"Bo sure as hell doesn't know video games!"

The game: This game was released back in 1990 when Bo Jackson was still playing Football and Baseball, so the people at THQ decided to give us a baseball and football game all in one. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, huh? Well, lets get onto the review to see if it lives up as a stellar sports title, or just a crappy sports game with some big name endorsement. Before I start the review, I'm just gonna let you know I'm slightly gonna change from my regular reviewing style so you can see which sport I'm reviewing for.

Graphics

Baseball: 7: You got a really great looking pitcher-batter interface, and when you're pithcing you get a nice pic of the catcher where you pick what pitch you get to pick from. The field looks decent, and so do the players, and the scoreboard looks great too. You get nice little victory/losing cinematics after games.

Football: 2: The football field is all right, but the players look God awful, they're just a either a white or black square representing there body, one little thin white or dark line representing there legs, and a smaller white or dark square on top of the bigger square representing there head. Not to be harsh or anything, and we all know that the old Game Boy's capabilities aren't the greatest, but the developers could've done a heck of a lot better than this. I mean the players look so bad I think that the old Atari 2600 football game, Real Sports Football looks a lot better than this. Graphics would've gotten a 1 for a score, but there are a couple of neat extras like a neatly layed out playbook, and cinematics for victories and losses.

Sound

Baseball: 4: I know most Game Boy games have bad sound, and that goes with this one as well, the tune is annoying, but the sound effects are alright, and sound normal for a Game Boy baseball game like the smashing of a bat with the ball.

Football: 2: The same annoying background music is in the football part of the game too! And the sound effects are really bad too, like the sound of the football in the air sounds like some dumb 7year old blowing a broken whistle.

Gameplay

Baseball: 6: Pitching and batting is easy to learn. In current baseball games you usall y just press a button combination to do a certain pitch, but in here you gotta go through the tedious process of selecting you pitch from a menu, there are about 9 pitches such as fastball, curve ball, fork ball, sliders, and so on. Even though this is odd, it fits for a Game Boy title, since your opponent can't tell which pitch you're going to do. And after a while at pitching I managed to throw pitches, which would always go in the strike zone, and the computer would never swing at! And in both games, Bo Jackson pops up to give you advice every now and then.

Football: 3: You got about 11 offensive and only about 7 defensive plays to choose from. There's barely any player animation at all, you can only tell if they're moving if you see the yardline's scrolling as you play, and you can only see about 15-20 yards of the field during game play, and there's no passing windows or anything so if you do a passing play you better hope your receiver will be in the right place at the right time, because interceptions are frequent in the football part of the game.

Replay Value

Both games:4: Well, the game is game link compatible, so you can play at your friend, but you'll probably not like football at all, and baseball takes too long to finish, and both games have no extra modes to play from. The only extra you get is Bo Jackson giving you advice.

Overall for Baseball: 5
Overall for Football: 3

''OVERALL'': 4

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 04/11/00, Updated 04/11/00