Capcom Sports Club
Tuesday October 10, 2023
When I put a MiSTercade in my Versus City, one of the games that caught my eye was Capcom Sports Club. It’s a collection of 3 little arcade sports games, which are tennis, basketball, and soccer. It was released for the CPS2 in 1997.
Each game has you select a country to play as, with each one having different stats. It really isn’t that deep of a game though, so you can pretty much pick whichever one has the colors you like and still enjoy yourself. It only uses 3 buttons so it’s girlfriend friendly. That’s a very good thing because I just realized while replaying this by myself that there is NO single player mode. You can’t hit start until there are 2 credits inserted.
Tennis
Each girl has different stats but I truly have never thought about it for 1 second. You can find out which one of these stats causes the most cheese when playing with your friend. Also, look at the Chinese girl. It’s Chun Li.
Each court makes the ball bounce slightly differently. Once again I have never thought about this while playing. Maybe that means I’m not reviewing this game throughly enough, but I don’t think any of these choices have had an effect on my gameplan or my enjoyment of the game. I hit ball.
Tennis is my second favorite of the group. Each button does the same thing (swing) so every game boils down to just mixing the shit out of your opponent.
Basketball
In my opinion this is the most fun game of the group. Usually if one of my friends is asking me to start up this game, the only one they want to play is basketball.
Each team has guys that play different positions. I don’t know much but surely shooter is the best. I play this game like a piece of shit.
It’s pretty similar to NBA Jam. I don’t have a ton of experience with NBA Jam, but it seems like you can be a way bigger piece of shit in Capcom Sports Club. Goal tending does not exist. If I get the ball, I can usually just tank through the other team like they’re not even there and slam dunk the shit out of it. There is a shoot, pass, and run button. Get ball. Run. Shoot. You win. Your friend is mad.
Soccer
My least favorite of the 3 but it could be fun if you like the Fifa games and are sick of everything being so damn realistic. What I do like about soccer is that you can jump and kick the ball in the air. Other than that it kind of just feels like a worse version of the basketball game.
Each team has a different “type” and as far as I can tell it only changes the placement of where your guys start.
Soccer is the one I’ve played the least but I do want to try it some more with a friend that likes soccer and not one that will button mash and hope it works.
Final thoughts
I’m not a huge fan of the art style of this game. They made the tennis girls cute but all the guys in basketball and soccer are ugly as shit. Why do all the basketball guys have giant bright pink noses? I can look past it because the game is fun, but it is a little weird. Even the kids that fly up onto the screen after points are scored is strange. I can’t really put my finger on why, it just seems like this game wasn’t made by Capcom or something. Music is fine. Nothing mind blowing. The games are a little shallow but that’s fine. If I had to explain mechanics to people from the other side of my Versus, nobody would play with me again.
This game is also very fun to spectate. Maybe I’m weird, but I like watching people who suck ass at video games compete.Hype shit happens by accident.
Is it worth your quarters?
Yes. It’s the kind of dumb fun multiplayer game that anyone can pick up and understand pretty quickly, even if they don’t really play video games. If you do play video games, there’s enough room for a tiny meta game to develop between you and your video game playing friend. At one point my friend’s “unbeatable” strategy was to serve the tennis ball as fast as possible, which was discovered, abused, and discarded over the process of many fun rounds.
I truly doubt you’ll ever see one of these machines in real life. According to VAPS, 7 of the recorded machines are actually just the circuit boards. Something about this game does scream “candy cab fuel”, and I couldn’t even find a picture of an American style cabinet for this game. Not even a big blue. You can get the game in the Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium, but I don’t know who the hell is buying individual arcade ROMs locked to one platform while FBNeo exists. But yeah, if you see it in some cool Japanese arcade running on an Astro City, and you have another person to play against, it’s worth your quarters. Or yen. Whatever.