[sips] Ahh!
[sounds of oceans waves]
Yeah, so it's summertime, which means you have to go to the beach.
If you choose to.
And stay out in the sun.
And have all sorts of sand and crap all over you
and listen to annoying HAPPY CHILDREN!
And birds and
look at men with hairy nipples and American flags.
Speaking of hairy-nippled men,
volleyball... is pretty much associated in my mind with summer.
I was going to have an interesting little cutscene here
of me finding something on the beach,
but I got lazy
and I'm not making it!
Instead, here is a picture of a monkey with a basketball.
I guess that makes it a monkey ball.
Ba-dum tish.
Introducing Kings of the Beach
for the NES,
as well as the Commodore 64 and DOS systems.
It's a game by Ultra Games.
"Dig It!"
"Sun-bathed beaches"
"from San Diego to Sydney are yours to conquer."
"as you challenge heavy-hitting volleyball superstars..."
Blah, blah, blah, opening scene, match point,
slam-fest, timing, aces, kills, digs, stuff.
IT'S VOLLEYBALL!
THAT'S IT!
WHY would you put this much effort in to the BACK of a BOX of a VOLLEYBALL GAME?!
It's volleyball.
You don't have to "nineties-ize" it to death.
The back of this is making my head hurt from all the intense marketing.
Inside is a little bit better.
You have a standard-looking black-and- white cheap manual from Electronic Arts.
"Learning How To Play."
Lemme guess:
you press A and B?
Oh my goodness.
You do.
You have your role models
which are Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos.
They are volleyball champions, apparently, in real life.
The rest of it is pretty stupid.
It shows you drawings of naked men.
So, let's stick it in the NES.
And play.
'Cause that's what you do with these games.
1989.
Oh, it says Konami.
I didn't know that.
And of course, now you have your role models here again.
It has to remind you.
Makes me wanna go out right now.
And buy posters of them.
At Target because it's trendy.
[whistle]
[NES music]
Pretty typical NES music, but I happen to like it.
You have your three different training areas: Bump, Set and Spike.
I'm going to Bump here just to see how much I suck.
And as it turns out, I can bump the ball rather well.
I could also do the other one.
However, I really, really, really run into some problems
with Spike.
In fact, if you made the argument that it's impossible to perfectly align yourself
to do these things all the time,
I would agree with you.
The timing is just weird
and you jump and there's like a slight delay,
so for some reason you just can't connect.
Serving takes the same aspect.
So you'll be kicking the sand a lot.
And when I say "you," I mean me.
Because I'm really horrible at this.
And to be honest, I don't really like volleyball that much anyway.
I always ended up looking stupid while playing it
and fell down on the court and looked like a moron
and generally ended up jumping up and down,
doing the same stupid stuff that this guy in the pink is.
Yeah, that's me in the pink on the left.
The guy in the, uh, white thong Speedo thing is my...
"partner."
The graphics are decent.
I suppose.
They're nothing fancy.
Pretty simplistic but I do like the animations.
Especially the sand kicking and–
Whenever you happen to
make a move that you don't particularly like,
I, I don't know, I just press all the buttons.
I think you can actually press Select
and you actually go to the ref and complain.
Which is completely freakin' cool!
Not enough sports games where you can go to the ref and complain, I say.
It doesn't do anything but give you a yellow or red card.
The red card doesn't do anything, so whatever.
These guys just handed my sandy butt to me,
so I'm gonna try something else here in the registration tent.
There is a blond girl with very large features
saying you should sign in.
The options are pretty standard.
You can play with another person,
or you can play with the Nintendo.
I prefer to play with the Nintendo because I am a loser,
and I do not have any friends.
Well, I, I actually do have a few friends, but they're not by choice.
They just sort of come and go.
I think we call them "Facebook friends."
At least, that's what I hear from the kids nowadays.
But they never wanna play Nintendo with me.
The tournament mode is essentially the exact same thing.
Where you have multiple games in a row to get pwned at.
So there's really not too much else to see here.
I also really wanna mention the DOS game.
The introduction screen has awesome AdLib music.
[AdLib music]
But in the actual game, there's none of that.
It's all PC speaker.
[PC speaker music]
The same
well-rounded lady–
who looks like she has an intensely bad sunburn
and her eyes are peeled back with Botox–
is standing there waiting for you to sign in.
The controls are... much the same.
The spiking is still impossible.
You press L,
colon,
and apostrophe in order to do the different things.
An interesting side note about these games
is that there are other Electronic Arts people in here,
such as Lester from Skate or Die
and Mack from Hard Hat Mack.
There's also Arnold Schwarzenegger for some reason
and another guy who looks like Ivan Drago
or whatever from Rocky.
If you happen to win any of these, at least on the DOS version,
you are greeted by another feminine burn victim,
who seems to be fisting her foot for some reason.
She gives you such high words of praise,
such as "Great going, guys!"
"You're on your way."
"Hope you can keep it up when the going gets hot and heavy!"
Yep.
It says that.
That is what she said.
Kings of the Beach
is...
intensely decent
and all-around okay.
It's a volleyball game.
As far as volleyball games go,
I guess you don't get too much better than this.
There's only three of them on the NES
and only a couple of them on the computer, so...
take what you get,
don't complain,
sit down,
and enjoy it!
Because
if not,
Sinjin and Stoklos
will come and kick you in the face!
Knocking your head off.
And then using it as a volleyball... to "bag chicks."
On the beach. Because they're the KINGS! Of the beach.