The Disney Sports Network, part 3 - A 1UP classic from July 6, 2010

The concept behind the Disney Sports Network was original. Konami and Disney Interactive had built a template for sport videogames featuring the most iconic characters in the world. The developer and publisher managed to deliver the complete vision with Disney Sports Soccer but failed to follow up with any other title in the series. This was no more evident with their basketball and skateboarding games. In order to understand how and even why the games failed we have to look at the publisher and see their history with sport titles. Konami had a very specific track record when it came to sport titles. This experience was reflected in Disney Sports Soccer. At one time Konami had two teams developing professional football (soccer) games, the Winning Eleven and Pro Evolution Soccer series. They had been working with the international sport for over 15 years. The PES franchise had been very successful and that experience was evident in Disney Sports Soccer.

The studio based out of Osaka had only limited experience with sports and activities more popular in the west. A great basketball game had eluded Japanese developers for some time. The most memorable basketball game Konami produced was Double Dribble. An arcade title from 1986 that was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System a year later. Their experience with basketball was spotty at best. Disney Sports Basketball was not a sim or 5-on-5 game but rather a faster paced 3-on-3 arcade experience. The game borrowed the elements that I spoke about in the previous blog, with regards to the teams, stadiums, uniforms and colors. Plays were quick and dunks were presented with over-the-top animations. It could be considered an attempt at making an NBA Jam-style game with Disney characters. Unfortunately the stiff control, poor balance, questionable collision detection and canned animations detracted from the title.

Each title in the DSN series was cast in a slightly different light, this was made most obvious in the opening animations. The Soccer title captured the energy and tempo of the global game, the American Football game captured the spectacle of the competition and the Basketball game had a very urban, almost Hip Hop vibe to it. It was present with the musical beat and urban setting in the opening animation. Characters bounced around fanciful arenas, not as large as either football games but still filled with tons of eye candy. Courts made of glass and suspended by blimps over skyscrapers, courts incorporated into theme parks and even space stations, all of the fanciful things that you would come to expect from the other titles in the universe appeared in DSN Basketball. The game itself was possibly the one with the most modes and even gameplay options. Disney Sports Basketball featured a number of play options including a full season as well as exhibition and challenge titles where All-Star teams combining different Disney icons could be put together. At the end of the Challenge Mode yet another feature popped up pitting a handful of "All Star" teams with their own uniforms and logos, including Pete's All Stars (who will be mentioned below in the soccer game), Mickey, Donald and Goofy also had their own All Star lineup. This was the only sports title that featured team creation consisting of multiple icons on the same side. The game also featured a step-by-step tutorial mode which was lacking in every other DSN title.

Control-wise the game was also the simplest to play, or at the very least fastest to master. On the easy setting players could dominate the competition with a couple of buttons. Passing, shooting and defending were completed with two buttons. On the harder settings scoring became frustratingly difficult as opponents stole or blocked the ball with efficiency and had a higher percentage of shots and dunks go in. Advanced players could actually enjoy the depth provided by the game targeted at youngsters. While it offered the frenetic scoring and over-the-top dunks of NBA Jam it also had a basic crossover move like NBA STREET as well as the ability to change formations and back down opponents like NBA Live. Players could switch relatively quickly between the tactics to find which worked for their particular character and style of play. This mix of arcade and sim elements meant that players could enjoy the gameplay in more than one format. Two buttons worked against opponents on the easiest setting but players had to master the four regular button and two shoulder button commands if they wanted to survive on the harder modes.

Disney Sports Basketball featured a marked difference between the teams and their style of play. The way the characters handled and even their special moves were defined by the individual mascots. In this way the teams each had their own personality, like the Soccer title. Unfortunately it lacked the substitution feature of the either the Soccer or American Football titles. While the gameplay was actually decent, above average despite what the reviews tell you, it was not in the same league as the aforementioned NBA games. The game did present one notable twist to the DSN experience. Pete and his Steamrollers were featured in the opening cinema and all through the instruction manual but the team was not present in any of the modes when starting a new game. This team could only be seen and played against after a season of playing against every other team in the league.

A cinema would introduce them on a smaller basketball court-sized version of the Steamroller Dome. Players would have to defeat the massive Pete and his team of hogs in a best-of-three series in order to unlock the team and their stadium. It was in the final levels that the naming behind his team, the Steamrollers, was explained, Pete was the only character in the game that could run over opponents rather than sidestep them with the crossover command. In fact Pete often knocked down all three of my teammates many times in a single rush to the basket. I learned quickly that the best defense against the character was to give him plenty of space and go for a rebound. Stealing the ball would often result in getting flattened by his quick step. This exception to the gameplay would have made Pete a popular choice amongst gamers trying to cheat their way to the top. Having gamers play through a season before unlocking the Steamrollers was a wise choice from a design standpoint.

As an aside I failed to mention that Pete was also the pivotal character in the DSN Soccer game. At the end of the Challenge Cup mode the player would have to take on Pete's All Stars, rather than the Steamrollers. This team had its own Stadium, playing in Vista Arena in outer space, which was the setting meant for Goofy's SpaceNuts team. Pete's All Stars also had their own uniforms, black and gray striped in a stark contrast to the bright orange of the Steamrollers. The ref Jose Carioca and the linesmen Huey, Dewey and Louie had bright yellow alternate uniforms instead of their regular black uniforms. The All Stars were composed of all the bad guy characters in the title, Pete and his hogs, Mortimer and his dogs and the Big Bad Wolf and his wolf teammates. The three mascot characters all had access to their magic abilities and trying to beat them was next-to-impossible as the rivals trounced players with an assortment of cheap shots and magic attacks. The difficulty curve with the magic shoes enabled was maddening, possibly surpassing the difficulty of Ninja Gaiden in its hardest mode. The only realistic way to defeat the team was to play through a season without any magic allowed. Additionally, if players managed to unlock all 40 magic shoes in the game they were rewarded with the Tiny Rockets, a team made up of the ref and linsemen from the game and the four all had access to magical shoes, making them the most powerful team in the game. Both Pete's All Stars and the Tiny Rockets could only be selected in the Exhibition Mode and not the Challenge or Dream Cup modes.

The titles at their best were a template for game animators to draw from, character designers to learn from and level designers to pull ideas out of. From a modeling standpoint the characters were faithful adaptations of their 2D counterparts. Many of the physical traits, personality cues, proportions and subtle details were brought into 3D models. Granted, there were some exceptions where characters with mouse ears did not keep their ears in perspective even when the head turned. This trick was easy to accomplish in 2D but would require some extra work in 3D. This was a slight oversight (the desired effect would show up in Epic Mickey after all) but for the DSN series the 3D models were great as the entire cast and supporting characters was well presented across the series. The uniforms themselves were actually unique in each title and not simply reused through the series. The color choices, patterns and logos did cross over but players in the basketball game had basketball jerseys and sneakers, players in the American football game had padding and helmets and those in the soccer title wore traditional kits. Each detail was accurate for their respective sport, from the cut of the fabric down to the cleats on the shoes. No detail was overlooked in the series.

From an animation standpoint the team at Konami had mastered the difficulties of creating realistic movement when the characters themselves had unrealistic proportions. Think about the challenges of having cartoon characters perform actions in three dimensions. How difficult would it be to have the short Huey, Louie or Dewey convincingly dribble a basketball almost as big as they were, or have the flat-footed Donald dribble a soccer ball across a field with his webbed feet? What about contests where height and size were supposed to matter? In the basketball title the shorter Minnie Mouse was supposed to be on par with the tall and lanky Goofy. There was also the challenge of having any character go up against the massive Steamrollers lineup and survive. The team at Konami in Osaka answered the challenges while respecting the legacy of the characters. The dribbling of the Tiny Rockets was fast and frenetic, as the ball did not have long to travel to the ground. Donald would lean forward and run full bore with a waddle in a wide-stance while keeping the ball close on dribbles, on free kicks he would turn his back to the person kicking the ball look then over his shoulder and shake his tail as a challenge / target. Minnie had a higher-than-average three point shot ability so she did not have to get close to the rim and attempt a dunk against taller opponents, this did not mean she couldn't dunk though. While the mascots maintained a happy facade in the other titles the grim determination was most evident and appropriate on those faces in the soccer title.

The stadiums themselves were amazing. As the detail in the logos and uniforms was evident, so too was the level of detail reinforced in the stadiums themselves. There were bannisters for camera people to set up, exit rows for the virtual guests, working projectors displaying the game from different angles, coolers and water bottles littering the sidelines and fully functional game and penalty clocks high above in the stands. While the majority of these things might not have been noticed or even seen by average gamers, it certainly helped ground the characters into a tangible universe. It wasn't solely the elements that existed in real world stadiums that were duplicated, it was the elements incorporated from the impossibly fantastic imaginations that were brought to life. Transparent floors with the scoreboard and gamecock visible underneath. Perpetually color-shifting fields made up of hexagons. Backboards made up of anti-gravity technology or with floating electronic signs circling them. I will go on and on over the course of the series with how spectacular the levels were. These were the types of designs that would make even the most creative architect green with envy.

The other saving grace, like those of most of the DSN games were the character designs and even concept art provided by the Disney artists. These rarely seen pieces showed the mood and atmosphere that the title was trying to present. These pieces gave the characters dimension far beyond a typical mascot sketch or any other Disney illustration of that time. Unfortunately most of the games failed to reproduce that sense of vulnerability, competitiveness or passion. They instead reduced the characters to the glassy-eyed, grinning mascots most people associate with the modern Disney characters.

The fourth game in the Gamecube lineup was possibly the worst. Disney Sports Skateboarding had the dubious distinction of being the lowest rated skateboarding game on Metacritic. A year later (in 2003) Toys For Bob developed and Activision published the highly popular Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure. It was vastly superior to the Konami game in many ways. It featured more modern characters from the Disney library including Toy Story, the Lion King and Tarzan. But it wasn't the characters that made the game special, it was the control by far. Toys For Bob had built their game on the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 engine. The control, tricks and animations were familiar to audiences and could be picked up easily by newcomers to the genre. Toys For Bob didn't follow up with another skateboarding game until 2006 when they made the Nintendo exclusive Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. By comparison the limited experience that Konami had with skateboarding as a culture and activity was evident as the gameplay fell far short of the expectations presented in the opening cinema.

 

Disney Sports Soccer came close to achieving gameplay that was on par with the opening cinema. DSN Skateboarding did not come close. The only thing that the skateboarding game had in common with the opening cinema were the locations. All of the levels and some of the features shown in the cinema made it into the game. The flow of the levels (the lines of the skatepark construction) was decent but the control of the characters and the multiplayer aspects were poor to nonexistent. I forced myself to play through the game through completion, again and again, to try and squeeze every ounce of detail that I could from the game.

Konami had only produced a few other skateboarding games before DSN Skateboarding. The two previous, ESPN X-Games Skateboarding released in 2001 and Evolution Skateboarding released a year later were met with mixed reviews. There were few changes made to the original X-Games Skateboarding engine to make it the backbone of both DSN and Evolution Skateboarding. That engine was one based on the Metal Gear Solid 2 engine that also happened to power the Winning Eleven game. Konami had built a powerful gaming engine, potentially spending millions in the process, that could be ported for different genres and even consoles. The thing that all the titles using the engine had in common were with the graphics. The engine was able to present fantastic 3D models with great lighting, textures and effects. It was able to recreate the physical traits of an actual skateboarder like Danny Way, a cartoon character like Donald Duck or even a Konami legend like Solid Snake while staying true to the source material and art direction.

For the skateboarding games the character models were all very detailed and appeared fantastic even when compared to the best work coming out of Neversoft, then the developers of the Tony Hawk games.

Where all three Konami skateboarding games failed was in the control department. Despite being detailed models, the characters moved stiffly and the control was even poorer. Turns were slow and clumsy, acceleration was a challenge and activating tricks was difficult even with practice. An activity like skateboarding demanded a certain sense of fluidity, range of motion and speed. Videogames rarely captured the sense of movement and freedom to explore the environment in ways that actual skateboarders could. Skateboarding games challenged developers differently than any other genre. The act of skateboarding was tricky yet had to be be made accessible and fun for gamers. Few outside of Neversoft managed to get that issue solved.

Konami tried to supplement the lack of control experience by changing the formula of a serious skate sim. They added themed environments and even "set pieces" to their titles. Both X-Games and DSN Skateboarding added exploration and even fantasy elements to their level design while Evolution Skateboarding introduced the concept of "boss battles" such as fighting a giant spider, stopping a runaway truck, planting bombs on an oil platform or battling a maniac in a tank. The oil rig and explosives, along with character models of Solid Snake and Raiden featured in Evolution Skateboarding were brought over from MGS2. Simon Belmont of Castlevania fame, Frogger and a few other random characters from Konami's library were put in Evo Skateboarding as well. Unfortunately all of these elements were undone by impossibly stiff controls.

I am a die-hard skateboarding game aficionado. I've played almost every skateboarding game made for consoles, handhelds, computer systems and the arcade. I still own many skateboarding games long forgotten by players. Unfortunately I also pride myself as being a glutton for gaming punishment. I grind through many games not worth the trouble just to see if I can find any redeeming factors in the title, or to try and understand where the designers were trying to go with the game. I played through Disney Skateboarding with every character, in every mode and searched through all the levels for secrets and unlockable content. Most gamers, even die-hard Disney fans refused to play for longer than a few minutes after feeling how stiff and unresponsive the controls were. The learning curve was also brutal as players not only had to learn how to do tricks but also had to complete certain objectives under a time limit. Even with a map to guide players to objectives, reaching some of the locations required thorough knowledge of the level, patience and sharp timing. How a young gamer could accomplish this was beyond me. There were also features touted in the manual and highlighted in the game like alternate costumes and several hidden boards that could never be unlocked. A handful of hidden boards never showed up in any level which frustrated a completion freak like me. The unintuitive checkpoint race, the unfinished training mode and brutally hard contest mode made for for an unforgivable experience. Unlocking everything in the game took almost two dozen hours to accomplish and I am sad for both Disney and Konami because I had to fight the game and controller every minute of the way.

Despite all of these things there were many fun and a few original ideas in DSN Skateboarding. From a gameplay aspect much of the level design was very progressive. Many of the levels in the game were laid out with makeshift ramps and rails lined up as they would be in an actual skatepark. Incorporating these elements made it easier (but not easy) for young or inexperienced gamers to find their way through a stage. The game had "perfect balance" during grinds so that players spent no time worrying about falling out of a grind and instead could pursue long combo strings. Perfect balance also allowed for lines to be built in a circuit, where some combos could be looped infinitely by reaching the right series of rails, wires and ledges.

This game was also one of the rare titles to incorporate grind-able roller coaster tracks in the level design. Jet Set Radio Future, Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarding 4 and Disney Skateboarding were all released in 2002 and they all had al least one roller coaster track in a level. The Disney and JSRF games allowed for characters to grind upside down, corkscrew and loop on the track. It was a fun dynamic that completely changed the way players approached levels and took gameplay and level design to new heights. The level Dreamland Funpark was inspired greatly by the Magic Kingdom, with an amusement park-meets-fantasy castle setting the stage. It was even framed with fireworks shooting off in the distance, a very nostalgic touch. Konami answered one of the challenges presented in the opening cinema by allowing the characters to do the impossible while skateboarding. It made for one memorable element in a game which was otherwise easily forgettable. Unfortunately it also highlighted one of game design choices that would handicap the vision behind the series.

Disney Skateboarding was special above the other titles because it allowed freedom of exploration. It was not locked into the confines of a sport sim. This freedom highlighted the deficiencies with the series more than the American Football or Basketball games could have. In fact over four DSN games for the Gamecube there were many lessons learned. We shall look at these in the next blog.

Did you play any game in this series? I’d like to hear about it in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!