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GAMES Virtua Tennis Platform: Dreamcast Publisher: Sega Developer: Mie Kumagai The players are second-rate pros (no Agassi, no Sampras). There are no women players. The Steve Vai-style guitar shredder soundtrack is insanely bad. The close ups look weird (the amazing Jim Courier guy looks like a burn victim). It's called "Virtua." But it's one of the most realistic sports sims ever. In fact, Virtua Tennis is the most fun sports game on any machine since the heyday of the Sega Genesis! Holy frig, this game plays nice. The control feels so tight and natural you're playing long rallies from the first serve. There's one button for a groundstroke, one for a lob, joystick for direction control -- you could almost play this with an Atari joystick. No wrestling around with trigger buttons, combos, contextual menus whatever; VT's gameplay is simple and classic and satisfying like a grilled cheese. The game is a Sega arcade port, like Crazy Taxi, so you know that means big and bright and beautiful (just watch the lighting change as the sun moves across the court and try not to weep). During gameplay the players look great, all smooth and realistic-like. The programmers nailed the different surfaces too -- clay court rallies can last forever, grass court points are short and sweet. You get a warm feeling in your stomach when a game just plays right and so few contemporary games achieve this. This is the smoothest feel you've felt since Tony Hawk. 
NFL Gameday Platform: PlayStation Publisher: 989 Sports Developer: US Gold This is a football video game for the Sony Playstation and that's about all there is to say about it. This game is the poster-child for the need for anti-aliasing in your hardware (the Dreamcast has it, the Playstations 1 and 2 don't). Rough, blocky, pixels are so everywhere it hurts to look at this game; it's like your eyes are wearing tight acrylic pants. It has all the features you expect (season mode, real players, every team that ever existed, etc.) and the control is alright I guess, but this game is a snoozer. The only redeeming feature is the option to celebrate after every play, so even after you throw an incomplete pass or you get tackled in your own endzone you can press the triangle button and your guy will say "I'm feelin' it!" and do the Running Man.
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