LLike developer Sidebar’s 2017 cult triumph Golf Story, Sport Story feels like a standout title from the Super Nintendo era. You’re vacationing on a pixelated, bright, retro-flavoured island with your golf coach and friends. The aesthetic is not far from a portable Pokémon or Zelda, immediately attractive and comfortable to play.
In this colorful and clever RPG, instead of using swords and sorcery to fight our way through a fantasy world, we play in resort towns populated by athletes who can teach us new sports: tennis, BMX, cricket, soccer. Of course, there are evil forces at play as well: a menacing corporation buying up the local greenways, and some sort of athletic mob hindering the player’s journey. What begins as a relaxing vacation with sunny beaches and glitzy shopping malls soon leads us to dark silver mines filled with puzzles to solve and citizens to help.
The writing is a real highlight. The tone of each exchange is crisp and light, and the shape and size of the text changes for emphasis, a simple visual design choice that gives a true sense of voice. However, despite the charming characters and lush, colorful worlds, the game suffers from some glitches and design flaws. There were times, in particular, during a lovely game of tennis with some babies, when the game broke down and I was immobile. The quest log is unreliable, and in a game that asks you to find a large number of items for many, many characters, that’s frustrating.
But technical instability doesn’t always denote a bad game. The sheer charm of the writing, the pleasure of playing golf, and the warmth of the world make up for the rough edges. It’s also a generously large game: flawed, but special all the same.
