Believe it or not it’s hard for me to give a game a bad review when I can see the intentions are good, it’s just that the game was just not made well. But even with bad games, I really will never begrudge anybody to get enjoyment out of them. There is someone out there who as a little girl really liked Barbie Horse Adventure on the original Xbox, or a guy who had fond memories of playing Karate Kid on NES. That said, though, we all know by now what the road to Hell is paved with and if you’re unfortunate enough to be on that journey to the lake of fire, you’ll likely look down at the ground and see copies of Instant Sports for Nintendo Switch snuggled in between copies of Drake of the 99 Dragons, Shaq-Fu, and all the unsold 3DO, Philips CD-I, and Atari Jaguar consoles.

Instant Sports is, to be frank (pic of Billy Madison w/ Frank’s Shirt), a pretty crappy game. It’s a Wii-style motion-controller shovelware game that was made about a dozen years too late, and despite being released Holiday 2019, is *still* overshadowed by the far superior Wii Sports. Does that mean you can’t have any fun with it? Nah. You can still enjoy yourself with some of it, but even those parts are flawed. Allow me to explain.

So you’ve got 6 games to choose from: Run & Jump which is known to everybody born after the 19th century as the Hurdles, Goal Keeper – a weird non-soccer soccer game, Tennis, Bowling, Rafting, and Baseball – which is more of a homerun derby. When you first fire up the game, it’ll make you choose your joy-con setup and force you to only use one of them. Remember that I mentioned this, it’ll be important in a little while.

Each game basically has you select the number of players (though Goal Keeper is minimum 2 player) then you select some weird androgynous character with various hats and accessories you can customize them with, then you’re off to play the game. You can customize the characters from the hat symbol on the menu.
I picked this guy with a moustache that makes him a dress shirt and suspenders away from looking like he works at a craft brewery downtown to see what I could change on him. Imagine my surprise when I highlighted the “no facial whatever” option and his moustache just disappeared, I’m assuming never to return until I win the moustache from the prize shop. Like that was it. It was gone after that.
So obviously the intention here is to continue winning coins in these games and buying duffle bags and unlocking more craziness for your characters. The items you win are random, just like your typical loot boxes you’d see in other games. You might win a shirt, or you might win a new set of hurdles. Because that’s what everybody hopes for…hurdles. Though the viking boat for the rafting game was actually kind of awesome.

So onto the games. Run n Jump’s controls are confusing. You’re supposed to keep the arrow in the little bubble, but then when you move the joy-con, then the bubble just goes up. Hit the red at the top and your guy starts running like a geriatric and can’t keep up with everybody and it screws up your timing jumping over the hurdles. So yeah. Crap.

It’s a Wii-style motion-controller shovelware game that was made about a dozen years too late, and despite being released Holiday 2019, is *still* overshadowed by the far superior Wii Sports.

Goal Keeper is if they dumbed down Boom Ball and put it in a soccer setting. You each have a joy-con and you’re obviously supposed to block the soccer balls, but then for reasons we couldn’t figure out, the gloves would start getting smaller and also I guess I hit a power up that flipped the screens upside down? But then that screwed us both up so it’s not like that was an advantage. So I don’t know what happened there. Wasn’t as bad as Run n’ Jump but still could use some tweaking or even an explanation on what the power ups do.

Tennis…tennis was so boring we played a match until someone scored. From what I could see there’s no way to move your character if you choose the motion control option so that means you’re just waiting for the ball to get to you so you can shake the joy-con once to hit it. If you’re playing against the computer, you’ll do the same thing until it eventually hits the ball so far away that the AI for your character isn’t smart enough to anticipate that and run to the ball in time, and it’ll force you to miss. So yeah, I do think the game cheats when that happens. Also the “easy” level is in the desert. Because apparently that’s the easiest place to play tennis.

Bowling is self-explanatory. It plays like Wii bowling except it forces you to share a joy-con with everybody else playing, which annoyed me. Why can’t we just all have a controller? And speaking of controllers – I told you this would come up again – you are forced at the beginning of every game to confirm the joy-con setup for everybody playing, no matter what. Let me tell you that it gets really annoying to have to tell the game every time which controller you’re using, or that there’s 2 of you playing, even though it’s been that way the whole time. If it does that every game, why did it make you do a single joy-con when you first started the game at all? (mugatu crazy pill clip?)

Rafting also wasn’t bad. It’s definitely prettier to look at than the other games and if you use teamwork I can see this being fun. There’s some power ups in this you can pick up while you’re paddling around. If you paddle really fast the characters start spazzing out, and that was entertaining.

Lastly was Baseball. It’s like a watered down Homerun Derby that’s played from a really annoying angle and there’s no batter’s box or anything that helps you get oriented. I also couldn’t get a run to save my life. Hey, that’s kinda like when I played actual baseball!

So is there anything good about this game? Like I said originally, if it’s a good natured, budget friendly and family friendly game that just happened to not be made very well, then that doesn’t bother me as much as the AAA titles that are shipped unfinished yet they still expect you to wait a couple weeks for the outrage mob to force them to issue a patch and give a milquetoast apology along with asking for another $30 for DLC. Bowling, Rafting, Baseball, and even Goal Keeper aren’t bad, but Run n’ Jump and Tennis should be skipped. You want a track and field game? Play Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games 2020. You want a tennis game? Play Mario Tennis Aces.