World Ping Pong Championship [USA]

When I was kid, I wanted a pool table. Instead, my parents got me a ping pong table. While I was disappointed, I grew to like ping pong. So when I saw World Ping Pong Championship get released, I was cautiously optimistic. Unfortunately, rather than reminding me of the fun I had playing ping pong, it reminds me of the initial disappointment. While Gameshastra created a handful of original titles for the Minis program at the very start (games like D-Cube and Deflector), most have simply been ports, either from their PC casual games or their more recent efforts on iOS. At first I thought this was an original PSP title, but apparently it is simply a port of World Cup Table Tennis, originally by Skyworks (who also originally did Crime Spree). You control a ping pong paddle, apparently held by The Invisible Man. You can move the paddle around with the D-pad or analog nub, and pressing X jabs the paddle forward. To serve, you have to move the paddle to the ball and hit it; you can’t use the X button. To return the ball after it’s batted back to you, you move the paddle where you want and hit the X button to whack it back. You don’t always need to use the X button though, as you can just move it forward yourself. It’s kind of a strange playing method, as if it were meant for a touchscreen where your finger controlled the paddle, or perhaps even for the Wii, with the waggle controls. Using the analog nub or D-pad instead is more than a little clunky. Still, because it’s physics-based (as opposed to simply timing your button presses), you can perform some impressive trick shots by putting spin on the ball.