I'm into it, I'm into it. The puck on the ice, the whizzing past my goalie (see Great Ice Hockey box art), the absolute failure. I have to be ready man, because my mean opponents mean business.

So let's continue! Along with the trackball, you have the ability to switch the controller for use with pad games or regular games. The switch on the right enables you to go from "Sports Pad Mode" to regular mode, assuming that the controller can be used with anything else you want to try it with. In addition, you of course have the two buttons right there to use, and for some dumb reason, again, Sega decided to go lefty on us and put them on the left instead of the right. I guess in this case their reasoning is more clear because most right- handed people would be using their right hand to spin the trackball. However, see that switch at the upper left? Luckily they had a bit of sense and also added a rapid fire feature to this controller, though they only refer to it as the "Action Switch." It works pretty well. Regardless, this is still the most awkward button arrangement ever. As most of us know, they also did this with the Sega Control Stick and it gets on everyone's nerves. But enough about the beauty of this thing, what about it's function?

HEAVENLY GOD. Am I supposed to seriously use this? Really? You're not kidding? Seriously. Come on, be serious now. You are serious. This would be my discussion with the fools who decided on this thing. You'd think that making two games with it would have come out pretty well since that couldn't have been too much of a workload. Atari had an arcade football game that used a trackball, so why not Sports Pad Football? I know there had to be a hockey game that used one too, so why not Great Ice Hockey? I have no idea what went wrong here folks, but for some reason these games are so horribly programmed that the Sports Pad simply does nothing. When you spin the trackball your characters don't really move correctly, they kind of skip and sputter about. This, and they tend to move really, really slowly. It's just awful. Surprisingly, you'll have more luck using this with any other game. I've seriously made it to the end of Streets of Rage using the Sports Pad, it's not that hard at all for certain titles, but there's simply no reason to use it. Yet again, it's very difficult to make anything more useful than the tired-and-true Control Pad. These things were perfect for a reason, they used the human body and simplicity to get the job done so you can friggen play games without thinking too much about it.

But wait, let me go into detail about how the Sports Pad works with the actual games it was intended to work with. First, let's check out Great Ice Hockey. This beauty is somewhat sought after by collectors, at least those outside of the US, because it wasn't released anywhere else. Smart move, Sega. I'm not going to go into how much the game sucks, so let me cut to the chase. When using the pad with this game, you'll find immediately that it's not as responsive as the box claims. You have to spin the trackball hard to get your player to move with any sort of speed required to actually play, and I mean HARD. Because of this, you spend the majority of your time simply getting the puck instead of actually moving with it because it takes so much trouble. The reason is that, unlike with the Control Pad where you can hold one direction down, move, and then quickly shift another direction, you have to spin hard in the other direction. Spinning like this is almost impossible at times, not to mention tiring. Once you do grab a hold of the puck with this monster, you have to spin the damn ball so hard you usually get it stolen right off of you in a matter of seconds. If you're lucky enough to get it to the other side of the rink, good luck getting into the net because you have to spin the ball towards the goal and then shoot. Due to the trouble with spinning it, you'll glide the puck along like a biscuit and never get it in the net. Another problem is thus that spinning it so hard requires you to almost hold on to the controller for dear life, and trying to press the buttons at the same time is almost impossible. I figured it was just the responsiveness of the pad I had but I tried it with three others (yes, I have more than one because I'm that sick) to find the same problem. What should happen is with a flick of the thumb, you should move along smoothly. It just doesn't happen here, when you use the Sports Pad you go nowhere. The only possibily is to play this game with someone else since it will be evenly matched, which I doubt is going to happen or ever happened in the history of video gaming. Strike one for the pad.

Strike two is even worse. I wish this were a baseball title so I could make a hideous pun to show I know what the word pun means, but alas, instead I have to tell you a bit about Sports Pad Football. Basically, when you use the pad here, you face the same problem. You spend so much time blasting away at the trackball that you never actually get anywhere. When you finally get the ball, trying to change directions, which needs to be done quickly in this title, is impossible. You finally get going fast enough in one direction, and when you need to go the other way forget it. If you're moving up to the right and then have to move down to the right, the awkwardness of changing your hand to this silly direction towards your body is difficult to describe. Further, the difficulty in switching from spinning it to pressing a button complicates the matter doubly. As I mentioned above, because you're holding onto the pad so tightly so it doesn't move around, pressing buttons when you need to in addition to moving is usually out of the question. Even more horrifying is something that some collectors don't even realize until it's too late, especially European collectors. Sports Pad Football is simply Great Football reprogrammed to accomodate the pad. Reprogrammed poorly, mind you, this game was clearly not geared to use this thing. You'll find that Great Ice Hockey sort-of works here and there because they actually tried a bit, but this game here just wasn't meant to be played with a trackball at all. So intead of making a new game and perhaps pulling it off, they just reprogrammed another that was already a piece of shit. Yet another example of Sega's stupidity back then. Seriously, MAKE A NEW GAME. Is it that hard? If you want to market something like the Sports Pad, put some effort into it for God's sake. Heck, Global Defense probably would have worked well with this.

As I wade through the sticky, rank, putrid, harsh-smelling, rancid, acrid wastes of Sega Master System accessories, I'm quite disappointed with this one. When I first picked up a Sports Pad, I figured it would work pretty cool. In fact, the potential is there because this game works splendid with Power Block on 4 Pak All Action, and Woody Pop would probably work equally awesome with it. But for some stupid reason, the idiots who decided on its existence decided to use it only for sports titles. They released two, and then realized their folly. It's so strange that it actually works much better with games that were not tailored for it, like Streets of Rage, or the other day when I tried Ghouls n' Ghosts. Well, that one wasn't the best example because shooting up or down is atrocious on the thing, but regardless, let it be known, the Sega Sports Pad is a disgrace. Purely and simply, a disgrace. Strike three out, biatches.