Long time Defunct Game readers will remember Bam! Entertainment for their entertaining name. But if you've been gaming at all the last few years chances are you've run across one or two Bam! Entertainment games, even if you haven't entertained the notion of buying their games. With a funky website (Bam4Fun) and some surprises up their sleeves, Bam! is set for an exciting 2005. Whether it will be enough for them to finally live up to their name we may not know for a long time, but at least we can review their website today. And I assure you, we're going to kick it up a notch.

Look and Design: I suppose that I shouldn't be too surprised that the website for Bam! is one of very few words? I would go as far as to say that this site has less text than any I have run across. Sites that are coming soon say more than this site. But like I said, when you're name is Bam!, I guess you can get away with it. The color scheme is dark blue with a lighter blue border, which would usually work for me, but I just can't muster up the energy to say anything good about it. The black on blue is better, but nothing about this site will make you remember it, especially when compared against other, better pages.

Accessibility: When you have a website like Bam! you almost feel bad when the links don't make sounds. Outside of the fact that it doesn't shout at you, the site is fairly easy to surf. They have most of their current big titles (Starsky & Hutch, Carmen Sandiego) on display on the front page, along with their upcoming games (Ice Nice, A Sound of Thunder, and Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death). If you're looking for something older (but not too old), you can look through their list of recent titles, going all the way back to the original PlayStation.

The game pages are pretty weak, even compared to some of the recent sites we've gone to. You get only a few pictures, and many of them you won't be able to enlarge. Even their biggest titles only get a 50 word description with a couple of lame bullet points, it's just not what you want to see from a website. Let's face it, the internet has been around long enough to where all of these companies should be giving us high quality sites, there is no time trying to find your way through this swamp.

Insider Information: Look, we can go about this any number of ways, but it's still going to get us back to the one obvious fact: Bam! Entertainment does not generate news. Oh sure, they could do what everybody else is by announcing games, patches, and celebrity endorsements, but that's not Bam's style. Instead we get one outdated news item after another. In the newest posting they talk about being "de-listed" from the NASDAQ stock exchange, yet only two stories down they feature a news article talking about their long-term plans with NASDAQ. It doesn't help any that the news section is almost never updated, and when it is it's often downbeat in nature. Bam! Entertainment may not be the biggest name in the video game world, but somebody should give them some Prozac and bake them a cake, because I know one company that is being too hard on themselves!

Parting Thoughts: When I go to write these articles I usually know what I'm going to say and the topics I am going to bring up. But occasionally I can be completely thrown for a loop and learn something I didn't know. If the Bam! Entertainment website taught me anything, it's that Bam! Entertainment recently acquired VIC Entertainment and will be publishing State of Emergency 2. To a lot of you this means nothing, but for months now I was still under the allusion that Rockstar would be publishing it. I guess there is truth to rumors that you learn something new every day.

FINAL GRADE: C-
(Important Note: This review was written in 2004. As is the case with websites things tend to change and get moved around. We've decided to cover major companies who should have a presence on the web for many years to come, but the actual reviews of the layout may not be relevant for more than a month to a year. Having said that, we're hoping this article was still interesting, and if not, at least you go this extra little paragraph of explanation that you wouldn't normally get on the other websites.)