Watching another Youtube long play for this review. The opening music immediately brought me back 30 years or so to sitting in my room loading up this game. Hearing the TV in the kitchen and the tinny speaker mounted oddly in the right side of the monitor I used with my C64 chirping out this now very retro sounding rendition of “Maple Leaf Rag“. I can also remember smelling what I thought was french toast cooking (my favorite breakfast food of all time BTW) when really my Mom was making fried tomatoes. That was always a huge disappointment because fried tomatoes don’t taste anything like french toast. =\ Now I’m off track, but I guess that’s the point of reminiscing huh?
The old school ‘ECA’ logo for Electronic Arts (EA, now-a-days) also brings back memories of eagerly waiting for my games to load with often un-skippable game logos masking some back end loading.
The game play is a bit slow but not terrible for such an old game. I like that the developers took the time to animate the spinning that is frequent in basketball (I would assume, I don’t watch or play it so I am certainly not an authority). A detail I feel was lacking in other basketball games of the period.
I think it’s comical how both players prance around with their hands out like they are doing some sort of river dance. I guess holding your arms out while playing basketball isn’t terribly uncommon, just looks awkward here after the basket has been made.
One neat thing about this game is that occasionally when dunking you will shatter the backboard glass. The subsequent cleanup by the maintenance tech is punctuated by his or her comical complaining at the situation.
Gameplay here is fairly straight forward, dribble around with the ball trying to shoot and make baskets. It’s half court, to 21. There are fowls but I don’t know that they result in free throws. The crowd sounds like a car driving through a puddle.
I recall playing this game with my sister and neither of us being very good. I much preferred ‘Sam and Ed’ for my basketball fun, but I’ll get to that later.
A solid sports game for the period/system.
As always, take care of yourself!
-NG
