There are not many sports games as bad as Pat Riley's Basketball, for the Sega Genesis. But back in the 80s, I didn't know much about basketball, and apparently I didn't know much about video games either, for I played a lot of this.
The highlight of the game was the "cinematic" dunk shots, pictured above. They're interesting for about five minutes. There are only a couple, and last about three seconds. The rest of the game looks terrible.
See?
The gameplay is equally bad. All the players are identical, stat-wise, and the game doesn't even have the NBA license, so it's just generic teams.
But, like I said, I played a lot of it cause I was a kid and bored. The game is a far cry from Lakers Versus Celtics, a later, superior Genesis game which had the NBA license, players who looked like their real life counterparts (in 16 bit), and even signature dunk moves for famous players. I used to play this at my friend's house. He had better taste.
Looked both up and not really impressed with either graphically. I'll ake your word on gameplay. The Celtics vs. Lakers video is just Tom Chambers stealing from and dunking on everyone. lol
I wonder how I'd feel about Double Dribble on NES if I played it today. That's the basketball game I grew up with; I think I played it more than my older brother, which is suspect ...
yeah, they're both pretty damn ugly. But the gameplay in Lakers/Celtics is a different world. Of course, can't begin to compete with today's simulation games.
Like most sports games, I never got into basketball ones. I do remember that Arch Rivals and NBA Jam were everywhere in arcades, though.
Only basketball games I got into were Mario Hoops 3 on 3 on DS and Mario Sports Mix on Wii. Both were made by Square and both had Final Fantasy characters in it, too. In the story mode on Mario Sports Mix, the last thing you do is fight a giant FF Behemoth with sports skills you used from playing basketball, volleyball, and dodgeball. I'm surprised people don't bring this up more often, as I found that VERY weird!
I don't think I've heard of that Mario basketball game. Sounds fun.
NBA Jam was my game back then. "Boomshakalaka!", "He's on fire!".
yeah that was big when I was in high school.
It was big when I was a college drop out toying with the idea of playing music for a living.
