Basketball Classics Reviews

I feel like I was duped by the reviews on this game. Bots? Pros: - The custom art is excellent and easily the best part of this game. I love the large sprites. This artist obviously loves the game of basketball and did a fantastic job of capturing the likenesses of NBA legends, without crossing copyright lines... Unfortunately, the art direction is also a con (will elaborate later). - Fully customizable rosters. - Multiple game modes. The game mode where you create a team of legends by means of 5 different challenge games is neat. Cons: - Gameplay. Shoot, pass, steal, block, jump ball to start the game... Even the dunking mini game gets old quickly and I find it to be immersion-breaking. Pretty much every single time you dunk the ball, if there's a defender nearby/in front of you, you're going to be pulled into a mini game that frankly takes too long and becomes tedious quickly. No turbo to run faster for a period of time (Although, if you call a play on offense like pick-and-roll, the "roll" guy will have a temporary boost of speed. Not all that well implemented though.) The gameplay is incredibly tedious. - Graphics. With a pixel art game, it's reasonable to expect some good old-fashioned pixel sprites. Unfortunately, you play with a bunch of stick figures who are marginally discernible from one another. Big missed opportunity here to make some great 16-bit sprites. While the custom art in the menu and in the dunking mini game is great, everything else leaves a lot to be desired. Also, the camera is so far zoomed out at all times...just sort of makes it a stale and boring experience. It's like looking at a board of marbles going back and forth. - There's a mode where you can play through a season, but it's as basic as it can get and you can't really do anything other than play each game in the season. No trades, no player development or mini games between the season's games, no draft, etc. More tedium and boring gameplay. - The way you call offensive plays is certainly unique, with there being three options drawn on the back court as you inbound the ball. These sort of "buckets" are triggered by standing on them for a second or two. The buckets you stand on should really be smaller, as sometimes you'll inbound the ball and BOOM you called a play you didn't want to call. It pulls all your players across half court when you call a play. Honestly, I don't care for this system at all. Just map the play-calling to buttons on the controller (the game only uses two anyway...). - No player development, coaches, or really anything other than very basic arcade-style gameplay. This game's creators actually had the gall to post something suggesting this as a successor to Super Techobowl. It has a long way to go. All in all, $10 isn't much, but I would rather have my $10 after purchasing this. There are much better options out there for the money (or for free).