Basketball the way (5-year-olds think) it’s meant to be
Sega Genesis
Released in 1994 by EA Sports
Grade: C+
Speedy, simple, free-wheeling basketball that’s instantly fun, but comes with shallow game logic and plenty of frustrating quirks.
Where it falls in the series
The “Live” name is pretty fitting for this game, because its innovations breathed life into a series that had been beaten to death.
EA came out with a whopping five basketball games that aren’t very good (Lakers vs Celtics, Bulls vs Lakers, Team USA Basketball, Bulls vs Blazers, and NBA Showdown ’94) before changing the side view to a diagonal view and making the action much faster and more enjoyable in Live 95.
Next of course was NBA Live 96, which made key improvements for more balanced gameplay. There was a college installment the same year using the Live 96 engine, Coach K College Basketball, and also 96 was the first NBA Live on Playstation. The 97 and 98 versions have the same gameplay just slightly tweaked, as development efforts were being devoted to the 32-bit games.
Praises and gripes
Players move very swiftly around the screen and the court feels large, which makes things fun. Simple, responsive controls help you jump right into the action.
The diagonal view makes for way better gameplay than any of this era’s side-scrolling 5-on-5 basketball games. The angle of the viewpoint makes your path to the basket and passing lanes easy to see. Playing offense feels intuitive.
But it’s too easy to make shots. Like, way too easy. This simple fact ruins this game for me.
Games play out the way a 5-year-old would imagine it would. You run down the court and recklessly throw up an off-balance shot from wherever you want, and it goes in.
I’m exaggerating a bit, but not that much. Teams can trade baskets for long stretches before a missed shot or turnover. This is celebrated by some reviewers, so I guess I’m just a stick in the mud. 3-pointers are harder to make than long 2’s, which at least opens the door for a high-risk-high-reward strategy of shooting a 3 every now and then.
And there are some other bad quirks (which weren’t fixed for 96): fouls are random, rebounding is difficult, there’s no steal button, players accidentally run out of bounds, and AI defenders play like spazzy children.
Top teams
This came after the Rockets beat the Knicks in the 1994 Finals. Standout teams are the Rockets, Knicks, Suns, SuperSonics, and Jazz, with the Pacers, Warriors, Spurs, Hawks, and the Jordan-less Bulls in the second tier. In the 1995 Finals, it was a repeat Rockets championship over the Magic.