PlayStation 1
Released by Midway in 1997
Grade: C+
This forgotten and low-rated game is quite fun. It’s a “simple sim” (definitely not arcade, but too basic to be a true sim) and it does enough of the core things right.
I haven’t yet played the PS1 version of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, but for the moment, this is (shockingly) my favorite basketball game on the console.
Where it falls in the series
There are no sequels, but the game was released with minor changes as NBA Action 98 on Sega Saturn. An N64 version was cancelled during development.
Praises and gripes
This is going to come off as a more positive review than this game deserves, but here’s the thing: Reviews of this game were consistently negative, pegging the game as far inferior to EA Sports’ Live and 989 Sports’ ShootOut series.
I don’t know what those reviewers were smoking. The PS1 Live games aren’t very good — I graded them all in the C range — and the ShootOut games are terrible. Fastbreak is similar to Live, but it’s better all around. (See NBA Live 98 and NBA ShootOut 2004.)
It has sketchy graphics, but the animations are solid, the colors are right, and the camera is smooth. It’s nice watching your player soar to the hoop for a layup or back down his man and shoot a turnaround jumper.
The action plays out like a modest-paced sim, except it’s extremely friendly to the offense. You have room to dribble around, and once you learn the shot timing, you’ll never miss. There are different buttons for jumpshots and for layups/dunks, which works well, so you avoid the stupid jumpshot from short range that you see in other games.
On the highest of three difficulty settings, I beat the CPU on my first try, but it was close. They blocked some of my shots and I blocked zero of theirs, but I forced misses and turnovers because there are — get this — workable defensive controls! They said it couldn’t be done! Most other basketball games have futile defense or stuck-in-the-mud offense. This game is somehow fun on both ends of the court.
You can hold L1 to make your guy sidestep and press Circle to put your hands up. There’s also a box-out command, but it’s hard to use. The saving grace is that rebounding is fair anyway.
There’s icon passing and a set of five plays, which are useful and easy to call. (The supposedly more sophisticated Live games had plays too, but the system was annoying and the plays were total junk.)
You know what else is pretty impressive? This game actually has decent referees. Instead of fouls being totally random (like in Live) you’ll be whistled if you try to block a shot out of position, and you’ll be called for a charge if you plow through a well-positioned defender. I had a couple nice three-point plays that felt realistic.
On the downside, defenders get switched onto the wrong guy very easily (that’s actually taken straight from Live, a quirk I never understood). And overall, the game is predictably shallow. I’m sure it wouldn’t take long to discover surefire tricks.
One more impressive little detail: The CPU actually handled a late-game situation correctly. Down by 4 under a minute, they scored a 2 and then fouled quickly. Down by 2 with 35 seconds, they played straight up defense, stopped me, rushed upcourt, and tied the game. I ended up hitting a game-winner after that, but I appreciated their smarts. I’ve played NBA2K and Madden games on PS3 where the CPU completely botches late-game situations, so kudos to Midway for programming some legitimate coaching sense.
I can’t go higher than a C+ in good conscience, but this game delights me. When I decided to review every dusty old sports video game out there, I thought I’d find some hidden gems. Unfortunately, that hardly ever happens. Old reviews usually score games fairly or too high. Games that are any good usually have good reputations in online forums. This is the rare forgotten game that’s actually better than people thought in its time.