PlayStation 1
Released in 1996 by Sony
Grade: F
Hahahaha, how cute is this game? It’s like a crappy NES basketball game wearing a PS1 costume for Halloween.
Where it falls in the series
It’s the first of eight ShootOut games, ending with NBA ShootOut 2004, and they all pretty much suck. According to Wikipedia, the 99 version was canceled due to “lack of quality.” Given how many bad video games make it through the vetting process into stores, it must have been REALLY bad.
Gripes
There’s just nothing to this game. The control is terrible. It’s too swift and loose when you’re moving, yet there’s a bad delay to everything. Players are constantly stopping in their tracks. Passes get stolen a lot. The AI is as basic as it gets. If you play the CPU, they repeat the same offense over and over.
It’s quite ugly too, which is to be expected from PS1’s early days. It’s funny how many developers rushed to 3D technology without doing anything innovative with the actual gameplay. If this game had 2D graphics like we saw in the 16-bit days, it might as least look cool.