Acclaim were famous for – mainly – other people’s work, porting Midway games and bringing over games that were popular in Japan. Having said that, I still have a wistful nostalgia for the logo as it reminds me of hours and hours of NBA Jam and Alien 3 on my Mega Drive.
The 2000s were not kind to the publisher and they went bankrupt, only to re-emerge 20 years later with a couple of games, one of which was Basketball Classics that taps into my nostalgia for digital basketball games.
Developed by Namo Gamo, this title goes even further back than NBA Jam and targets visuals that would look at home on an 8bit console. From the simple character portraits, to the lovingly garish court colours and animated stick figures, to the blaring music, it makes me think of a lost Master System game. The cutaways during the story mode that show block outs of sports announcers reminded me of the ‘detailed’ character portraits in Hunt for the Red October but in a good way.
Fortunately Basketball Classics has none of the sluggishness I remember from those titles – the characters move swiftly across the screen, the button layout of shoot/pass in offense and steal/block in defense is tightly put together. The way that each of the characters move around the court, accompanied to bright flashes and snazzy context sensitive stats, shows that this is on a modern console. The back and forth on the court is fast, responsive and it feels like a great recreation of a game of basketball.
Shooting is straightfoward, giving the player a shot meter that can be impacted by another player jumping in front of them, but the more full the meter, the better chance there is to sink the shot. Dunking takes on a different approach. When a player enters the paint, if there is no one opposing them they instantly dunk. If there is a defensive player, the game turns into a slow motion duke out between the two players with the dunker trying to position their hand where the defensive player is not blocking. It is a funny little minigame in the middle of a high speed basketball, and I loved it.
Under the hood there are even more things to think about – each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, some a better at dunking and rebounds, others have speed and a knack for intercepting passes. Learning to pass to the best point guard, for three point shooting, becomes important, as does switching to a better defensive player.
The on court action is solid throughout, although I found the game a little easy, within a few quick matches I felt like I could out play most teams regardless of whether I was playing the 1970s Lakers, or the 2019 Toronto Raptors.
To flesh this out there is a story mode and a season mode. The story mode has a bunch of facsimiles to Legendary teams that can be played against to unlock, and the season mode allows you to pick a season and then play a series of games.
Both these modes don’t really offer a lot of depth – there was no real simulation or drama outside the playing of the game to really get its hooks into me. I admit that might be outside the remit of a game called Basketball Classics, after all it is trying to create the joy of a pickup and play console game, but it didn’t stop me missing it.
Conclusion
Basketball Classics is a solidly made blast of fun in short bursts, but is missing the depth I’d hoped for a modern re-imagining of retro sports game.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
