Basketball in Video Games

Categorized as: Author: Patrick, Diatribes
Posted on: January 30th, 2008

There are only a few things I really love in this world: basketball, Christmas mornings, burritos, the female form, HDTV, and of course, video games. Each and every one is good enough on its own, but combining two or more turns me borderline orgasmic. Video games in HD. Brilliant. Cheerleaders in the NBA. Brilliant. Eating a burrito while watching porn. Brilliant. And playing video games about basketball. Brilliant.

I bring this up because two recent basketball/video game posts caught my attention. The first, by 100%InjuryRate, runs through the history of basketball video games starting with the classic, Atari Basketball. And I use the word classic in the same way I used the word ‘sucks’ or ‘piece of garbage’ or ‘it’s like getting kicked in the balls just thinking about it’. My toddler mind may have been in an altered state from eating lead paint chips by the handful, but Atari basketball even sucked way back in 1980 (although it was nowhere near as bad as ET for the Atari).

Moving down the list, everyone seems to love NBA Jam (the commenter’s’ on the post are no different), and while I played my fair share of the game, it didn’t get any better for my money than NBA Live 95. It was the first sports game I owned where you could create your own characters, so of course, I spent a college education’s worth of time running the much taller NBA Live version of myself around a court tilted at a 45 degree angle and surrounded by crowd made up of identical twins who never moved. Oh, and you could crossover dribble in the game.

As good as the 100%InjuryRate post was (and the Youtube videos of the games are great) there were two glaring omissions that any complete history of basketball video games has to include. This first was the sublime Jordan vs. Bird*. The dunk contest was a video game innovation for the ages.

I’m not sure how Bird is ever going to win that tip

Give me a little 2 handed hammer action

The second game missing from the list was Barkley: Shut Up and Jam. Truthfully, I didn’t actually play the game that much, but it deserves a mention for introducing the “street ball” basketball genre. The title is also fascinating. Is Barkley telling us to shut up and jam? Or his Barkley the one who is shutting up and jamming? It’s a mystery that might never be solved.

Barkley: Shut Up and Jam also has a wicked game description. From the Genesis box (capitalization from the box, not me):

No pretty uniforms. NO REFS protecting your sorry self. Just you and me against some of the toughest street legends I’ve ever had the pleasure of bustin’ a move on. And THEY AIN’T ABOUT TO TAKE TRASH off some two-inch vertical leapin’ momma’s boy. You got that? So don’t embarrass me. SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT on seven of the nastiest blacktops this side of North Philly.

I guess Barkley is not the one shutting up.

Do you have what it takes to take to shut up and jam on Sarge and Xaos?

Barkley: Shut Up and Jam leads to the second post I came across, this one via TheSportingBlog on Sporting News. Apparently, someone has gone through the trouble of creating a role playing game based on Barkley: Shut Up and Jam called Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden (of course). There is a trailer of the game up on Youtube and the game is available for free downloading here.

According to the creators, Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden takes place in the post-cyberpocalyptic ruins of Neo New York in the year 2053, twelve years after something called the “Chaos Dunk” massacred “thousands upon thousands of the world’s greatest ballers in a swath of violence and sports bigotry as the game was outlawed worldwide.” So it’s up to the 90 something year-old Charles Barkley (and his son) to “discover the secrets behind the terrorist organization B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S.”

Barkley’s weapon of choice is a basketball

The plot sounds ridiculous until you realized that pretty much every RPG has a crazy storyline like that. Unfortunately, the game has got a couple piddling reviews so far and is a whopping 60+ megs to download (I remember getting the entire Wolfenstein 3D from my friend on a couple 3.5 inches floppy disks – those were the days). However, I consider myself a fan of RPGs and may give the game a try anyway. If I do, I’ll post my review.

Postscript: This post required some extensive research on the subject of video games and I would have been at a loss without Every Video Game, a site that let’s you play old video games from Nintendo and other systems. Alright, I just used this post as an excuse to go back and play some games for fun. The title of that site is a little misleading, however, as it doesn’t have either Barkley: Shut Up and Jam or Jordan vs. Bird. You can play Double Dribble and the classic Skate or Die.

* The post did include the original Dr. J vs. Larry Bird, but that game is a far cry from Jordan vs. Bird. I mean, no dunk contest? No three point shootout? Not interested.

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