Tv Sports Basketball

TV Sports Basketball is the first five player basketball video game ever made. That's right fans-using the TurboTap, up to five people can team up against the computer team, or ' go head-to-head-to-head.

There are eight teams to choose from, each with a unique style of play. For example, the Outlaws play Laker-style basketball-plenty of fast breaks with these guys. The Pirates are very defense-oriented-much like the 1988-90 Detroit Pistons. Just like in the NBA, you compete against both weak and strong teams.

Digitized audio feedback enables you to hear foul calls, steals, blocked shots, and cheering from the sidelines.

You can set your own plays-picks, screens, post ups, and clear outs. On defense you can crash the boards, release for a fast break, pack the middle, or trap the ballhandler. This is a cart for diehard hoopsters!

Turbo-Hoopsters rejoice! Finally, thanks to the folks at NEC and Cinemaware, there's a REAL basketball game for the Turbo-Grafx-16 (I never considered 'Takin It tou the Hoop" a real basketball game).

Hoop it Up!

TV Sports Basketball lets you play an exhibition game or compete in an eight-team league. In Exhibition ' mode, you can play with as many as five people using the TurboTap.

All five of you can challenge the computer, or you can pick up computer players to form two mixed teams. League mode is a one-player-only, 10-game schedule, complete with a best-of-three play-off and a championship series.

Good Looks at the Basket

TV Sports B-ball features both vertical and horizontal scrolling. Most of the time you play via a great-looking, vertically-scrolling, 45-degree, half-court view. The screen shifts briefly to a horizontal perspective when a team bnngs the ball out of its backcourt.

The ball may not be stolen or passed in the mid-court screen, which effectively limits fast breaks or half-court traps. However, that doesn't mean the hoop action's wimped out. During this view both teams can call a defensive or an offensive set. The team with the ball can set up a screen play, a clear out, a post play, or a pck. The defense can counter by calling a trap, setting up a regular defense, or crashing the boards. TV Sports Basketball allows you to run your offense and defense more realistically than any basketball video game to date!

And if the on-court graphics are very good, the sounds are definitely out-tasight. Swish shots actually "swish;" bricks really "clang" off the rims.

Dream Team Supreme

You get eight teams each with a 12-man roster-just like in the NBA. One of the best features of this game is that every player is rated from 1 to 8 in six skill categories: Shooting, Rebounding, Passing, Quickness, Defense, and Jumping. Super-stars? You bet! And they have their own hot dog moves.

Turnover!

TV Sports Basketball isn't as flashy as Lakers Versus Celtics for the Genesis, but it has plenty of exciting action. The only major critique we have is that the middle of the court has essentially been removed from game play.

That Championship Season

There's never been a "perfect" basketball video game, but TV Sports is pretty dam close. Who says you need NBA super-stars to make a good basketball game? The hoops here is excellent, and five-player games are great fun. TV Sports Basketball is a slam dunk!

Cinemaware has once again adapted one of their famous TV Sports lineup of games for the Turbo! Using the same style of play that highlights game play and graphics presentation, TV Sports Basketball brings all the action of full-court basketball to life. Complete with full teams of players in both practice and league settings, TV Sports Basketball features slam-dunks, three point shots and plenty of fast breaking basketball thrills for up to five players!

With graphic intermissions and animations that really bring the game to life, TV Sports Basketball stands out as one of the most eagerly anticipated sports titles to yet appear on the Turbo!

After their great success in licensing Cine-maware's TV Sports: Football, NEC announced an entire line of future TV Sports titles for the TurboGrafx-16. Basketball is the subject of the second game in the series, but with the future of Cinemaware in doubt, there's no telling if any of the other planned titles will ever be released. I hope that they will, because TV Sports: Basketball is another gem.

Since the game is not licensed by the NBA or its players, you'll have to settle for teams like the Ninjas or the Zombies. The players are similarly generic, including the cleverly disguised monikers of well-known NBA stars and the names of several Cinemaware staffers involved with the game's development. No Manute- or Muggsy-lookalikes are present, but some players do have distinguishing physical characteristics. There's also a benchful of subs who can be sent in when your starters get tired.

Interestingly, the vertical orientation of the court has confined the action to either side of it. Dribbling the ball across the halfcourt line brings up a brief, noninteractive horizontal transition screen, with a menu at the top that lets you pick a play to execute when you reach the other end of the court.

A fuzzy but understandable voice punctuates the action with comments like "Rejected!" or "A steal!" Fouls are also called out loud, and the announcer tells you the player's number and how many violations he has. The sounds of the ball dribbling and swishing through the net are perfect, but there's not much else happening in the audio department. There's no music other than a lightweight tune that plays behind the title screen, and it's spoiled by weak percussion; namely, a snare drum that should be crisp and powerful, but instead sounds like a 7th-grader tapping on his algebra book with a No. 2 pencil.

To really put TV Sports: Basketball through its paces, I assembled an elite team of game TurboTesters and asked them to check out the game's five-player mode. That's right--up to five players can participate, and there's a simple menu screen that lets you specify which team each player is on. You can play three against two, four against one or any other configuration; on-screen players not assigned to a controller will be handled by the computer.

We decided to go all the way and set it up so that all five of us were on the same team, playing against a computer-controlled squad. Most of us had never seen a five-player game before, and the results were predictably riotous. It wasn't long before the room was filled with shouts and high-fives; you simply can't enjoy an experience like this with only one or two players. One common complaint: Though the game assigns a color to each controller and flashes that color on your player's uniform, most of us found it difficult to quickly identify which player was ours.

In the final assessment, TV Sports: Basketball suffers because so many features have been left out. I'm not referring to esoteric, nonessential stuff like the flash of the photographers' strobes or a half-time show. I mean basic, fundamental things like jump balls, crowd noise and situations where a team will inbound the ball from someplace other than beneath their own basket.

Aside from these glaring omissions--in addition to the frustratingly high level of difficulty--TV Sports is a pretty decent game. If nothing else, the sharp graphics make it an improvement over the cartoonish looks of the other TurboGrafx roundball contest, Takin' It to the Hoop.

On the other hand, if you have a Turbo-Tap, five controllers and five people, you can't afford to miss this one; the five-player mode is a blast. Even when you lose, it's great fun.