"When you're not forced to wait around, it's rather good, actually."

The first personal sign my beloved Apple IIe was becoming outdated was when I went to a friend's house and saw a wonderful game called GBA Championship Basketball on the Apple IIgs. It was great fun, with crowds that left as my friend blew me out, full stats for all four basketball players, and a real hardwood looking court, and I noticed a IIe version at Babbage's selling at a discount, so I snapped that up quickly. The game had its moments, but the first impression dragged me down, and after I pretty much solved the game I only went back once. Besides, everything that excited me in the IIgs version was only mildly entertaining on the IIe. Although it has some neat features it never approaches the magic and quick pace of Bird vs. Dr. J., due largely to the blocky basketballers and the long time it takes to bring the ball up the court and choose a play.

The main part of the game has you enter a league with five other teams; North is weakest, West is strongest. You play round-robin and the top team at the end goes to the play-offs. Win two games and you're the champion. Each game is six minutes per quarter, which seems approximately the right length even if it can't be adjusted, and you get to choose your partner before the season begins. You are naturally weaker than he is, but you have more control and can even tell him when to pass and shoot. There's even overtime and the ability to call time-outs. You have the ability to custom-make your own player(inside/outside shooting, quickness/jumping and dribbling/stealing skills must each, in pairs, add up to eight--your teammate, one of ten with odd names like Magic Lyndon(the co-writer's last name) or Wilt Dulmage, gets predefined stats adding to ten per pair.) The two other major play options are shooting practice(you still have to fetch the ball) and an exhibition game against a team in the division of your choice. Two can also play but cannot co-operate.

As for controls, one button makes you jump on defense or directs the ballhandler to pass(quick tap) or shoot(held down), and the game does reasonably well at establishing two-player co-operation. If nothing else the AI directs the computer's players to stay between you and the basket, and it will pass when you are open(it also often passes when it's open, which helps you get that Angry Coach feeling a Purdue fan like me can particularly relate to, unless you override by telling it to shoot.) However, you have several ways to direct the computer. When one side is bringing the ball up the court, there are several seconds in the backcourt where you decide which play to run(these seconds add up to over a third of the game and even slow down fast breaks after steals, and after one game you won't need all this time) before the main frontcourt view(the backcourt with a scoreboard replacing the play list) shows. On offense, there are five(fire button sets you a screen or moving the joystick tells the computer where to run his character around in circles) and there are four on defense; man to man or zone, with the computer playing high or low. Not terribly complex but it's neat to see in action. You can move in eight directions and you can even back in. The main thing to master with the controls is to shoot when at the top of your jump; that adds 20% to your chance of making a shot. One annoying but unavoidable part of the controls is that you cannot move while accepting a pass or it will go out of bounds, but as the computer forces you to stay in-bounds, it's an odd refinement and doesn't exactly encourage flowing basketball. Time-outs also have problems; if the computer calls it, it switches to frontcourt view so quickly that you can't call a defensive play. TO's may cut down the delay taking the ball up the court, but you can't take time-out after a basket late in the game. Then, on the other hand, you also have a loophole of calling a time-out to reset the twenty-four second shot clock, meaning that you can potentially hold a one-point lead for two minutes. Also fouls exist but, like bad passes, only happen to you. Even to foul you must run into an opponent for two seconds straight. But overall despite the tendency to high-football scores(45-32 is a typical score, and my record is in the sixties, although I got smacked 34-8 during my learning curve) the game does feel like basketball even as you learn how to beat opponents with superior speed and the like while making sure your teammate doesn't pass into double coverage. Being forced to scrap constantly, combined with little touches like shooting practice, the ability to play an exhibition game, and the three-second call, help make the game credible, and although the graphics are mostly uninspiring, you can still make your characters do neat things.

So how are the graphics limited? Much is due to the IIe's limitations, which I did not consider after having been star-struck; no crowds, it's ''pure basketball'' in what feels like a deserted gym. Your stick-figures are animated well enough and you can tell which direction they're facing. They show up nicely as orange, with the other guys having different jerseys, and there's the blue out-of-bounds line, but they're not as cool as Dr. J and Bird. The ball bouncing off the rim is still shaky, although the behind-the-back passes, the hook shot(even from three point range) never gets old, and dunks are actually clear and accompanied by a satisfying ''thunk'' which is a nice change from the dribbling thunks and referee's whistles. And the other thing I loved about the game, the final page that includes stats, does not keep track of individual shots made, attempted, and so forth, as in the IIgs. It would have been a neat feature and easy to program, and even the meager stats offered are wrong; steals are usually counted as rebounds, and blocked shots ''returned to sender'' are counted as missed field goals. Still, when you lose, the opponents have some funny names even if you only see one of them as the high scorer.

I remember feeling GBA Championship Basketball was worthwhile, but it was a bit on the dull side. Winning any sort of sports league is exciting to me in computer games, even though my later wins consisted of gaining a lead and implementing a ball-control offense(when I control the delay, it's okay) and scheming for the final shot of the period from half-court, which had the same chance of going in as one just outside the three-point line. The best part of my experience was that I had to develop new winning strategies when I moved out of the weak north, and more concretely, there are neat touches like different teams(i.e. Sharks, Wizards and Jammers) and opposing player names, which you don't see once you beat the other team as only the high scorer is displayed. So seeing all the touches on the Apple IIgs not limited to graphics, many of which took only a few bytes and thus could have been added to the IIe, deflated my enjoyment of this game. Then, the critical factor bringing this game's score down is how you have to take five to ten seconds(hey, at least it's not a back-court violation) bringing the ball up after a rebound, which took a second or two on the GS. It's a worse pause than baseball, almost as bad as if a commercial had been thrown in, and there isn't anything like the anticipation of the next pitch to offset it. Seven games of a half-hour each are a bit too much for a one-page display calling you champion, although an exhibition game every now and then can be fun, as I usually make a rousing comeback from an early first-quarter deficit.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/20/01, Updated 11/20/01