NBA Live '95

"A must have, best of NBA Live series"

I can remember playing Live 95 at my fiends house on the computer. We would have heated battles and sometimes play 7 game series to determine the winner. When I heard that it was coming out for Genesis I was psyched. I bought it as soon as I could and found the game to be just as good as the PC version.

The game plays beautifully with easy controls. A is turbo, B is pass and C shoots. When players take shots it actually looks like they are shooting and not just throwing the ball at the basket like in other games. Players can post up and shoot fadeaways and take leaners which look good as well. Some other cool features of the game are alley-oops and slow motion dunks, which include 360's, reverses, tomahawks and the classic windmill. The graphics are extremely good and definitely go a long way in the playability and enjoyment of the game. The season feature is the best part of the game in my mind. You may start a season with any team and trade to get any players you'd like. The game saves your season for you so there is no need to write down a password after every game. Also, during the season, stats are kept for all players around the league so you can see how your roster matches up with the league leaders in a number of different categories.

I didn;t give this game a perfect score because of a few minor details of the game that annoy me. One being that players such as Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan and a few others are not available in the game. Barkley happens to be my favorite player on my favorite team (Phoenix) and not being able to play as him sucks. Also, winning a game on the highest difficulty level against some teams is almost impossible due to the fact that some players can not and will not miss a single 3 pointer. Players such as John Starks, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and Fat Lever (yes he is a real player) will not miss a single three. Not to mention Chris Mullin who lit me up for 46 points going 13 for 13 from 3 point range.

But overall, the pros far outwiegh the cons. With the exception of fricken Chris Mullin, this game is almost flawless and a better game to play than many other current basketball games. Buy this today, I saw it at Gamestop for 89 cents so all of you have no excuse not to buy it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/13/02, Updated 02/13/02