NBA Live 99

"Best NBA game of its time"

When it came to NBA, the NBA Live series was always the best out there. But now there is all those new games with almost real life graphics, which makes me miss the good old days of the N64. So, I decided to crank up NBA Live '99 again after a while, and I was not disappointed.

To Playstation standards, the graphics here were incredible. most of the players were a tad blocky, but there was absolutely zero slowdown, everything moves in fluid animation. They even made Dennis Rodman's hair red. But when there faces get a close up (take when they make substitutes for instance) their heads look like small coneheads Sometimes when a player dunks, the ball sort of sticks in their hand, and their show off dunks will stick to their hand, then sort of fall off their hand then fall in the basket. This is very obvious during the Auto Replay. The Auto Replay is the option where if you make this cool dunk, it will replay and usually show it at a cool angle. The courts for each team look just as they would in real life. (not much surprise there)

The background music makes for a nice catchy tune, the kind that gets stuck in your head for a few hours. Along with the crowd applause, it sounds just like you were at a concert.

Also the sound effects were done nicely too. From the screeching shoe noise from when you stop too fast, to the net when you make a shot, to the cheering crowd, it makes you feel like you are at a real basketball game.

The gameplay is where the game shoots (ha ha, basketball pun) through the roof. There are five general gameplay options you can do. There is Exhibition, Season, Playoffs, 3 Point Shootout, and one I have not seen in another basketball game so far, Practice.

Exhibition mode is just a simple five on five game of basketball. There are a ton of things you can tweak to set it just right for you, but lets start with the team select. You select your team and the team you want to play against. They show five stats and how they rank, you can go down there, and choose your team by that, like if you wanted to choose the Indiana Pacers, you just have to go down to shooting and toggle to to 1st. Okay now onto the options. If you pause the game, and choose Set Rules, you will see that you can change a ton of options. You can turn off or on the Out of Bounds, Goaltending, The number of fouls needed to foul out, and tons more options. There are infinite amount of different ways you can play your game, and you can set it perfectly to your advantage so that you can finally beat your friend!

Season mode is pretty much the best part of the game. You play 82 games (if you want to play at a full season that is) but there is plenty more. You can choose to have a pre-season draft, so that you can choose the players you want though. You can also enable trading during the season, and also activate the trading deadline, for even more realism. Also you can change playoff length, and put it anywhere from 1-1-1-1 to the full 5-7-7-7. There is plenty more, but I'll let you find those out of your own. What I like best about season mode is the stats. They collect all sorts of stats, from trades, to hot/cold streaks, and they even collect stats over different seasons. It also shows your best finish, worst finish, average finish, and other

Playoffs is for you if you don't want to go through the mess of playing a whole season, and go right to the playoffs. You can choose your playoff length, disable or enable trading, trade restrictions and stuff like that. Less options, but then again, there is less stuff to do in this mode too.

Three Point Shootout is just like the shows on TV. You shoot thirty three pointers and you try to make the most. The top scores advance to the next round. There are not many options, you can choose split screen mode, which shows both you and your opponent shooting at the same time. It makes the game go 2 times faster, so if you want it faster turn it on. You also choose the number of players 2-8 and your shooter.

Finally, there is practice mode. There is not much to do here, but this is good if you just got the game and want to polish up your skills a little bit. You choose your player, and then you have a basketball court all to yourself and the player dressed in street clothes. You can practice shooting, dunking, but there is not another player so no passing drills here.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of challenge in this game. Rookie mode makes the game way too easy, so if you want to have fun turn up the difficulty level. It is stupidly easy to get ridiculously high scores at Rookie mode. Even right now, I haven't played this game in like a year, but I still won the first game I played 149-10. But the challenge does increase as you turn up the difficulty level (obvious fact of the day).

This is the type of game that you will like to play over and over again. But the game will get boring after you play it a while. The real replay value here comes from season mode, it is interesting after a few seasons to see your stats. That's one reason I play it a lot.

Fortunately, since this is a PS game, this game will not burn your pocket. I would recommend heading to a pawn shop, or onto eBay to shop for one. But if you see this somewhere, this is a definite buy. I once lost my first copy, and I missed it so much, I went and bought another copy days later. That is how good it is.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/22/03