NBA Street

"Street Cred 101"

Behind the back passes, killer crossovers, roof raising dunks and the like are all fair game in NBA Street. Heck, you can roll around on the ground, as you control the ball in an amazing fashion. NBA Street takes the best players in the NBA and throws you on the mean streets for some street ball. The And 1 mix tapes that you see on television come in video game form. But instead of a bunch of unknowns, you can now dunk from the free throw line with middle aged David Robinson. How cool is that?

One thing that NBA Street does particularly well is its brand of basketball. While taking roots from NBA Jam and its arcade style, NBA Street expands on it further with plenty of cool moves for the player to utilize. From crossovers to crazy dunks, it utilizes the street brand of basketball and the whole arcade like atmosphere to full effect. While NBA Street had its nuances, overall, it felt solid and fun.

With Tim Duncan breaking away from the fundamentals to utilize behind the passes and killer crossovers, and with Shaq making half court shots, the unlikely scenarios became likely scenarios. Despite this lack of realism, NBA Street still has plenty to like. It has fast pace action, along with the many different scenarios to score or make fancy plays. More importantly, it is able to keep things fresh and fun. It doesn't try to be what it is not. It does not try to utilize any defensive schemes or necessarily any strategy. But unfortunately, this backfires a bit, as playing defense more of a chore than a strategy.

There are no Rules on the street!!

With blatant charges and goaltending that aren't called, the game makes an obvious statement. It's to break away from traditional basketball and let everything go in an upstream, quick pace, and fast court type run and gun basketball to make its mass appeal. Typically, run and gun is an exciting brand of basketball. Like the Suns, who forego defense, just so they can get the ball and light up the court. NBA Street is similar in many facets. Playing defense is pretty much a chore, since most players fall over due to a killer crossover, or they fall over when an opponent comes at you strong. So getting the ball back, so you can utilize street ball skills to the max is the main draw in the game.

Despite its fast pace action appeal, there are several things that NBA Street fails to incorporate. A solid defensive scheme would have been rather nice because it takes away the skills to some extent. It's basically whoever scores 21 first. It isn't about stopping your opponent. To make matters worst, a lot of times, it is up to the person or A.I to decide whether they want to lose the game or not. It's not up to the player to decide the victory. The A.I will make the mistake of not taking it to the hole and that is your chance to exploit such an opportunity to separate yourself from the computer.

This brings up another issue, concerning the slashing abilities of people who normally don't possess such a skill. Typically, you can take the ball to the basket with relative ease, and you have an extremely high chance of making it, which takes away from the thrill and challenge. Three point shots also feel a bit easy to make, once you get the rhythm down. Once you get the rhythm, it could become a game of 3-point shots when you play with a friend. This becomes problematic because mid-range game is all but non-existent. You can either get the easy 2 with a simple drive to the hoop or shoot the ball lights out with the 3-point shots.

The game obviously emphasizes “And 1” style basketball. So much so, that you get rewarded with points every time you do an awesome move. The points accumulate till you have a chance to shoot a game breaker. When this occurs, not only do you get rewarded with points, but you take away points from your opponent. So being down isn't necessarily a bad thing because you can catch up in an instance with a game breaker. The game pretty much rewards those that are willing to go above and beyond the skill set of the NBA player's ability. Originality is a big plus.

Even with its release being a distant memory and 3 incarnations later, the original NBA Street still holds up quite well graphically. You see a tall, lanky, Kevin Garnett taking it to Shaq. There is nothing better than seeing the flair and dramatics being used by NBA players. As you play the role of some of your favorite NBA players, you can see them do moves that they can't normally do in the real NBA courts. But this ultimately makes the game's graphics so unique. It blends solid character models with the dramatics and trick plays of And 1 basketball.

NBA Street is a solid game. While it is missing a few components to push it over the top, it is still plenty of fun to play with a buddy. The trick plays are always fun to utilize. However, the game's lack of defense, easy 3 point shots and slashing maneuvers, along with a fairly weak enemy A.I leaves a lot to be desired. All in all, NBA Street is a good starting point. But at this point in time, the future editions are just much better games. Even with that said, if you can find it cheap, then by all means pick up this retro title.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/29/06