NBA Street

"Get ready for the second masterpiece to come from the new brand, EA Big."

NBA Street...the first thing that probably comes to mind when someone says NBA Street is “Oh no, not another sequel to NBA Jam”. Some of you may think that this is just another NBA Jam with a few extra features. Those of you who think that are so wrong, for one Street is made by EA Big (the new line of games which started out with SSX) not Midway. What EA Big did was everything that Midway should have done.

Lets start with graphics. These graphics are stunning and really used the power of the PS2. From smoke to rain to leaves blowing across the court this game is visually amazing. The players faces look very nice and Jordan looks a lot like his real life counterpart. The animations
are executed very smoothly with no noticeable slowdown. The only slowdown I noticed is sometimes when I shoot the gamebreaker caused by all the lighting effects. The background is also something that was stunning, the people in the background move and look just as nice as the players on the court. You don’t usually see good looking graphics from an over the top basketball game but EA Big really pulled out all the stops.

Lets move on to sound. There are some great upbeat jams and tracks during the game. And also some crazy, funny things that Joe ''the show'' says throughout the game. Even though it might get repetitive, he’s definitely original with stuff like “shoot the ball playa” and “you’re out of turbo
babay”. At times the players will talk trash and say stuff like ''that's game'' when they shoot the ball for the winning point which adds some fun to the creativity to the game. Michael Jordan will talk to you throughout the city circuit mode and I'm not sure if it is really him talking or not but I sure can't tell. The overall sound is great but if Joe gets on your nerves you can always turn him off in the options menu.

One thing that this game peaks above all the Midway's previous games is that the gameplay has a lot more depth and there are many things to accomplish. One mode is the city circuit mode which is kind of like a season. You play teams from the different divisions and after defeating a
division you much play the division boss which is one of the six street ballers and two of his boys. Once beating the city circuit mode you will have played every NBA team and six level bosses, note: after every team you beat, you can take one of their players or get create-a-player
points and you unlock the street ballers and hidden levels from schooling the different boss teams. There are tons of moves and dunks you can pull of that are similar to the tricks in SSX. You hold any combination of the shoulder buttons and press the square button to pull off the
designated trick or specified dunk with the circle button (when you just press the square button you will pull off one of the random tricks). After mastering the moves you can play hold-a-court where you must beat the winning streak and trick point records for each court. If you have seen any of the and 1 mixtapes and are wondering if you can do all those sweet moves the answer is yes, with the exception of one or two. Probably a games most important feature is gameplay, and EA Big felt the same way.

Yes arcade sports games can get a bit repetitive but expect a lot more replay value from any Jam game. One thing that’s great is it the stats page keeps track of just about every
accomplishment from broken rims, gamebreakers, dunks, win%, etc. There are also tons of things to unlock such as hidden teams, cheats, and create-a-player outfits. Well my final words are that this is one of the best games out for the PS2 right now with loads of replay value (especially in multiplayer). Everyone should at least rent this game, if your a sports fan than this is a must buy.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/05/01, Updated 08/05/01