"Playing this is the only thing worse than seeing your favorite team end up with the worst record in NBA."

The 90's were awesome times to be a basketball fan for me, I lived in Illinois near Chicago and was obviously a Bulls fan and it was a non stop rush with how many records they broke and just how good they played, who could forget a 72-10 season and two 3-peats for world champions. I've since stopped following basketball and sports in general in the current years but still miss it and wish I'd give it more effort. You could imagine my enthusiasm when I found this game at a thrift shop. Sure it was made by Acclaim but it was an All-Star game that had almost the full roster of top players of my favorite years of the NBA and I figured that it may not be great but it has to be decent enough fun and a way to relive the memories and remember some of basketball's greatest players. Well I got home and gave it all of about 15 minutes of play before it became so unbearable to play that I just had to hit the power button and sat there in complete disappointment at Acclaim for completely trashing a game with such great potential.

All-Star Challenges are quite nice to watch on TV and they keep me interested for the entire duration. Acclaim made a game with an All-Star Challenge and that's it, it's as bare bones as it can get, there's no extras, variety or pizzazz whatsoever. On TV it takes a couple of hours to complete, if you want to compete in each event than it will take you maybe 15-20 minutes and it's over. There's no replay value because the events are translated very poorly. They included the free throw contest, the 3 point contest, Horse, a one on one match, and a one on one tournament and the option to have a second player.

The free throw contest is useless, shots are made by pressing the button when the crosshair is exactly in the center of the square of the backboard, I could make maybe one or two baskets in one round since the aiming is so precise that it's useless, sometimes it takes forever for the crosshair to get in the right spot leaving you to grow board when the shooting takes longer than it should. The 3 point shootout and Horse are OK for what they are but again the aiming is still on the precise side and the computer player still has an easier time and will make most every shot it shoots. The one on one tournaments have no options and are exactly what they are, a one on one contest and just that.

This game just plain sucks, it includes 27 NBA All-Stars and claims it has actual player stats but I was hard pressed to tell the difference. For a game having such big names as Karl Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Scottie Pippin and Michael Jordan among others, you'd think Acclaim would have given them a game worth being proud of and that would showcase their skills but they did a disservice to the players as well as the NBA name as a whole.

Graphics can be best described as adequate nothing is bad looking, players look distinct and like they should and each team's court looks like it should. The same goes with the sound, it gets the job done but won't leave an impact on you. For a game in 1992 it could all be passable.

My wife saw this game when I bought it, she's a basketball fan (more of a WNBA fan) and was curious as to how it would be and we tried this together with the glimmer of hope that it would be one of the better Acclaim games but after about ten or fifteen minutes we were both ready to turn it off for good and both thought the game was terrible. It needs some other options or an entire extra game play mode or something to give it some backbone and solidity. It would have been nice to play a game where you could divide the players into teams and play a real game instead of just one on one contests but we get an All-Star Challenge and nothing more and a broken one at that.

Don't waste your time with this game, most of you probably haven't heard of it or haven't played it since it's just another sports game lost in the sea of other sports titles but let this review reemphasize that it needs to be left alone.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 12/22/09

Game Release: NBA All-Star Challenge (US, 1992)