NBA Courtside

Anyway, the game begins with a ‘tip-off’, which is where the ball is lobbed into the air and everyone tries to grab it. After that it's time to score some goals. Except they don't call them goals... but then you know what I mean.

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY

The player characters in NBA Courtside move fast and impressively, being nicely animated with a lot of attention to detail. The controls are fairly easy to pick up, and like World Cup ’98, there are a number of special moves which your players will perform with the minimum of button-tapping, thus transforming anyone who plays into an instant basketball superstar.

On-pitch action can be viewed through the use of seven different cameras, ranging from a side-on cam to one that looks directly down on the court from above, in the style of old (but great) soccer game Kick Off. The really neat thing about the NBA Courtside camera views is a fully-adjustable zoom function on each camera which lets you move the view as close in or as far out as you like, thus effectively granting you an almost limited number of different views, albeit some more useful than others. Zooming all the way in on the overhead view for example gives a close-up of your player's head and nothing else – very helpful! Once you've finished messing with the camera views and actually get down to playing the game, you'll find that the action is smooth and exciting. Basketball as a game is generally faster and more action-packed than football anyway, because the pitch is smaller so the playing area – and thus the activity – is more condensed. Also, when a basket is scored the play kicks right off almost immediately, rather than faffing about sending all the players back to their respective halves and starting from the middle.

This style of play has been nicely replicated in NBA Courtside, and serves to make the game fast and entertaining. One of the most important aspects of sports games – and more particularly, basketball games – is how well the players respond. The ones in NBA Courtside respond extremely fast and are very easy to control, making the game a charm to play. Within moments of picking it up, my players were intercepting and slam-dunking with the best of them – and since I was taking on an all-star team my first time out, you could say it really was with the best of them!

For those who like tactics (and who doesn't?) NBA Courtside offers a range of different ‘offensive sets’ which you can choose from to enable your team to put one over on the opposition. If you don't have much in the way of basketball knowledge, then this element of the game usually wouldn't be of too much use to you, but in NBA Courtside each set has a brief description of the kind of effect it should have on the game, so it is possible to learn what plays are useful to use when.

The best basketball game for the N64

Other in-game options are available – about what you'd probably expect these days from a reasonably decent sports game, with a few more unusual ones thrown in. Elements like fatigue and the likelihood of penalties are fairly standard in football games for example, while there are also basketball-specific rules such as turning the shot timer on and off and other equally obscure settings which will no doubt be familiar to all you basketball fanatics.

CREATE YOUR OWN DREAM TEAM

In addition to the in-game options, there are a host of choices outside play. If you like statistics, then you can spend your time checking up on your basketball heroes and their teams. If you're unhappy with a team's performance, then you can edit the team, hiring and firing as your whim dictates, and of course, where would you be without the chance to play God and create your own players? The only criticism of the player edit facility, aside from some of the damned ugly players that is, must be that when setting your player's abilities, there's no limit to what statistics you can give him. Usually in sports games where you create your own player, abilities are granted through a ‘barter system’, where the prospective creator is issued with a limited number of points to spend on each new player forcing them to reduce aptitude on some abilities in order to boost others. In NBA Courtside however, your player can have 100% on all abilities, making him practically superhuman!

GET YER MATES ROUND

So far, all we've discussed is the single-player game, but of course, multiplayer is one of the most important features of any N64 game. NBA Courtside allows up to four players to play at once, either opposing each other or even all on the same team if you so desire. This is where the game really comes into its own, and if you buy it you'll soon find yourself bullying and cajoling any three friends you can get your hands on to come around and chain themselves to your console for endless hours of tall-blokey action. This really is one of the best multiplayer games I've ever played, not least because pretty much anyone has a great chance of learning to play really easily without having to practice for hours in advance. Of course, the one-player game is great fun too, and that shouldn't be forgotten. Kobe Bryant In NBA Courtside, apart from having the most long-winded basketball game name ever, and also the ugliest selection of heads in a player edit section that I ever hope to see, is actually a top sports game, and one that finally proves that just because it's a basketball game on the N64, it doesn't have to be rubbish. If you're a basketball fan, then this is the game you've been waiting for, and if you're not... then it's still bloomin' good fun! Last-minute word of caution though – this is an import game, so it'd be advisable to wait for the UK Update if you're looking at getting the PAL version in a few months, just in case something nasty happens to the graphics and/or animation during that long, lonely Atlantic crossing.

IT'S A STRANGE GAME, IS basketball, especially if you're not American and haven't been bottle-fed on odd colonial sports since popping out of the womb. To the uninitiated, it looks like a bunch of very tall men in shorts running hither and yon over a wooden-floored tennis court, throwing a ball into a basket first at one end of the court, then the other. By the end of the game, the score is about 3,002 to 3,001. What's wrong with the Americans? Can't they appreciate the thrills of a nil-nil draw or a 27 all out? Cuh!

Kobe Bryant In NBA Courtside, apart from sounding like the name of a bad American sitcom, is one of the first members of Nintendo's 'Nintendo Sports' line-up, much ballyhooed at E3. I still don't know (or especially care) who Kobe Bryant is, but the Kobester has put his name on quite a decent game.

Space Jam

For the basketball-impaired, things are helped along by a very clever passing system; since the players in the game are professionals, the game assumes that 99 percent of the time they're going to chuck the ball around fairly accurately, so you rarely need to worry that you'll pass the ball only to find empty space where you hoped there'd be a team-mate. Passing plays are made on the run by moving the analogue stick in the general direction of the player you want to pass to and pressing A. Although it sounds a bit vague, it's one of the best passing methods in any sports sim to date.

Glory-seekers can take a shot at the basket at any time by pressing and holding B. The chances of getting the ball through the hoop obviously increase the closer you are, but there is still the chance of pulling a blinder from the opposite end of the court. The whole thing is a bit random, since unlike a football game you can't pick a side of the goal to aim at, but then that's a problem all basketball sims are stuck with.

NBA Courtside has a wide range of offensive and defensive moves, which unlike some games are straightforward enough to use regularly in play. If you've got the ball, holding R puts you into a defensive crouch while you look for someone to pass to, but doing the same when you're trying to tackle automatically keeps you right in the ball-holder's face. You can also do neat tricks like switching the hand your player is dribbling with to prevent a steal, tell the other players on your team to block your opponents to give you a clear run at the basket and even commit a deliberate foul!

Lanky Yankee

With four people playing, NBA Courtside becomes a frenzy of pituitary-fuelled action. The small size of the court compared to a football pitch means that the action moves from end to end the other very quickly, and the ease of passing keeps the game flowing like mercury through a teflon-lined pipe. Obviously it helps if you're into basketball, which is a small-time sport over here, but if you switch off some of the more incomprehensible rules like the numerous time-based penalties and goal tending (it's an offence to try to stop the opposition from scoring a basket – the hell?), pretty much anybody can drop straight into the game and start playing.

It does have to be said that the PAL conversion is a bit disappointing. Although NBA Courtside runs full-screen on British TVs, there's a definite loss of speed compared to the NTSC game, as though someone had swapped the players' isotonic energy drinks for Horlicks. Everything also seems a little bit fuzzier than before – it's not the incredible Blur-O-Scope™ of NBA Pro '98, Courtside's only real competition, but the clarity of the American version is missing.

If you're a basketball fan with an N64, NBA Courtside will be an essential buy. It looks good, plays well and has enough options to choke a camel, as well as being loaded down with all the tedious statistics that American sports fans get so excited about. On the other hand, if the squeak of trainers on wood doesn't get your blood pumping it's not going to be next on your list after Banjo-Kazooie, but you might still be pleasantly surprised if you're willing to give it a go.

Mintendo's here-again, gone-tomorrow sports lineup makes games like Courtside feel a lot like the ex-girlfriend you regret breaking up with: It comes around every couple of years, only to remind you of what you've been missing. This year's Courtside has little in common with previous editions of the b-ball franchise, aside from Kobe Bryant's mug on the box. Yet, this completely revamped bailer manages to sport a polish that makes it feel like it's been being refined for years. The surprisingly deep features set is more robust than even the most established basketball franchise. And when you're tired of playing NBA hoops, you can dive into a three-on-three streetball-style contest, or tinker with a player creator so intricate you can field a full team of Ron ieremys, detailed right down to their body hair. If that's not a hoop dream, we don't know what is.

Nintendo isn't known for realistic sports games, but they've been somewhat forced into making them due to the need to plug some gaping holes in the N64's sports lineup. Even more surprising is that NBA Courtside, their first foray into basketball, is actually very simulation-minded. It isn't the arcade-style fare you might expect from Nintendo but perhaps that's because it is developers Left Field Productions who are responsible for what you see on screen. And, indeed, what is on screen is pretty impressive.

NBA Courtside was deliered to the tGM offices, and short of a few bugs, it is almost complete. The 3D graphics are as good as those found on basketball games on any system, though they don't seem to raise the bar in any way. The polygonal players are well-constructed, and move fluently around the court--there's very little jitter between the motion-captured moves. Better-known players have their faces texture-mapped, and there are varying player sizes that make them roughly the size of their real-life counterparts. And as you might expect, there are a variety of selectable camera angles, and even some that automatically flip to the view that best captures a particular dunk.

Courtside's gameplay seems to be well-balanced, and smart. In various playing sessions, the computer defended well and played good offense. There are a ton of moves to learn and are executed by presses of the C buttons. There are post passes, alley-oops, cross-over dribbles, calls for a pick and various dribble moves that can be used in conjunction with Turbo speed (Z button). When you get the hang of them, you can really make your player scoot like a jitterbug as he flies to the hoop. For beefier, less nimble NBA players, there is the ability to post-up (by pressing R) and back in toward the bucket, something rarely offered or done correctly in basketball games. The one glaring omission in the version we tested was the ability to pass while jumping in the air. Such a move is crucial for faking shots, and is something that just about every basketball video game has.

While not as anally retentive as EA's NBA Live series, there is no shortage of features. Players can be created and extensively edited in appearance and abilities. There is full stat tracking during the season that includes individual stats, and those on overall team performance. Hardcore players will undoubtedly make use of those in addition to the playcalling on the fly. If you're not sure what a certain play does, just pause the game and read the play descriptions provided.

As you can see, NBA Courtside looks to be on track to become a great addi tion to the N64 sports lineup--especially for a first-time effort. At the very least, it will definitely top the horrendous NBA In the Zone 64 that is (unfortunately) the only N64 hoops game currently available.

Fluid gameplay, sharp graphics, and a very simple control system make NBA Courtside the best ever basketball game.

When it comes to Nintendo 64 basketball games, Kobe Bryant's NBA Courtside plays like the Bulls while its only competition, NBA In the Zone, plays more like the Mavericks (sorry, Dallas fans). Although Courtside isn't quite as good as the two top PlayStation basketball titles (Shoot Out '98 and Live '98), it's definitely the best b-ball game for its system and a must-buy for all N64 hoop-heads.

Setting the Court on Fire

Courtside blazes the hardwood with its fast, fun five-on-five action. You can compete in Preseason, Season, or Playoff modes while shakin' stiffs with an array of moves straight from the NBA, including up-and-unders, hook shots, and finger rolls. Although it can't measure up to the overall depth of player abilities found in Shoot Out '98 (no icon passing, cutting, or Total Control Dunking, to name a few), Courtside buries In the Zone in terms of team A.I. and NBA realism. You can call plays on-the-fly, double-team hot players, and even choose to front post players while on defense.

Sometimes, though, controlling your squad can become a bit sketchy. While your players react nicely to the change of speed provided by the analog stick, it's sometimes frustrating to grab rebounds, and your teammates get in the way too often as you bring the ball up court. Other problems include your offensive player picking up his dribble after bumping into a defender and a free throw meter that takes too long to get used to.

I Dunk on You

Courtside's graphics score all over In the Zone's--everything from player movement to the look of the arenas is animated more clearly and with greater detail. The dekes and dunks aren't as smooth as Shoot Out's, but when it comes to the N64, Courtside's visuals win by a landslide.

Soundwise, the game sports crowds who boo the visiting team and cheer for their hometown heroes. If a member of the home team misses an easy shot, you'll even hear a funny voice in the crowd disgustedly yell out, "Oh, come on!"

Division Champs

While Courtside isn't the greatest basketball game ever made, it's the best hoops game currently available for the N64. Jump all over this one the day it comes out--it has enough hang time to get you through the approaching hoops-less summer.