Foreword

The personal computer Commodore 64 was very popular during early 80s on the United States of America and in Europe. It was logical to include sports titles in their initials lineups of titles. After the success of one of their first attempts, a game of Football Association, which had a considerable success at the time, it was strange that the next title was not a sequel, but a game of a different sport, Basketball in this case, reusing some of the ideas that made the Football one a success.

Game

The game has very simple graphics, let’s consider that those were the personal computer’s first years, the virtual basketballers look a bit huge compared to the court and the animation is fluid enough. Using the same style applied to other videogame from this company, International Soccer. Using a standard in this kind of games, the virtual basketballer controlled by the videoplayer looks with a different color compared to its teammates.

The other virtual basketballers move a bit faster than the controlled one, trying to find an open space to receive the ball and later try to score points throwing to the rival’s basket.

With the joystick it’s possible to move around the court, and with the fire button the basketballer can jump, and pressing a second time shoots to the basket. At this point of time, it should be possible to convert 3-point shots, but I was not able to do it. Actually, during my younger years I was known as the “lightning” because I never could strike twice in the same place. Stealing the ball is easy only by touching the ball controlled by the rival, but if you clash with it, you’ll be marked a foul.

It’s possible to adjust game’s options, this is achieved by pressing the following keys in the keyboard:

Key	Effect
F1 or F3	Change of color of the left or right team.
F5	Skill level of the Artifical Intelligence, from 1 to 9, the highest the hardest.
F7	Type of rules: International, NBA o College.

Recommended for rookie videoplayers to set the AI Skill at either 3 or 4, because a lower skill is too easy, and higher, the rival is too damn good. The type of rules determines time of posession of the ball to shoot to the basket, or time duration of each period.

A funny feature of the videogame are the different fouls marked during a match: from no back court, to not being able to stay too much time in the paint under the basket. In my opinion, it’s a really nice touch.

When the match finishes, appears a cheerleader to give a trophy to the winning team. Actually I did not expect that, and it was an hilarious touch, which I have seen few times in videogames at the time.

Epilogue

Funny and basic game, for a quick basketball game, it invites to raise the AI skill level to see how well can you perform, but it does not propose anything outstanding.

References

Sport Icon designed by Smashicons of FlatIcon licensed by CC 3.0 BY.

Console Icon taken from Retroarch.