#98: NCAA Basketball

No developer credits on the title screen...

As far as hardcore gamers seem to go I'm a pretty big sports fan. Watching sports, playing sports, playing sports games... I tend to like it all. Except basketball. For whatever reason I've always found basketball to be frustrating to play and boring to watch. Maybe it's being short and bad at jumping with low upper body strength? I don't know, I'm terrible at other sports and I can still enjoy them. Just not basketball.

BUFFING!

If there's something else I've never gotten into it's the NCAA. I'm not from the US so US college sports has never appealed to me. There are football bowl games and this whole March Madness thing but I've always just found it easier to ignore it than try to figure it all out. All the power to people who do get into it, but it's not me. So while this game looks like it has all the actual conferences and teams and things, that gets no bonus points from me. It also looks like the player names are faked since I looked up the Demon Deacons rosters from around 1992 and none of those players were on it. (Aside: Demon Deacons is such an awesome name and they have a fantastic logo!)

Hughes is _wide open_ down court?

The game itself has the 'interesting' rotating camera movement that I remember from Stanley Cup Hockey. I remember finding it disconcerting in that game and it's not much better here.

The controls didn't make a whole lot of sense. I couldn't find a way to actually do anything when the enemy had the ball. I could move around, and I could jump, but I couldn't find a 'strip the ball' button. That's probably realistic? Basketball defense is probably a lot of standing around in zone control and jumping to block shots? Shots never got blocked though. Either way.

The game had a difficulty setting, and I put it on easy, which meant almost all of my 3 point shots went in no matter where I shot from. Getting stuck playing a sports game where I can't score at all is pretty frustrating so I like that this exists, but it also meant winning was pretty much a foregone conclusion. Assuming I could find it in myself to actually play out 24 minutes of basketball. (Spoiler: I couldn't.)

Rating: D