Here's how this is going to work. This is going to be a little different.
The fans of HOCKEY are going to think of the five best hockey games.
The fans of BASKETBALL are going to think of the five best basketball games.
Because we all have lives and it's 2011, we don't have time to get scientific, so just roll easy with this shit. Anyway, we will then go tit for tat, and announce our suggestions one after the other. So I'll do the #5 hockey game, then someone, either my brother or Flack or whatever, probably just Flack because you guys are animals, will do the basketball one.
Then at the end we determine that hockey had better games. Okay? This will be a fun and educational thread, like Bumble Plot!
I think I specifically avoided this topic in my original list because I was afraid people would start talking about hockey on the Sega Genesis and I would be forced to admin that that was a pretty fun game.
Here's how kick-ass the lineup is for hockey games. I couldn't fit Hat Trick on, and Hat Trick is probably one of the 30 greatest arcade games ever made.
Hat Trick pits two hockey players against each other - the awful, sadistic, evil and inhuman Russian team versus the U. S. of A.!
What I like about Hat Trick is that it boils the simplicity and brutality of the sports down to a delicious three minute treat. Most of the time when I boil something it gets worse, but not really the case with arcade hockey! I am going to go ahead and say that you haven't gamed until you've stolen the puck from your opponent, thrown it against the wall and collected your own rebound to score. You may have lived, but you haven't fully gamed.
Why it's memorable: Well, people are still porting it to other platforms. Martijn Wenting did so for the Vectrex earlier this year. Additionally, I am of the belief that it is an instantly approachable arcade sports game that would be in my home arcade if there weren't already 14 other games in this house. Whoops.
In 1978, Atari released the generically named "Basketball" for the Atari 2600, the first (?) basketball home video game. Playing against either the computer or a friend, two stick-men basketball players went head-to-head on an oddly-drawn, forced-perspective basketball court. The game had its limitations (you couldn't control which way your player was facing and the ball was square), but ... it was a start. Hey, considering that in Mattel's handheld basketball game (released that same year) players were simply represented by red LEDs, Atari's version didn't look half bad!
[youtube][/youtube]
Programmers experimented with different basketball formats for a few years. Intellivision had a three-on-three basketball game, but with limited processing power a "good" basketball game with five players per side and decent graphics had yet to materialize. Going back to the basics, Eric Hammond developed One on One.
The original game's full title is "One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird" or "Julius Irving and Larry Bird go One on One", but nobody ever called it that back then -- it was just "One on One", which is a fairly accurate description.
The 1983 original pitted Julius Irving (Dr. J) against Larry Bird for a game of one on one basketball. I don't know how much underlying code went into making the characters unique -- Dr. J could hit three pointers and Bird could dunk -- but it was a fun game, nonetheless. The game was originally released for the Apple II, which leveraged its two button joysticks to give players more control. On offense, players could spin 180 degrees (button one) or shoot (button two). On defense, they could jump or attempt to steal the ball. Later, when the game was ported to systems with only one joystick button (like the Commodore 64), spins were performed with a quick button tap, while a full press shot the ball. It was a fine line that often ended in a painful "I MEANT TO SPIN BUT INSTEAD I SHOT FROM HALF COURT" error.
Most people remember the game for its ability to allow players to break the backboard. It didn't happen every dunk or even during every game, but when you dunked the ball just right, the backboard would shatter and a lone janitor would shuffle out to sweep up the pieces, cussing you out in Q*Bert-ese while doing it.
Despite it's quaint graphics, One on One really has it all. There are fouls, there are fatigue meters, there's shot blocking, there's actual offense and defense ... all the basic building blocks are here. If your plan is to shoot from the three point game the whole time, you will lose. If your plan is to dunk every time, you will lose. It really takes strategy to win.
The original One on One was followed by 1988's Jordan vs. Bird go One on One. By that time Jordan was a star (and Dr. J had retired). The second one on one game had some additional features like a three-point contest and it had some other things the original didn't have like REAL COLOR GRAPHICS, but hey, graphics aren't everything.
The sound and graphics haven't aged all that well, but it's still a fun game to play and it certainly raised the basketball video game bar at the time of its release.
I don't know how much underlying code went into making the characters unique -- Dr. J could hit three pointers and Bird could dunk -- but it was a fun game, nonetheless.
I believe their roles were reversed there. FRIENDLY THREAD! Friendly thread!
I worded that awkwardly. What I meant was, in the game, Dr. J could hit 3-pointers just as easily as Bird, and Bird could dunk just as well as Dr. J. The point I was trying to make was that in the video game the two of them were essentially "equal", whereas in real life, they were not.
The sequel addressed this a little bit, by having a Michael Jordan dunk contest and a Larry Bird 3-point contest.
pinback wrote:Oh man, I just remembered, I played One on One for TEN BILLION HOURS as a child.
Oh my god.
Oh my God is right. Ten billion hours is 1.14 million years. If you were a child for something over 1 million years, how long have you been an adult, God Pinback?
I read a review once of Altered Beast for the Sega Genesis that trumpeted the giant character graphics, and said that was one of the reasons kids took to it. I don't know if that's true. I do know that I took to FaceOff! because it was the very first hockey game where I could totally see what was going on with big, realistic players.
I don't know how this VGA screenshot is gonna come off but let's give it a look:
I realize that most of what I have been saying so far is "lookit how big these dudes are" and on preview they don't look that big, but please, I'm begging you, trust me. I'd be so grateful.
The graphics for the PC port of Hat Trick didn't take up much of the screen, and there was one dude. The characters for Blades of Steel on the NES? Tiny. FaceOff! just looked great.
Gameplay was centered around league mode - I believe the NHL had 24 or 26 teams back then, so the divisions are small. You have your games to play in a given week, and the computer sims the other ones as you progress through your schedule. This was amazing, groundbreaking stuff on the IBM PC in 1989. You could make trades, change up your lines and also see the computer reject your trades.
FaceOff! had a few different modes as well. There was fighting and the "Taking a Close Shot" mode.
Fighting:
Shot Cam:
You controlled the goalie when the computer decided it was time for Shot Cam, so reflexes and anticipation were necessary.
So what we have here is a fully-featured hockey game with all the trimmings, stuff that EA Sports would sometimes take out, like blood and goalie control, when they had a modicum of success, five years before NHL '94 set records for sales on the PC. A bit of a forgotten classic, I have played entire seasons of FaceOff! as recently as four years ago.
Double Dribble wasn't the first five-on-five basketball video game. It wasn't the first basketball game released in 1986. Hell, it wasn't even the first basketball game released by Konami in 1986! ("Super Basketball" also released by Konami, predates it by a few months.) What it is, however, is the birth of the modern basketball video game, and the first game to actually "get it right."
Double Dribble hit arcades in 1986, but it didn't hit a lot of radars until a reasonably good port of the game appeared on the NES in 1987. That's where I first saw it, and while it's a pretty rare occasion, I've always felt the NES version is a little bit better than the arcade version -- if for no other reason than you don't have to press a button to dribble the ball like you do in the arcade version. Seriously, that's dumb. That's like a "breathe" or "sweat" button in a boxing game. Dumb.
Double Dribble is cited as the first arcade game to play the national anthem, so even if Double Dribble isn't the greatest game to appear on this list, it gains points for being the most patriotic. It was also one of the earliest games to include "cut scenes". After performing a slam dunk, the game switches to a cut scene of a four or five frame long animation of a generic player dunking the ball. In 1986 terms it was like watching HD video, so shut up.
Double Dribble was also one of the earliest NES games to contain speech. The arcade version has more, but there's still plenty in the NES (although to be fair, the NES' "double dribble" sounds much more like "bubbo breebo", which sounds more like the name of a hobbit than a basketball game.)
[youtube][/youtube] Double Dribble: Arcade Version
Along with the arcade and NES versions, Double Dribble also appeared on the Amiga and for DOS. A graphically-updated sequel was released on the Sega Genesis.
I played the crap out of this game on my neighbor's NES, and years later, on my own. It may not seem very good now, but back then, having a full on basketball game seemed pretty awesome.
While waiting for the next post in this thread, you can play a flash version of Double Dribble for free on Konami's website.
Sheeeit. Double Dribble and One on One. That's the beginnings of a murderer's row. I better come correct and stop messing around here. It's time to bring out a big gun. I am checking the arsenal right now for a large hockey gun!
Mike Commodore is only CONSIDERING the number 64. I am outraged that he wants us, the FANS, to kiss his ass. Don't pretend you're too good for this, Mike, or we'll start our write in campaign to get Mike Dogeater to wear #20.
