Arcade Archives: Super Basketball

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Super Basketball (Konami, 1984)

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Just the one version for this game, and the almost-standard-at-this-point 'adjust game speed' option in the Preference Settings.

It's been a minute since we've had a sports game, but this is perhaps more conventional than Punk Shot. We're on a regulation court with five players on each team, and we're working our way from the juniour high school leagues all the way to the world championships. This also does something pretty clever that I've seen only a handful of sports games do- rather than play a full game, you start every game in the middle of it, and your team is losing. Close the gap before you run out of time, and a draw doesn't count! You can earn extra time by scoring baskets to reach the target score, but mistakes will cost you a few seconds (thanks for the reminder, ohfivepro!) Its other innovation is perhaps a bit weirder, as this is a three-button game- pass and shoot are on their own buttons as you'd expect (with the passing working quite nicely, as the team member you're free to pass to is highlighted) but the third button is dribble and you have to mash it to move with the ball. It's a bit strange at first but if you're OK with mashing, it works pretty alright and tries to simulate the physical act of dribbling, although it might be a bit of a strain for some, but that's what the rapid fire function of all ACA rereleases is for. Double Dribble would also keep this unusual dribbling system, but scrapped it for the NES home version (only having two buttons there didn't help, I imagine).  

I found myself pretty charmed by this one- it's not a super-advancecd basketball simulation by any means and it does stop and start a lot as it keeps as many of the rules and fouls of basketball as it can, but there's neat touches like a penalty shot system that plays like a micro Track & Field game (get the angle and position right!) and the synthesized voices, a staple of Konami games in the '80s, are really charming, they're doing their best. There's even a bonus shoot-out round from a slightly different perspective where you try to score as many baskets as possible before time runs out! A bonus round in a sports game, can you imagine?