Ultimate Basketball
System: NES
Release Date: September 1990
Developer: Aicom
Publisher: American Sammy
Genre: Sports
5 on 5 basketball comes to the NES with Ultimate Basketball! Pick your favorite of seven teams and head into tournament action to become the champions of basketball! There’s no license here, so pick your favorite city. Two are from California, two are from Texas, and the rest are three of your other large cities. My buddy Lil’ Steve had this when I was a kid and we would play it occasionally, so I come into it with some nostalgia.
Of course, I chose to play as the Detroit Unions. Not the best team you can be. Honestly, probably the worst. I mean, look at this guy! Seven foot two inches with impressive speed and shooting, but no defensive capabilities. This is certainly better than Hoops and All-Pro Basketball, but that really isn’t saying much.
Passing is terrible. You’ll chuck it out of bounds for no reason way too often. It takes way too long to switch the guy you want to pass to. The AI loves to play full court defense and will run from behind a pass to overtake and intercept the ball. The number of fouls is ridiculous. You’ll be dribbling up the court, move away from a guy and get called for charging. Plenty of three point shots were ignored and I was granted two for them. Steals happen if you stay on top of a guy for a couple seconds.
If you get close to shoot, you get the close up dunk animation where you have to press the button again at the right time to slam it through. I would contest the computer a lot, and they would miss a lot and travel, but I couldn’t tell if I was actually affecting it, because they’d chose not to shoot on their own a lot, too. In the end, I got steamrolled by the Dallas Fighters, who are incredibly overpowered on top of cheap AI, so I bailed.
Graphics: 1.0
It certainly doesn’t look good. The animations are at best a lateral movement from All-Pro Basketball.
Sound: 2.0
Some of the music is pretty good, but everything else isn’t great.
Gameplay: 1.0
Passing is awful. Shooting ignores your 3 point shots. Fouls are way too prevalent.
Difficulty: 1.0
So much cheapness from the AI, especially on in bounds passes.
Fun Factor: 0.5
I started with high hopes, but they were immediately dashed.
Overall Rating: 1.1
Ultimate Basketball earns a D. This is slightly better than the other NES basketball games, but that is saying absolutely nothing in the long run. Bad game. Stay away. Nostalgia fails me again.