Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs
System: Genesis
Release Date: December 1990
Developer: Electronic Arts
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Sports
We finally have real professional basketball action here in Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs! Choose from the eight teams of the 1989-1990 NBA conference semifinals and duke it out on the court. But if you’re a Knicks fan, get out of here, because the Celtics were a more important team at the time, so they get inserted despite getting kicked in the first round. I mean, they are in the title, after all.
You can play an exhibition game or the playoffs. An exhibition game can be played with 12, 8, 5, or 2 minute periods on arcade or simulation play mode with a difficulty of preseason, regular season, or showtime. You can even choose to play as the All-Star teams, complete with players not featured on the eight teams, including Fat Lever. Arcade mode ignores fatigue and fouls. The playoffs must be played with 12 minute periods, in simulation mode, on showtime difficulty. The first round is best of 5 games, while the conference finals and NBA Finals are played in best of seven.
Of course, I took the Pistons to the court because the 89-90 Pistons are the greatest team in NBA history. The greatest basketball player ever is featured here, so make sure to bow before Bill Laimbeer. Drained it! The gameplay can be a little slow and you don’t always pass to who you want, but you can get used to it pretty quickly. Especially when you start drawing double teams, you have an open guy on the inside to get the ball to. It can be difficult to get around defenders because of the collision detection. But drawing a charge always makes you feel good.
The A Button is your shot button. Depending on where you are on the court, you may go for a jumper, hook, layup, or dunk. Some players come equipped with a superstar shot, which I’ll show off here. Isiah Thomas has a spinning layup, which often leads to charging fouls because it takes too long. Larry Bird shoots a turn around jumper from the top corner. Charles Barkley hits a monster Gorilla Dunk. Clyde “The Glide” Drexler throws down a Tomahawk Jam. Tom Chambers has the ultimate broken Double Pump Fake Dunk, which you can activate from near the three point line. David Robinson has a Windmill Slam. Magic Johnson has his Finger Roll Layup. And Michael Jordan has his famous Air Reverse.
There are two moves on defense to help you stop them from running up the score. You can jump for a block attempt with the A Button and go for a steal with the C Button. You always have to be careful when trying to steal, because any defensive foul leads to shots from the charity stripe. On the other hand, standing still next to a defender is a guaranteed pilfer for the other team. If you want to make substitutions, and you will to combat fatigue and foul trouble, you need to pause and press the C Button when you have the ball to call a time out. Scroll your starting lineup by pressing up and down, and the reserves by pressing left and right. As a kid, I didn’t know I could press left and right and cycled through the reserves by subbing them in and out real fast. Game stats aren’t collected, which is kind of a bummer, with the scores I put up, I want to see who my scoring MVP is.
Graphics: 2.5
There are a lot of different sprites, with numbers visible, so you shouldn’t have trouble telling who is who.
Sound: 3.5
This sound track is one of my favorites on the Genesis. The songs are all high energy and done really well. I also love that they didn’t try to make the sound of shoes squeaking on the court.
Gameplay: 3.0
Passing could be a lot better, and collision detection is a bit off, but otherwise, this is a great playing game.
Difficulty: 3.0
The computer can get on streaks and put you in trouble if you don’t know how to ease off on the fouls and other mental mistakes.
Fun Factor: 3.5
From October 1985 until December 1990, there wasn’t a good basketball game released on consoles. This broke the streak.
Overall Rating: 3.1
Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs earns a B. This is far and away the best basketball game we’ve seen on consoles. There’s room for improvement and EA will get their opportunity in the upcoming years.