Street Sports Basketball

Your Sinclair

Graphics 5/10

Playability 5/10

Value For Money 4/10

Addictiveness 6/10

Overall 5/10

Jonathan Davies 5/10

US Gold £8.99 Reviewer: Jonathan Davies If phrases such as 'slam it through,' 'slow dribblers,' and 'pop 'em from the corners," mean anything to you, then you'd probably be better qualified to review this game than me. I'm afraid that corpuscle redistribution is more in my line, but I'll give anything a go. Street Sports Basketball puts you in the dubious position of having control over a team of, ...yes, basketball players. Only three, admittedly, but we all have to start somewhere. Your side is picked from a selection of ten possibilities, none of whom I'd want to be seen with in public. Then either another player or the computer goes through the same ordeal to select the opposing team. Having done this, and named the teams, you're now almost ready to start. But wait for it... you've still got to decide where to play. You can choose between such picturesque locations as the school playground, a back alley, a street out in the suburbs and even, for those romantic, poetic moments, a parking lot. By the time you've got to this stage, you'll have endured hours of tape starting, stopping and turning over, some horribly average graphics, a beepy tune and, most stomach-churning of all, the original Sinclair character set! Urgh! And it would only take them 768 bytes to design a new one, he says knowledgeably. Sadly, things don't improve a lot presentation-wise during the game, either. The players stagger around as if they're recovering from the side-effects of a particularly violent tandoori, none too inspiring when they're just about the only things that move in the whole game. The playing area is a small window in the centre of the screen, hemmed in by some close-ups of your team members, just in case you forget what they look like. That's just what I was trying to do, in fact. And then we get onto problem number four hundred and sixty two: controlling your players. Rather than adopt the normal method of the guy (or girl, for a change), nearest the ball coming under your control, this game has plumped for a different system, whereby pressing fire flips between your players, unless one of them's got the ball, in which case it'll make him pass or shoot with it. Well I said it was different didn't I? Having sussed that lot out, the next stage is to get hold of the ball. Not easy, I can tell you. Jiggling around next to the bloke you're trying to get it off sometimes works, but it's usually easier to wait till he takes a shot at the basket, invariably misses and lets you grab it. To have a go at shooting yourself (that wasn't meant to come out like that, but I came close at times!), position your player near the basket and press fire. Then it's mainly down to Lady Luck whether it goes in or not. Which leads me (and rather neatly, I think), onto my next point. The main snag is that you simply haven't got a lot of control over what happens. The moves available to you are minimal and ball control is a very hit or miss affair. Compared to the likes of Match Day II with all its subtleties of gameplay, SS Basketball looks pretty poor. No doubt this one will find a home with a select group of basketball fanatics out there, but I'd advise even them to give it a thorough checking out before parting with any of the folding (or jingling if you want to annoy the shopkeeper), stuff. It's tough on the streets, as the bumph points out, especially after its been lying there for a few days (Eh? Ed).

Crash

Presentation 72%

Graphics 57%

Playability 49%

Addictive Qualities 45%

Overall 49%

Kati Hamza 56%

Mark Caswell 46%

Phil King 48%

Producer: Epyx/US Gold Retail Price: £8.99 cassette, £12.99 disk Author: J Bagley and D Worton Forget official tournaments, professional teams and airconditioned arenas - real basketball is played in the streets. All you need is a ball, a makeshift court and a couple of teams... You can choose from a selection of four courts, including a playground, alley, suburban street and parking lot. A human or computer opponent (with three skill levels: easy, intermediate and tough) is selected. Team names are chosen and a coin is spun to determine who gets to select a team first. Three players, recruited from a gang of ten streetwise kids (each with their own abilities) make up each side. The scene then switches to the horizontally scrolling court itself. Still portraits of each team member are depicted at the side of the screen, and one player is controlled at a time. Should the ball move out of his reach, control of another team member is assumed by pressing fire. Various offensive moves can be performed: dribble, hook shot, slam dunk and jump shot. Running head-on into an opposition player dribbling the ball transfers possession. Pressing fire while facing one of your team-members initiates a pass. To shoot, a player needs to be in the correct position, facing the basket. At a press of the fire button he (or she) attempts the most appropriate type of shot, and the current score is displayed at the base of the screen. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: well drawn, transparent characters and colourful backgrounds Sound: lacking in all respects Options: one or two players, definable keys

Come on girl, I thought this was basketball not football.

They don't call him Cameron 'stretch' Pound for nothing.

Sinclair User

Graphics 70%

Sound 40%

Playability 59%

Lastability 68%

Overall 60%

Chris Jenkins 60%

Label: US Gold Author: Jimmy Bagley Price: £8.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Chris Jenkins Yo! Slamdunk! Well crucial! Squoddlyl (I made that one up). All these are things which you might be expected to shout while playing Street Sports Basketball. As I understand it, stealing hubcaps or selling drugs in playgrounds, but Epyx tactfully decided to show them playing basketball instead. You can play against the computer or another human, and the first task is to pick teams. You're shown a motley array of thugs with nicknames like The Slammer, Captain Hook and The Brain. There are even a couple of token girlies to add a bit of variation to the playing styles. Each player has his own characteristics; speed, powerful jumps, accurate passes or whatever; many also have disabilities, like Theo whose peaked cap sometimes slips over his eyes. After spinning a computerised coin to decide who has first pick, the two players choose three 'dunkers' each. You then get to choose a background; playground, alley, suburban street or parking lot. Once everything has finally loaded - and this is a major three-cups-of-tea business - you can get on with playing the game. At each side of the screen appear the players for each team, while the play area scrolls left to right in the centre of the screen. The backgrounds are nicely detailed, but it doesn't seem to make much difference which one you choose to play against; oil slicks and high curbs are supposed to affect your performance, but I didn't really notice them. Gameplay is at once simple and complicated, as silly oriental people say. All you have to do is move the chosen player around, blocking your opponent's moves, until it's time to tackle, pass or shoot for the basket, all of which are done by pressing the Fire button. Turning your back on an opponent makes it harder for you to be tackled, and type of shot, jump hook or slam dunk, is chosen automatically. The complicated part is that, unlike other sports simulations, where joystick control automatically passes to the character nearest to the ball, here you have to hold down the Fire button until the player you want to control is highlighted at the side of the screen. The problem is that you tend to forget to do this in the heat of the moment, and assuming that the closest player to the ball is under your control, you zoom off in the wrong direction and leave the mohicaned punk Pogo to slam in another. You can set the number of points needed for a win before the game starts, but there's nothing much else in the way of sophistication, like penalty shots, time outs, fouls, all the little things which make basketball a sport rather than a game. So if it's an accurate simulation you're after, forget it. Dreadful music and sound effects add nothing to the game. Overall a great deal of effort has gone into adding the illusion of sophistication to something which plays no better than the average budget game.

HARVEY A slow mover, but a wizard at the hook shot. BENNY Good at jump shots, his legs are like springs. MELISSA A fast little mover, oo-er! THEO Quick and agile, but his cap sometimes slips over his eyes. KATHY Her nickname 'Butterfingers' says it all. PEPPER A hot player with good all-round skills. LES They call him Captain Hook. NORM The Brain calculates every shot precisely. POGO He's cool under pressure and an accurate shot. ALVIN No superstar, but a good team player.