Tecmo NBA is brilliant. It was the only game that had strategy. You could run plays, set screens, isolate and post up. Calling a play would give you a better chance of scoring rather than taking random shots. It was head and shoulders above NBA live and it was a tough challenge
Definitely underrated tecmo nba i had it on snes and my brother had an genesis but he always played this on my system as a 7yo kid I didn’t fully understand all the strategy but i still loved the game but i owned almost all of these games at some point
literally i just would find the fast break, or pass the ball until my player has an angle to the hoop. The ocassional hookshot in the post. There is no need for any play calling.
I remember I would go to create a player on NBA Live 96' and I would type in Michael Jordan and all of his attributes would appear instantly from correct height and skills to even correct school he played for. The same would go for Magic, Bird, Barkley and a few others. It was awesome!
the moment we discovered it back then at my friend's home... man, that was magic. I remember using a Guinness World Records book to discover old great players to unlock (in 90's Spain, NBA wasn't that well known, we did know the USA92 Dream Team, but not the likes of Chamberlain, Abdul Jabbar...)
Its nice to see Tecmo Super NBA Basketball get a little love as a pretty good game. It was probably the first SNES game I ever played and owned. Great video as always. You're an inspiration to Snes collectors. :)
From twitter: "With Kevin Garnett's retirement. There are now no more active players that can be played on the Super Nintendo & the Sega Genesis or Saturn of NBA Jam." Well unless you count Hillary
I remember Davidson from that NCAA game! We had a house rule with that game, no one was allowed to be UNC because he was so overpowered that anyone playing against that team had no chance. Also, LOL at "Some of these phrases are still used today." Yeah, by the guy that did the commentary for that game, he works for ESPN.
My favorites for basketball here are "Tecmo Super NBA Basketball", "NBA Jam T.E.", "NBA Live '95", and "NCAA Basketball". I vaguely remember playing that Magic Johnson game, and it's a real floater, as is the Bill Laimbeer one.
Tecmo Super NBA Basketball is a hell of a lot of fun, even today. My stock-in-trade in that game is to select the Phoenix Suns, start Kevin Johnson, Jeff Hornacek, Dan Majerle, Cedric Ceballos and Tom Chambers and try to run the other team off the court :)
Give And Go is a port of an arcade game called Run And Gun. RAG didn't have NBA licensure, so they got NBA approval and changed the name to sound less violent. Great game.
@@Jburneyjr ive never seen a home port of it. I read in a gamer mag that had famicom reviews that Dream felt similar to it and assumed it was a sort of port.
You absolutely saved the best for last. Besides nba jam of course. Tecmo basketball got tons of run on our block. Craig Hodges was automatic from three point line
What I was finally looking for!!!! LOL!!! But, as a big basketball fan who has owned the SNES since 1992, this video will help me recommend some people who are looking for good basketball games for the SNES!!! Excellent informative video, +SNES drunk. My personal basketball favorites are: NBA Give N' Go, NBA Live series (mainly '95 and '96), NBA Jam series, NCAA Basketball, Tecmo Super NBA Basketball, Bulls vs. Blazers and NBA All-Star Challenge.
Finally, someone else that had and played NCAA Basketball on the SNES! I loved that game! But NBA Jam: Tournament Edition was the SNES basketball game me & my friends played to death.
Super Tecmo Basketball is severely underrated! I also loved the NCAA game with the blue background. I killed it with Oklahoma State, as they had a player who had a 75% 3 point shooting ability.
My favorite was NBA Hangtime. Not because you could play as santa or the wolf man, no. Because you could just run around shoving people to the ground and the ref would never call foul.
There was one NBA Live game where you could add Jordan and Barkley and some of the top Rookies at the time in the Create Player Mode. I think it was ‘96. That would be the one I’d recommend, since it has that cool feature.
NBA Showdown was my favorite back then. It felt the most like an arcade 5 on 5 while still having some strategy to it. Sure it was slow as hell but that came with the territory of snes sports games.
Thank you so much for doing what you do. I have one of those retro clone SNES mini systems (wife bought it by mistake thinking she was getting me the actual SNES mini). However, I was really pleasantly surprised when I got it and found out that it has EVERY NES and SNES game on it and the emulations are just like the original and has original-like controllers. This particular clone system is awesome, so much better than Nintendo's version. So I really appreciate you reviewing these games so I know which games to check out (and subsequently which ones to avoid).
I remember sleepovers playing bill laimbeer's combat basketball for hours. I don't know if we really liked the game or just didn't have anything else to play.
Still playing NBA Live '96 on SNES in 2020! Yep, the easy create-a-player and trades were an awesome addition! Years back I rounded out all the rosters with only players that played for those teams along with the best of my favorite created legends. It was an undertaking, but it was well worth it. The keep scores close option allows for some nail-biters and there's an option to play every team once for a complete season. It's a great game. Tecmo NBA Basketballl (SNES) is solid too, but beware the Sega Genesis version as it does not save trades.
Why did All Star Challenge court look so good for that era...? I loved Give N' Go. It's the first game I remember being able to switch a dunk to a crafty layup
My brothers and I still play NBA Jam to this very day when we get the chance. Aside from Super Mario World, it's our go-to multiplayer game on the SNES.
This comment is 4 years late but thanks you for giving NBA Give 'N Go it's respect. Underrated overachiever based off an Arcade cabinet that did it a little better. This was my favorite SNES Basketball game without a doubt.
I remember playing NBA JAMS on the 64 with 4 players at my friends house back in the day.......with created players of course!! Can't tell you how many hours we put into that game
Eugene Chee I learned about Looney Toons basketball from SNES Drunk videos. The game is awesome! I wish I had known about it as a kid. I sing "Kill the wabbit!!!" every time I use Fudd's defense power, because he dons that horned opera helmet and shoots lightning. LOL
I like seeing NCAA Basketball get some praise, it was one of the first SNES games I had. There were some other players who almost never missed a shot, I want to say McManus on... Tennessee? The red/yellow/green passing icons were very intuitive too.
Top 5 basketball SNES games according to SNESdrunk 5. 5:44 Looney Tunes Ball 4. 4:30 Dream Basketball: Dunk & Hoop 3. 2:14 NBA Live series 2. 6:43 NBA Give 'n Go 1. 7:13 NBA Jam
I have always felt that the 16-bit NBA Live games were kind of a secret gem. It was impressive how much you could do with 3 buttons (I played 96 on Genesis). The isometric view made it easy to see everything that was happening on screen, and the way players react to contact with each other created a surprisingly effective mechanic that allowed you to set up picks, shot fake and do low-post work. You can also control your speed a lot more fluidly than in other games from this era. It was cool that you could call out plays in the moment, and choose your go-to offensive sets ahead of time. By holding the pass button you could hand the ball off to the computer, who then runs the point. This allows you to do stuff like set off ball screens, run backdoor cuts and set up pistol action plays. What other NBA games from that era go this deep in playmaking? In the midst of all of these realistic features, you could also turn on slow motion dunks, and hard fouls would send players flying comically off screen. The animations were well done and occasionally players would bust out hook shots, finger rolls, and impossible 360 dunks. I still play this game sometimes and it always surprises me how close it got to real basketball considering the limitations of these systems. Compared to Live, some of these other games play more like Streets of Rage-style beat-em-ups.
If you like those NBA Live games and have a Genesis near you, try Coach K Basketball. Its the same gameplay, but with NCAA teams, and its a quite well done. Doesn´t have a bunch of customization like Live 96, but the gameplay is top notch, specially with universitary defensive rules, its much harder to score compared to NBA.
Barkley and Jordan were unlockable players on NBA Live 96. All you had to do was go to create a player and type their names in. You could do the same with Hall of Famers like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Jerry West and the whole 1995 draft class.
NBA Live 96 had a create a player mode. If you entered a name like Jordan or Bird it would create the player with the right look, number and stats. 95 and 96 did a stat track trick. It only tracked the stats of your team. They had generic stats for the players on other teams (the iconic players would be among the league leaders in the appropriate categories) that allowed you to try to be among the "league leaders". Great memories of 95 and 96.
Looney Tunes bball is actually an incredibly well designed basketball game. Take off the wacky meter and play the game like real basketball, and you'd be surprised how realistic it plays. Without instruction, you can play man-to-man, or zone out the computer AI. You can set picks and stuff the opponent. Rebounds are essential, and ball control is accurate. Otherwise you turn up the wacky meter and go crazy with 3 pointers.
If you actually look at the release date of college slam, and see the rosters, you'll notice it's based off of the 95-96 season. Connecticut and Georgetown have specifically badass guards....ray Allen and Allen Iverson. Those are real players of the time.
Yup! I played as Georgetown all the time. The center looked like Othella Harrington and the 4 looked like Jerome Williams! He also didn't mention that you were able to go in and name your players. College Slam was a cool game
bulls vs blazers was my first game. i played this game to absolute death. Super tecmo nba basketball was the one...that one and nba live 96. Jordan and pippen were god tier on tecmo. I played this games so much as a kid. "Give and Go" was actually called Run and Gun in the arcade and i remember at the arcade there were 4 setups where you could play 2v2 at the actual arcade. that game was wildly fun at the arcade itself. 100% sure it doesnt translate on console. also a quick tip: on NBA Live 96, you could go to the create a players and enter in the names of players from the draft as well as real player names and they would populate as the real likeness of that player.
NBA Give n Go, a.k.a. Run n Gun in the arcades.... First basketball game ever to allow mid-air shot mods. Also, Run n Gun 2 was the first game to include crossovers. Both games, fun AF.
I got Give and Go off eBay a couple of weeks ago. It's really good for what it is. I still haven't gotten the hang of whatever defense there is, but I was shooting threes with Reggie Miller all day long.
@6:54 This game is forgotten about because the same company Konami had already released this exact game in the Arcade a good 2 or 3 years earlier and it was called Run -n- Gun basketball. Run-and-Gun didnt have an NBA License and used generic teams but that didnt matter back then... it was fun so people played it. By the time Give-n-Go came out for home systems with an NBA license... people had moved on because NBA live was newer and fresher and we'd already played the better version of the same game in the Arcade. A little chronological context from a newly old dude. I was 11 years old when SNES came out now I'm early forties.
SNES Drunk: You can't be Jordan due to copyright issues. All you get is a generic player number... whatever. Michael Jordan: And that's when I took it personal.
Great video, so much nostalgia for me here. I grew up on a lot of the early 90's sports games like NHL 94, and of course Tecmo Super Bowl and even some of the bad ones like NBA All-Star Challenge (it was all I had to play for a while!) I even got one of my childhood friends into sports games just by showing him NBA Jam, and he hated sports games before that. Funny you mentioned Tom Gugliotta during the NBA Live part, I used to have fun making custom teams of 15 Gugliottas and pitting them against NBA teams...they didn't fare well. I still pick up Tecmo NBA and NBA Jam from time to time, I may have to revisit some of these!
I've got a friend who doesn't even like basketball and loves NBA Jam. I wish NBA Jam would get brought back, can you imagine the 2 on 2 today with so many of the super teams in the league
I also grew up playing a ton of NCAA Basketball. I always played as Texas and I still remember the fake names of several of the players all these years later.
Live 95 was life changing for me.....that game was amazing. I played it on the Genesis, but it was unreal with a full season, all teams, playoffs......that was the shit I also didnt realize that Lakers vs Celtics and NBA Playoffs never came out for SNES, but only Genesis. I was gonna ask if you missed it but then saw it was only a Genesis release. NCAA Basketball is a personal favorite of mine to....that was my first college hoops game with a season and the tournament. Took my Razorbacks to the title....
Am I the only one that wants an NBA Jam type game with Kitzrow saying things like "get that shit outta here!" I know there was a supposed leaked version a couple years back but I don't think it was legit
Arch Rivals for the nes, was the original NBA Jam. You should really try it out - it's very fun and great looking and reminds me of the Bad News Baseball game but with basketball.
Nice video! Great to see all of the basketball games released for good old SNES. When I was a kid I was a huge basketball fan. So I own three of those games myself. Well kind of. I own NBA Jam TE, Give‘N‘Go and a game not featured in this list. I don’t know if it was already mentioned in the comments somewhere but there was also World League Basketball. It's the NCAA game but without licenses. I guess the publisher wasn’t convinced NCAA teams would sell properly outside the US. So for the international market they made up teams around the globe like Warsaw Lynx, Berlin Bears or the New York Apples. It took a while but eventually I would really enjoy playing it. Japanese market got yet another version of the NCAA game. A really strange one. called Super Dunk something. Did you ever hear of the Chicago Bills and their Superstar Jordun? No!? But you must have heard of Boston Celleries legend Bard!
