NBA Unrivaled Arrives on Wednesday, November 11 For XBLA

[jaosming]

Joystiq has the scoop.

Quote:

"Tecmo's trying to fill the arcade-basketball-shaped hole in your heart left by NBA Street with NBA Unrivaled, a retro hoops release from developer A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Games. Though the cleverly-named company is relatively new on the scene, it has experience to draw on after helping Sony build NBA '08: The Life. We're happy to see some fun-loving 5-on-5 take the court, but we're a little nervous about how quickly the game's sneaked up on us: It's arriving this Wednesday on XBLA, and later on PSN, barely enough time to get our sneakers laced up."

[jyoung]

Man, there is literally no footage of this game and it comes out tomorrow (Wednesday)?

Always a bad omen when that happens.

Even worse considering that Tecmo hadn't put out a good sports game since the 16-bit days.

[Tha_Kid]

There is footage. There is already a thread about this game a couple pages back. Pretty and thats about it.

[jyoung]

Well, this game is an unmitigated disaster.

It's missing things that made Tecmo Super NBA Basketball great (poor soundtrack, no season mode), the stuff they actually kept in (jump shooting, passing) were some of the worst parts of the original game, and the stuff they added (alley oops, 3D player models) just feels tacky.

Can't believe this game was even released, much less at $15.

Go buy a copy of NBA Street 2 if you want an arcade game for your Xbox or a copy of Tecmo Super NBA Basketball for the SNES if you want to relive the nostalgia of that game.

[goh]

I thought 2K10 was a glitchy mess but this is just something special right here.

[jyoung]

I will say this:

it's growing on me a bit now that I've figured out how to make jumpshots (they changed the timing from the SNES game and don't give you cut-scenes anymore to let you know when you've timed one correctly), but that only threw my opinion of the game up to the point that I'd pay $5 for it.

$15 is still a total ripoff for the (lack of) effort that was put into this game.

The soundtrack is literally the same 3-4 seconds looped over and over again (major disappointment compared to the amazing SNES soundtrack).

No season mode is ridiculous (best part of the SNES game).

Everyone can now dunk the ball (instead of just the guys who could in real life), and since the range for triggering dunks has been increased (you can now start one outside of the paint), the game is basically a dunkfest.

[Admiral50]

Why keep comparing it to the SNES Tecmo NBA game? This isn't even trying to be like it, it's a bad NBA Jam clone. The bad part being they've managed to make it worse than a 10+ year old game.

[jyoung]

Quote: Originally Posted by Admiral50

Why keep comparing it to the SNES Tecmo NBA game? This isn't even trying to be like it, it's a bad NBA Jam clone.

It's not a Jam clone, it's just a 3D version of the old Tecmo game, which actually existed long before NBA Jam.

Tecmo had their game out on the NES in 1991. Jam didn't come out in the arcades until 1993.

This game keeps most of the presentation aspects of the old NES/SNES/Genesis game (cheerleaders, announcer, ref, cutscenes, sidelines, etc.), it just butchers them badly.

Here's the old game, for comparison:



Tecmo NBA Basketball was actually a simulation type game back in the day, not an arcade style game, which is what they've turned it into now.