With the NFL Conference Championships a week away, and not much else going on, we're in a bit of a dead zone right now. And it's going to get even worse when we hit the two-week break before the Super Bowl. Basically, it's just a slog of relatively unimportant NBA games - and the occasional good college basketball conference matchup. Oh yeah, there's also hockey, but no one watches that. So since we're about to hit the stretch of the year where basketball is pretty much the only thing on, let's take a look back at the history of primarily cartridge-based video game basketball, from it's hideous inception on the Atari 2600 to whatever the hell the kids are playing these days.

That may not exactly be what you're looking for, but it's all you're going to get. So let's get started.


Atari Basketball is where video game basketball got its start. Basically two square dudes bouncing a square and heaving it up towards, well, I'm not really sure what that is. Remarkably, this game was once popular, although I'm not sure how. And if you think I'm joking, just check out this ad Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did for it below.



Naturally video game basketball could only improve from a sprite banging a square around a court. And it did, although barely. Shortly after Atari dared to venture into the world of basketball, the Apple II did as well, with One on One: Dr. J versus Larry Bird. Interestingly, this was also the first basketball game with licensed characters.
In it, you could play as either Dr. J or Larry Legend. Probably the best thing about the game was that you could shatter the backboard with a thunderous jam. By the way, if you're wondering how great the likenesses of Doc and Bird were, they were, uh, interesting. Below is a pic of both stars heads as they appeared in the game (courtesy of Basketbawful, which also has a great review of the game).
The game did a good job capturing Bird's whiteness and Dr. J's, um, I'm not sure what Doc is there exactly. Maybe a mutant fly.


Next up, because gamemakers had trouble getting full NBA licenses, they started doing weird things like signing deals with British Knights and making games where you could pull guys' pants down.

This game was called Arch Rivals and it may have been responsible for BK's complete and utter destruction. Which is too bad, because BK used to have dope commercials like this.
 


Despite the problems with licenses, there were also attempts to make real 5-on-5 games as well. This is where Double Dribble came in. DD tried hard to make "real" teams even without the license. The Boston team had green uniforms and a freaky frog replaced the Celtics' leprechaun. The Los Angeles team had blue uniforms but had a "lake" for a mascot, while Chicago had a red ox.
 
The game was also famous for having a glitch where you could dunk from the 3-pt line as the above video shows. For some reason, Double Dribble turned out to be an immensely popular game, even though every player in the it looked like they came right out of Hoosiers.


But the game that really put basketball games on the right track was Tecmo NBA Basketball. Is there anything Tecmo didn't do well in the early 90s?
 
What made Tecmo Basketball unique Tecmo was that it was granted a license to put in every real team, every real player and even the real 1991 NBA schedule, a combination that hadn't been seen before.


That led to video game companies trying to get the NBA brand to make their games more legit. During the time, the Lakers and Celtics were two of the elite teams in the NBA, and Electronic Arts capitalized on that with Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs. Interestingly, James Worthy, and not Magic, was featured on the title screen.

Jordan was featured on the Bulls' roster, a rare feat. The game featured only ten NBA teams, with corresponding jersey numbers and names for each team's roster. There was no turbo, no jukes, and no real method to elude the defense. All one could really do is pass and shoot. EA made a few other versions of the game, including Bulls versus Blazers, that did feature every NBA team. In Bulls v. Blazers MJ could do a 360 dunk and there was a spot near mid-court where anyone, including Bill Cartwright, could hit threes. Awesome.


The game that made basketball a true video game sensation though was NBA Jam. The game was immensely popular in the arcades and quickly came to the home systems of the time. Luckily, systems like Super NES and Genesis were decent enough to at least reasonably recreate the arcade version.

The game featured a ton of secret characters and you could even put in a code where you could dunk from half-court. I'd be lying if I said I never did that.


The next generation of game combined the fast-paced nature and dunking of NBA Jam with real 5-on-5 basketball. The game that most effectively accomplished that was NBA Live 95.
 
Live 95 was undoubtedly leaps and bounds ahead of Lakers vs. Celtics, featuring a full season mode, all 27 NBA teams, and a full repertoire of jukes, blocks, alley-oops, and more.


Versions of Live went on to dominate the market until NBA 2K came around.

The game was fairly brilliant on the short lived Dreamcast, and it quickly found it's way on to other systems.


These days, both the NBA Live and NBA 2K series are the best known on the market. The games are becoming increasingly realistic and you can even develop players over time, from a rookie to a veteran. And on 2K8, you get to hear Steve Kerr and Marv Albert giving you commentary. Yes!

Even Sony has entered with their own version called NBA The Life, but supposedly it sucks.

In many ways, it's kind of remarkable how far video game basketball has come over time. I just wish we could find a way to get Marv to call an Atari Basketball game.