The perfect arcade basketball game.
What Is It? “Never judge a book by its cover” is a perfectly fine saying, but sometimes you need to throw it right out of the window. NBA Street vol. 2 can absolutely be judged by its cover. It perfectly depicts what the game is about: NBA legends (Dr. J and MJ), AND 1 styling, amazing graphical style, and an over-the-top arcade sports experience. It is an iconic video game cover in my book.
As for the actual game, it is a 3v3 arcade basketball game with traditional streetball rules. Points are counted by 1s and 2s and games are played to 21 and you must win by two. The core gameplay feature is the Gamebreaker. Everything you do in the game will earn style points to fill your Gamebreaker meter. Once it is full you get to choose: activate it, use it to cancel your opponent’s, or bank it to go for a double Gamebreaker. When activated, it will trigger an unblockable shot which will score you points and take points away from your opponent. A double Gamebreaker could have a six point swing, so filling the meter and timing your usage is vital to winning any game.
The Gamebreaker mechanic works so well because everything you do provides style points which fill the meter. This includes pulling off special moves in a few varieties: dribble, pass, and shooting, as well as scoring and playing defense. The ultimate goal is to string moves together into combos to unlock mega points. Making a three (two) pointer might gain you 500 points, but blocking a shot, breaking your opponent’s ankles, throwing a pass off of the backboard, throwing the ball off of your opponent’s head, then pulling off a kick-pass for an ally oop will gain you tens of thousands of points. This is, essentially, adding a Tony Hawk style combo system into arcade basketball and it is a wonderful experience.
Holding any combination of the four shoulder buttons along with a face button will pull off a special move. Dribble moves get you points, and extra points for breaking ankles. Slick passes and monster dunks add even more. Not everything is offense-based, however, as you can cancel special dribbles with well timed counter button presses. Same thing with blocks.
The game features real NBA rosters from the 2003 season which include some awesomeness (prime Kobe and Shaq) as well as some really weird snapshots (Shawn Kemp on Orlando). There are 25 unlockable NBA legends as well, you will earn points through playing the game to unlock these. You can play a standard exhibition game or one of two longer modes: NBA Challenge and Be A Legend. NBA Challenge has you trying to defeat every other NBA team with the squad of your choice while Be A Legend starts with creating your own player and having you work up through the ranks by playing pickup games, improving your stats, and so on. Both modes are great, and the CPU provides a stiff challenge even on normal difficulty.
Everything is tied together through an amazing art style that could be described as superhero, cartoon, realism. That’s probably a terrible description, but the game does a good job representing the players as they actually appear (arguably better than sim games of the era), and it does so through a wonderful cartoon style where features are exaggerated to stand out. Superhero, cartoon, realism. It fits.
The Best Part: The game has a wide array of fun things to do. The game gives you points for doing these fun things. The game rewards points with game-changing Gamebreakers. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s a wonderful cycle which ensures players are doing as many ridiculous moves as they can, not just for fun, but to help win games. Most games of any genre dream of such a tight gameplay loop where the most fun and visually awesome feats are so directly tied to winning.
The Worst Part: This is a nitpick, but it is incredibly strange to try to press two different shoulder buttons at once on a PS2 controller. Each different combination of buttons triggers a different move, which provides a lot of variety, but have you tried pressing L2+L1+R1 at the same time recently? My fingers are not trained for those kinds of gymnastics!
The Verdict: This game is fun. Pure fun. The gymnastics your fingers will perform trying to pull off different moves provides a bit of a barrier to entry over simpler arcade sports games, but once you get the hang of it, there is very little in the genre that stands up to NBA Street vol. 2. The CPU provides a good challenge as well as lengthy (I will stop short of calling them ‘deep’…) single player modes, so you can have a great time playing this game solo over 20 years after it was released. The list of sports games that hit that criteria is incredibly short.
NBA Street vol 2 is a perfect blend of style and substance, I didn’t even comment on the streetball courts, music, or legendary announcer! It mixes the stars of the era, legends of the past, and the AND 1 style that was having a major moment at the time. The cover of the game tells a story of unique style and legendary skills. The game, somehow, manages to back this up and then some with the most memorable hoops game of all time.
How to Play: PlayStation 2*, GameCube, Xbox
*console played on for this review
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