Retro sports video games can be a tough pill to swallow. I’m talking these titles released on 8-bit hardware. It doesn’t matter the sport for the most part they’re all clunky and feel more antiquated than your average game. With that said basketball titles generally fare better than pigskin or hockey, at least in my opinion. I wasn’t aware of any good basketball titles for the Sega Master System until I accidentally stumbled upon Basketball Nightmare. This PAL and Canada only release doesn’t take itself too seriously (which no sports games ever should) and it won me over almost immediately. Today we’re going to take a look at this weird and obscure basketball title.
Basketball Nightmare actually has a little bit of story exposition. Who would have thought it? The scenario here centers around a hometown basketball team captain gearing up to face off in the all American tournament. The night before however he has a series of nightmares wherein he was playing in matches against horrifying creatures in strange fantasy based locales. It’s pretty cheesy, but dare I say I love it? There’s something very Sega about the fact that they tried to shoehorn a story into such a bizarre title and I applaud them for it.
As you may have guessed this is a basketball video game. If you weren’t able to figure that out, then were you even reading up to this point? The game is played from a skewed side perspective and you control one player at a time. Your character can move in all eight directions across the entire court as you compete against various teams composed of monsters. Sega missed a big opportunity because no matter the creature you’re facing off they have no special skills and play basketball just the same as the human players. It’s kind of a waste given the theme, am I right?
Either way, the core gameplay is pretty solid. It’s a typical full court five versus five basketball match. The camera is viewed from a skewed side perspective as you have free range of motion. This means you can freely move in all eight directions You can only control one player at a time but can freely switch between all available people on your team as long as you aren’t currently in possession of the ball. It’s pretty standard stuff. You have one button used to pass the ball. Even having finished the game I was never able to figure out how to choose who you want to throw to. If I’m being completely honest this just seems random and the game rarely makes the best choice for you.
Then there’s the shooting mechanics which work surprisingly well. You press the button to first jump, and then again to actually throw the ball. The height at which you release, and the distance you are from the basket determines if the shot is a success. It’s much better than simply throwing the ball and rolling the dice like in most basketball games of this era. The most difficult time I had was with the slam dunks. You have to jump towards the hoop and press the shot button at just the right time. It feels like the animation doesn’t trigger when it’s supposed to. There’s a strange delay that constantly left me thinking I had missed my opportunity to score.
The best part of the dunks is that you’re treated to a sweet animation of the character in question making the move. It’s certainly not CD quality animation or anything, and it’s more like a few stills thrown together to simulate any kind of animation, but I loved these. The character designs are full of charm. The humans are generic anime rubbish but the monsters (the werewolves in particular) are hilarious to me. I love how they dunk the ball upside down. The other monster designs are pretty cute as well. It’s hard to be mad when you’ve been scored on when the action looks so darn charming.
Basketball Nightmare isn’t a particularly difficult game but it does have a learning curve. I was never particularly adept at stealing the ball from the opponents and would block them and button mash until I was successful. It worked about half of the time, but that’s all I needed in order to complete the main story. The game itself offers a fair amount of challenge. I had to replay matches several times, but the game doesn’t penalize you for doing so. There’s even a fairly in depth multiplayer mode but you can’t play as the monster teams. Instead you’re given a selection of international teams to choose from. Personally I think this saps some of the charm out of the experience. I’m not playing this game to play as normal humans. I want the monsters.
Graphically the game is pretty on-point. I’m surprised at just how smoothly it runs on the 8-bit Master System hardware with so much happening at once. You have ten players moving independently from one another, and all without much slowdown and almost no flickering to speak of. That’s quite a technical feat as anyone familiar with gaming in this era will tell you. In addition everything is nice and colorful. The courts themselves look great with a lot of detail and vibrant designs. It’s very over the top but for a game called Basketball Nightmare it definitely fits. The briefly animated sequences also look great as well. The music isn’t particularly memorable or anything but at least it isn’t painful. It’s there, and it does it’s job, so I can’t knock it too much.
I had low expectations going into Basketball Nightmare but I left pleasantly surprised. I wanted an over-the-top hoops game and that’s precisely what I got. It’s heavily focused on the arcade style of play which was pretty common for sports games like this back then. I love that I can pick it up, play a match, and go about my day. That pick up and play nature really helps it out, and the simple controls and mechanics are pretty decent. It’s not the best 8-bit basketball game but Basketball Nightmare is at least in the top 10.
