NBA Street flows like Eminem on the microphone and it takes literally less than a half hour to really find your groove in this game. It’s safe to say, not only did the boys at EA BIG play NBA Hangtime, but also the Tony Hawk series. The trick element was carried over from the original game in this series and yes ‘game breakers’ are here too. When you play head to head with a friend it feels more like a fantasy street ball game, yet if you edit the ‘game rules’ you could set the game to run like an NBA basketball game. Not only does this game cater to b-ball fans of all shapes and sizes, but it also offers more game modes, incentives, and features than any of the other titles that are currently out on the market.

Now we all know the concept of mixing street basketball with NBA legends is far from anything new. Personally I felt this had become a dieing genre in the late ‘90s after a few companies brought almost identical releases to both the SNES and SEGA. Yes we’ve seen it done many times before, but I feel this is the peak of the genre. This is completely different from the other basketball titles, and by different I mean: good. Now aside from the five different game modes, and the simple fact that it contains enough in-game incentives to keep you playing for months, this is one game you won’t be able to stop playing anytime soon!

It’s not NBA Jam, and it wasn’t created by Midway, but does that mean we can’t love it? Without argue NBA Street is one of the greatest fantasy sports games ever to grace the console. The fundamentals are of course, the same as you have come to expect from every game in this genre. This is one of the games were they didn’t go outside of the boundaries; they just took what’s good and made it better. I think the slogan for this title should have been, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” Instead of trying to make a new game, they took a different route. What they chose to do was build on top of what was already fun to play.

There are four game modes to select from, those being ‘Pickup Game’, ‘NBA Challenge’, ‘Be a Legend’, and ‘Street School’. Pickup Game allows one on one play, two on two and all the like you would find in an exhibition game mode. Yes, you can even load your created player and team into this mode. NBA Challenge is a simple game mode. Defeat NBA players and you will be rewarded. The rewards range from new jerseys all the way to new players. When it comes down to Be a Legend, you’ll love this one. You start off as a no name street ball player, and from there you have to climb the ropes. With each victory you gain fame, and points to increase your player’s attributes. To make it even more interesting, every time you defeat a team you get the chance to recruit players from the other team, including the ‘bosses’ at the end of each challenge. While Street School is very simple and quick, I guarantee it will raise your skills to the next level. It’s more or less a twenty minute interactive help course.

The 3-on-3 basketball style is here. It contains the ‘oops’, the ‘raises up’, and even the ‘he’s on fire!’ The only difference is there’s a ‘new’ spin on things and the controls are much more responsive. The ‘alley-oop’ has pretty much survived time itself and remained what it has always been, and that would be quick and effective. In order to accomplish this b-ball feat, you merely need to time your pass with your partner as he jumps. This is very easy to setup, even easier yet to control, and yet very nice to watch as you throw a few tricks in right before driving the slam-dunk home. Now when we look at the term ‘raises up’ I would be referring to the flash of a pixilated character jumping across the TV screen and if you hit pass at the right moment, your partner makes a extra spectacular air dunk, as it was in Hang Time. The only difference is now your partner is a high resolution character model and his dunk is even more spectacular. With that you might start to feel as if there was little change in the game mechanics. But that is so far from the truth. You can do tricks in between shots by pressing a series of buttons (much like the all too familiar series: Tony Hawk), and by holding different button combos and than pressing the shoot button, you will allow your ‘baller’ to take different shots. I can’t stress enough how much variation and creativity you are allowed in making shots, and setting up dunks.

Now let’s examine the old ‘he’s on fire’ aspect, and note what has changed. Basically, the original idea from the Jam games of old was scrapped. Now it’s the ‘game breaker’ we all strive to hit. Instead of trying to make 3 baskets in a row so that your player makes all of his shots, it has become the point issue. You want to be nailing as many tricks and combo strings as possible. This will add to your overall score, fill up your game breaker meter and eventually give you the game breaker shot. What it does is takes a point away from your opponent and gives two to yourself. But if you feel you want to go for the long haul you can bank it, and save up for a level 2 game breaker shot.