Review

Pat Riley Basketball

By: Alex Burr | January 29, 2009

It's 1990. We're talking hoops here, and when we are talking coaches, one of the biggest on the NBA block was Pat Riley. Pat Riley lead the L.A. Lakers through the 1980s, in what some have called "the rebirth of the NBA," against their bitter rivals the Boston Celtics and my beloved Detroit Pistons. You hear the name Pat Riley and you think of him walking up and down the court with his hands on his hips, shouting out something at Magic Johnson, and you just know that the Lakers are the class of the '80s NBA. So, naturally, someone had to throw a load of money at him to just put his name on a game, right? Sega did. Sigh... and now, almost twenty years later, some college guy is going to have to subject himself to it.

All of a sudden, you're sitting there all irked at two a.m. - you're plugging through this game, and a voice shouts out at you through the mist. "Come on man, get your head in the game! Genesis Does! Pop in Pat Riley Basketball and run away with these extreme 16-bit graphics!" And then, you know there is some sort of sweet montage of gameplay, with really loud metal and big graphics that say something that is rarely true. Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, this game rocks! Pick it up today!

WRONG!

If there is any way possible for this game to suck much worse, please contact me immediately, because Pat Riley Basketball is an insult to gamers and basketball players everywhere. Wait, what's this Pro Quarterback game? I'll have to investigate. Anyway, Pat Riley Basketball was released as a free game (if you bought the Genesis) as part of the "Genesis Does" series. Pat Riley is worse than Tommy Lasorda Baseball, and we all just laugh at that game because of its primitive controls, uninspired graphics, blah blah blah. I wouldn't go so far to say that the controls in PRB are primitive, but they don't make any sense at all.

In the history of games that have had controllers with buttons lettered A,B,C,X,Y, etc. there has been one button that obviously has been used to cancel things, go back, or to go to a menu screen, etc. Clearly, B is said button and rarely is it used as the main button (the only one I can think of is Sonic, where every button is the same). Pat Riley Basketball uses B as jump - not shoot, not pass, not even to change players. What I take the most offense with is that jumping requires its own button press, so if you want to shoot the ball, you have to press B again to do so.

When someone tells you that, or you read it in the manual, it's not so bad. However, it's MISERABLE when you're in the game. Numerous times you'll get called for traveling, or your shot has no chance, or you didn't mean to shoot it and jump and before you do something with it. Also, if you are anywhere near the basket in the key, the game goes to a "close-up dunk" system where you have to line it up and such. This isn't really a big deal, but when they show the player at least two feet over the basket just chucking it in, the player looks like he jumps at least twelve feet in the air (a NBA basket is only ten feet tall)! And then he really doesn't dunk it at all; he just throws it in the hoop! I guarantee you anyone who dunks like the players do in this game deserve to win the NBA All-Star Slam Dunk Challenge, because no human should be able to jump that high. Granted, there are few different kinds of dunk screens and a three-point shot screen too.

What sucks about B being both jump and shoot is nearly made up by the graphics, which are pretty good for the time, especially the close up dunk and three-point shot graphics. The court-view graphics are decent too, despite the miserably shoddy presentation. Yeah, that's right, the players dribble the ball at least twice as fast as they run up and down the court, adding yet another check to the list of things that aren't at all realistic (along with the 12-foot high leaps). The shooting on the main view screen doesn't seem to make sense either, as it just appears to take a straight line path to the basket and then doesn't even really look like it goes in either. That's just being lazy.

One more thing that isn't real at all is the difficulty. Man, is this game tough. And it isn't so much in the insane AI, but rather that there is just no way to defend your basket unless you are in the close up view, and even then the little control thing to get your guy to jump the right height at the right time is confusing too. Yeah, I can't seem to figure out how to block on the main screen, and the computer mercilessly just drives up and down the lane and lays it in. There's nothing like being down 43-15 after the first quarter, that's for sure. And there's nothing else like not even being able to bring the ball down the court without having to pass it around a bunch either, because that AI will take that ball away from you like Biff does from those kids in Back to the Future 2. And don't think that you can do the same, because I have tried to run right though the AI player who had the ball, and I didn't get it at all.

There are a multitude of problems about Pat Riley Basketball, and I have just begun to discuss them. Another problem is the sound. Not the music, mind you, because that is actually pretty spot on. It's pretty safe to say that there is only about one or two audio clips that sound right, and that is either the sound of the whistle or the ball going into the basket. The crowd sounds a little like the Wheel of Fortune wheel, frankly. Pat Riley's crowd sounds like the Wheel of Fortune Genesis game's wheel more than the Wheel of Fortune's wheel itself. That game is more also fun than this one, believe it or not.

There are very skeletal options: regular game and tournament, one player, two-player, or demo. I don't know why anyone would want to watch the demo, but you can if you want, I guess. Obviously Sega didn't include a license of any means, but there are so many things wrong with this game that you won't even notice. Despite not having a license, the player's ability stats are available to view so you know who to go to in the clutch. Oh wait, you hardly know who each player is (other than by their color of their skin), so it's useless. You can shift players around, but you can't substitute from the bench during the game for some reason.

Listen, I know what you're thinking. "Yeah, I am beating the living crap out of Pat Riley Basketball, and I know that it was practically a launch title, and launch titles are very rarely the best games on the system (See: Nintendo)." But, this game is bad! It's worse than bad! Just let it sit on your shelf and collect dust until you forget that you have it, and then when you find it again a while later, don’t play it. It is one of the only games that I have paid $1.98 for and felt like I paid too much. It’s also the only Genesis cart that makes me feel I can’t be 100% convinced that Genesis does. Does that tell you how bad this game is?

Reviewer Score: 2.0   |   Avg. Reader Score: 5.2

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