NBA Hangtime - On this day

In the 1990s, basketball in the form of video games was mostly played with an emphasis on arcade gameplay. Some games tried to simulate real sports, but the fame was primarily achieved by the NBA Jam series which brought 2 on 2 matches and overemphasized jumping in the air while dunking. As the series had several publishers, the titles split in the mid-1990s, so we got NBA Hangtime on this day 25 years ago.

The game came out a little earlier for arcade machines, PC, and Sega Mega Drive consoles, but it got the most attention on Nintendo 64 console. Unlike the previous two NBA Jam games, Hangtime brought the ability to create their basketball players, and not exclusively human but could play with werewolves and other supernatural beings.

In addition to creating characters, the novelty was the introduction of the so-called. alley-oops mechanics for even more effective dunks. All basketball players had grades in six different categories, and four basketball players from each of the 29 NBA teams from that season were licensed.

NBA Hangtime received only mediocre ratings, and critics mostly blamed the lack of innovation compared to the 1993 NBA Jam. The PlayStation console version went even worse due to long downloads. The NBA Jam Extreme of another publisher did not fare any better either. The series was later continued with NBA Showtime, and after a long break, it returned in 2010 to PS3, Wii, and X360 consoles.