You start off by picking your player out of a pool of ridiculous losers. Everyone has tight shorts. There are even white people available.
One button is shoot (or have your teammate shoot) and the other is "give me the fucking basketball" / "throw a punch." It depends on whether you are on offense or defense. There's only one other game of its era that did that (that I can remember). That was the hockey game "Faceoff." One button was shoot and the other was "punch somebody with your elbow."
My teammate almost never drives to the basket. So when he does and I feed him the ball and tell him to dunk its very rewarding. The computer will punch you as well, which makes attempts to dunk over the computer a lot of fun due to the revenge factor. The game doesn't always let you do it and will sometimes force an awkward jump shot a foot from the basket. I think this is a bad game because the controls are dodgy, but it's a fun game because when you DO pull a move off you're frigging psyched about it.
After each score there is a cut scene. Sometimes it's of a cheerleader, but it could also be one of the coaches. Or the crowd. There's certainly no more than three dozen people who came to the game you're playing in. There's even shit on the court like popcorn boxes and other assorted garbage that leads to hilarious falls if you touch one of them. If they ever remake this game they should set it in the Superdome so that they can depict some distracting murders and rapes. The detritus on the floor does lead to a little strategy: should you "set off" the trash so that you don't run into it late in the game, when you may need a crucial possession? Or do you leave it there and hope the computer players run across it? I know it's not like trying to decide when to use the A-bomb in Civ II*, but for a basketball game it's not so bad.
Plus, the coach of my team looks like my dad:
* I know the answer to that one is "immediately," but please pretend otherwise.
What are some bad games that YOU like, JC Denizens?
