SNES Game Review: NCAA Basketball

 NCAA Basketball is a basketball game for the SNES made by Sculptured Software.  The game is a glimpse into what the college game can be, much like Bill Walsh's College Football from EA Sports.  It didn't have the lasting legacy like the NCAA March Madness series did but the game does have it's ups and downs.  Without any further ado, here is what went well and didn't go well.

Positives:

1. Major colleges: This game wasn't going to feature the 200-300 college basketball teams that it did at the time but there was the positive that pretty much every major college conference was involved.  The ACC, SEC, Southwest Conference, Big 10 and others were involved.  So that included schools like Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, and so forth.  If you wanted to make a college basketball game for the SNES, the big conferences needed to give it staying power.

2. Mode 7 camera- This actually works for this game.  The game itself rotates well and is paced well with the camera so you won't get a sense of motion sickness like you would in a fast paced game.

3. A feel of control- You can pass, shoot, play defense.  You have all that in a good pace.  It seems good overall in that sort of game.  At this point that seems like it should go well to be honest and it does do well.  I felt in control of playing well overall.  

Negatives:

1. Graphics- Yeah these aren't the best.  Just feel choppy and just feel at times blurred which Sculptured didn't seem to equate this.  It just seemed graphics just weren't a major thing for them and it is a big downfall.

2. The blue screen- I contemplated making this neutral but it seems to be combined with the graphics.  The blue screen just isn't a good eye sight for the game.  It just makes it muddled and makes it look worse in a graphics sense.  Add to that the mundane crowd noise and it's just meh at best.

3. No mid-major schools- Yeah this is a downside, as it is so limited in scope and sphere that with the graphics issues you would think it would be good to then add more schools.  Alas it was just a major conference game and that was about it for this basketball game.

Overall rating/Rank:

This is an average at best game.  You feel in control, you can do the basics of basketball well but the graphics, lack of depth in this game really hurts it overall.  I can recommend it from a pure just play as a one time, maybe season mode game but that's really it.  Not much more than an average game at best.  Personally I rate it 5 out of 10 and it's probably around 400th on the list of SNES games.