Monday Tip-Off is a weekly feature that comes out - as the name would imply - every Monday. Tip off your week with a column dedicated to opinions, commentary, and other fun stuff related to basketball video games! This is a central discussion thread for the feature, in which I invite you to post any feedback along with your responses to each column's topic. A link to the latest article can always be found here in the first post, along with a link to the complete archive.
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Monday Tip-Off: Giving NCAA Games The Old College Try
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles and on our podcast, I didn’t grow up playing college basketball games, as issues with international licensing rights prevented them from being released outside of North America. With no PAL versions of the games, it was usually unfeasible to import them, since they wouldn’t work on the hardware that I own. Of course, college basketball itself isn’t as popular in Australia as the NBA or our own NBL are, so I’ve always had a more casual interest in the NCAA anyway. At the same time, I was intrigued by college basketball video games.
After all, I loved playing with the fictional players in World League Basketball, which of course was originally a college hoops title that was rebranded for PAL regions. I also read previews of NCAA games with a degree of envy, my interest piqued by mechanics such as momentum meters, the ability to shatter the backboard, and the inclusion of classic teams. When a friend gifted me his old PlayStation 3 back in 2019, I was finally able to add a few college basketball games to my collection. It was satisfying to track them down and finally check them out after all this time, as well as write about them. Recently however, they’ve been getting more time in my rotation.