The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to basketball video games, the real NBA or another area of interest to our community, either as a list of five items or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. 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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The Friday Five: 5 Basic Features We Take For Granted
There are a number of basic features in a modern basketball game that have become firmly entrenched as essential, at least if you want the game to be good! The genre has come a long way, and even though I still have tremendous fondness for the early classics, I’m also aware of their shortcomings. Of course, many of the basic features that were once innovations did come along in the mid to late 90s, so we’ve had them for decades now. To that point though, it’s all too easy to take some of those basic features for granted, especially if you didn’t grow up with the more primitive titles.
“Primitive” is the operative word here. When video games as a whole were in their infancy, those first steps towards what we have now did feel like huge strides. On top of that, technical limitations meant that games couldn’t have the same level of depth and detail as they do now, or even a couple of generations ago. Nevertheless, it’s still interesting to look back at some early basketball video games – as I obviously enjoy doing for Wayback Wednesday – and note how some of the basic features that we now take for granted are nowhere to be found. This doesn’t mean that we can’t and shouldn’t criticise modern games, but it’s a reminder of the progress that’s been made.