Who’s ready for some HOOPS?!
One of my favorite weirdly specific old video game genres is “weird one-off retro basketball games.” There are tons of these – Jammit, Rap Jam Vol. 1, the Atari 2600 Basketball, the FMV-based Slam City with Scottie Pippen and so on. I tend to dig into these more often when a good friend of mine (who also loves these) is in town and we can fly through a bunch of them. One of the more enjoyable games of the era I can remember playing with him is the generically-titled NES release Hoops.
Hoops was first released in Japan in 1988 by Jaleco, a now defunct company whose name is a shortening of “Japan Leisure Company.” It is part of their “Moero!!” series of largely unrelated sports games, which began with Bases Loaded. There were a total of eight games in the series, including the tennis game Racket Attack, the soccer title Goal!, and a couple of games that never made it to the U.S., including a game based on judo.
As a quick aside, check out how the low-detail Statue of Liberty looks like it’s just flipping everyone off. There’s some meaning to be taken from that, probably.
One of my favorite things about Hoops is the game’s characters – there’s no NBA license or even a series of fake teams. Instead, there are just eight unique players, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There’s a good variety to the characters, too – tall, short, male, female, etc. I’ve always been partial to Face, because like me, he is both tall and great:
Another of my favorites is Wiz, who is just this damn nerd:
Real smart? Round glasses? A name that suggests he’s a wizard? I’m just saying.
Anyway, the game itself is played in a half-court, with both 1-on-1 and 2-on-2 modes. The controls are understandably basic – for instance, you press ‘B’ once to go up for a shot, and then ‘B’ again to release. The timing of this matters, and it feels pretty rewarding to get right. Taking a shot near the basket leads to a cool cutscene showing off a dunk, or a contested play at the rim:
Defense is a mix of just staying close to the player you’re defending and pressing “A” to get in a defensive stance. This is tricky and occasionally leads to fouls, but in general it feels like you have control over what you’re doing.
Before each game, you can choose the number of points needed to win, the post-basket possession rules, and the ‘court’ (which is mostly just a pallette swap). There’s also a password system, which lets you get different opponents in 2-on-2 games, if that sort of thing matters to you. There isn’t much more to it than that, but it’s a lot of fun, especially with two human players.
Also, the graffiti on the back wall kinda looks like it says “fart.” That doesn’t really matter, but I thought you should know.
As I eluded to earlier, I really love simplified sports games. The lack of a lot of buttons and/or programming complexity leads to some interesting deconstructions of what a sport like basketball is. The results aren’t always pretty, but sometimes you get something that’s just really straight forward and fun. Hoops is a great example of that, and if you’re at all like me in this regard, it’s a great pickup. It’s also a common NES sports game, meaning it can be had for basically nothing.
Next week, we’re sticking with the NES again – this time with a licensed game from a publisher that everyone hates (though the game in question is sometimes liked more than most of their work). I’ll see you then!