Double Dribble is my personal favorite basketball game on the NES. I have fond memories of playing this game head to head with my childhood friend Jerry. He was much better at it than I was, but somehow I didn't get frustrated with the game. That says something for the playability and fun factor of Double Dribble.
As far as I can figure, there were only 8 basketball games total for the NES. Of those games, 6 are pretty much crap-ola and two of them are playable. The two playable games are Arch Rivals, in which you can punch opposing players, and Double Dribble. I prefer Double Dribble for one reason and one reason alone: the cutaway dunk shot.
Pictured above, the cutaway dunk shot is pretty impressive by NES standards. Any time you hit the shoot button and are either right under the basket or moving toward that vicinity, you'll get a shot similar to the one above. There are three dunks you can perform: normal two-handed, backward two handed, and one handed windmill. The only downside to the dunk feature, which is in all other respects phenomenal and head and shoulders above every other basketball game for the NES, is that you can miss dunks. Here's what's frustrating about missing dunks: the CPU never misses a dunk, and I mean never. You, on the other hand, can go hot and cold sometimes throwing it down like Clyde the Glide and other times missing repeatedly like Birdman Anderson in the 2005 dunk contest. Your dunks can be wildly inconsistent, but it's easy to pick up the offensive board on a missed dunk, so at least you have that going for you, which is nice.
As for the rest of Double Dribble, here's what you need to know: 1) It's an infinitely more satisfying game if played in two player mode with a buddy. It lends itself to a lot of trash talking. 2) The CPU can be hard to beat. I used to beat the CPU easily on level 1, but that was back when I played this game a lot more often. Now I'm barely batting .500, which is frustrating. I even cranked it up to level 3 just to see what it was like, and I didn't get the ball across half court until the 3rd quarter and didn't score my first points until the 4th. I'd really like to see someone beat the CPU on level 3. 3) It's really hard to play defense. I can count on less than 5 fingers the number of shots I have blocked in this game. Basically, if you can steal the ball right after it is inbounded, you better hope the other guy misses his shot.
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