NBA 2 on 2 Slam

NBA 2-on-2 Slam is a speedy pick-up-and-play basketball game the likes of which might remind you of titles like NBA Jam and NBA Street.  The keyword here is “might”, since the game really more likely resembles the old Basketball game on the Atari 2600.

This isn’t a knock on Slam (or maybe it is), except that if you ever played the Atari game, you’ll remember that it was really more of a race as to who could score more before time ran out, with hardly any other real semblance to basketball, and that’s basically what you get here…forget about playing defense, don’t worry about setting picks, and in all actuality, you can even completely ignore passing to your teammate if so desired.  Just run and gun.

Now of course the game does have functions for passing, blocking and stealing but you’ll find that these aren’t really necessary.  What’s more, there’s also the opportunity to perform high-flying dunks but again, most likely you’ll choose to pass this up as well.  That’s because it’s a bit tedious and if you’re already scoring tons of points normally, there’s really no need to perform these special dunks unless you just want to relax for a minute or so.

The way in which these dunks work is that for every basket you make, a gauge fills.  When full, an icon appears on the floor that you must run over to and land on, however the icon disappears after a few seconds and moves around to a different location.  In essence, in order to perform the special dunk, you have to chase around that icon.  Once you have landed on it, the game then switches to a mini-game in which you must correctly press the D-pad the way the arrows indicate.  If done correctly, you can then sit back and watch the computer take over to perform the dunk.  If not, you just wasted all that time running around chasing down the icon.  So you see, it is better just to go for the score in normal mode than to bother with the dunk.

NBA 2-on-2 Slam does have the license attached so you’ll find all 30 NBA teams represented by three of its top players.  The three game modes offer little variety where Play Game allows you to select teams and players while Challenge gives you a shot at working your way up a tournament to ultimately take on legendary players like Kareem and Dr. J.  Still, for its fast pace and simplicity, the game does lose its appeal rather quickly since you can easily blow out all of the opponents, including the legendary players.  At least in the Atari game the computer made a decent effort in stealing the ball.

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