Simulation basketball games get better and better each year, but we’d be lying if we told you we don’t miss the glory days of over-the-top classics like NBA Jam and now-defunct EA Big’s NBA Street.
Comically acrobatic dunks, quick-fire matches, big heads – the early noughties knew how to do arcade absurdity.
Recently-announced NBA Playgrounds looks like a welcome return to that forgotten breed of basketball games.
With cartoonish player models and rapid 2v2 action, it’s basically NBA Jam 2017. We’re very much into that.
Look:
NBA Playgrounds launches next month in the USA for $19.99, so we’d expect any UK version to cost around £20. Console-wise, it’s coming to PS4, Xbox One and, perhaps most interestingly, the Switch. A game like this is tailor-made for the on-the-go multiplayer that Nintendo have been pushing since they announced their new console.
Keep an eye on this one.
Get exclusive shortlists, celebrity interviews and the best deals on the products you care about, straight to your inbox.
Matt Tate is a freelance journalist and contributor at for Shortlist. Formerly Stuff Magazine’s news editor and based in the UK, he’s been writing about consumer tech for around eight years, with a particular focus on gaming.
For his sins, Matt is a huge Tottenham Hotspur fan and unfortunately spends a lot of his time scanning his published work for Spurs-related digs that may have been slyly inserted by editors. Otherwise, he’s often buying Lego sets he can no longer accommodate and trying to perfect his carbonara recipe. He can be found tweeting (mostly about football and video games) at @MattWTate.