Double Dribble
Double Dribble is a basketball video game developed and published by Konami, originally for the arcade in 1986, ported to Famicom Disk System, NES, and PlayChoice-10 in 1987, the Amiga, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS in 1990, and the Game Boy in 1991. In the game, the player plays a game of basketball against another person or the computer's AI while viewing the court from a slightly raised side-view perspective. The game's gimmick is to show a large zoomed-in graphic of players when they dunk the ball.
Contents
Personal
My older brother was a fan of basketball growing up, so he got this game for our NES. I remember playing him in 2-player vs mode, and uncharacteristically doing better than him at it. I had discovered that, if you hold down the shoot button longer while you're in the air, it increases your likelihood to make a basket. My brother, on the other hand, would simply press the button and frequently miss. I remember silently hoping that he wouldn't notice my slower, but more accurate, shooting ability, and kept racking up baskets. He eventually got so frustrated rage-quit the game. Later, I practiced the game on my own and got good enough to beat the bronze level AI. I tried several times to beat the silver level AI, but failed every time. One day, on a lark, I tried bumping the AI up to gold level just to see how bad it would beat me, and I ended up winning! After that, I kept trying to beat the silver level AI until I eventually did just to say I could beat all three difficulties. I did this sometime in the early 1990s.
Status
I don't own this game, but I have beaten the NES port on all difficulty levels.
Review
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4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Best Version: NES?
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- The large player animations during dunk shots were pretty impressive at the time.
- Having speech in a game was still interesting at the time.
- The game plays several short musical themes commonly heard at basketball games, which helps create a professional basketball vibe.
Bad
- In most versions of the game, the graphics aren't very good. The human animation is very stiff, especially with the cheerleaders and mascots, and the backgrounds are ugly.
- At least in the NES port, the AI cheats by having the ability to pass the ball to players that are not on the screen, something human players cannot do. This gives them a big advantage by allowing them to pass the ball all the way to their basket before any of your defenders can block them.
- The music is quite lackluster.
- It would have been nice to have 2-player co-op.
Ugly
- Nothing.
Media
Box Art
Documentation
Videos
Titles
Language | Native | Transliteration | Translation |
---|---|---|---|
English | Double Dribble | ||
English (Game Boy, Europe) | Hyper Dunk | ||
English (Game Boy, North America) | Double Dribble: 5 On 5 | ||
Japanese | エキサイティング バスケット | Ekisaitingu Basuketto | Exciting Basket |
Japanese (Game Boy) | コナミックバスケット | Konamikku Basuketto | Konamic Basket |
Links
- Video Game Rank - 4
- Video Game Graphics Rank - 3
- Video Game Sound Rank - 4
- Games
- Video Games
- 1986 Video Games
- Video Game Prime Order - Action, Strategy, Adventure
- Media Theme - Sports
- Amiga Games
- Arcade Games
- Commodore 64 Games
- DOS Games
- Famicom Disk System Games
- Game Boy Games
- NES Games
- PlayChoice-10 Games
- Games I've Beaten
- Multi-Player
- Multi-Player Versus