The Nintendo 64’s first basketball is a straight up arcade conversion, which means there’s nothing to the game except matches and very few options. It’s a 2-on-2 basketball game where scoring is so east that most games will be back and forth of constant scoring from both teams.

With four players, you might find a bit of fun, but this is the kind of game best suited left in the arcades, as it’s something that can be fun for a quick go, but playing for more than a few minutes quickly wears thin. For an arcade game, it’s fine. For a console game, it’s pretty terrible. I know that some people love this game, but it really needed a lot more to it.

Poor

Very, very quickly indeed, we got bored of saying “Serious hangtime!” in increasingly-ridiculous American accents, and one by one we quietly put down out joypads and sloped away to do something less boring instead. Like work.

- Jonathan Davies, N64 Magazine #6. Review Score: 52%

Remake or Remaster?

A collection of Midway’s arcade NBA games would be worth having.

Official ways to get the game.

You can buy an Arcade cabinet that contains NBA Hangtime from Arcade1Up.