Basketball Arcade

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Basketball Arcade, released on Nintendo Switch in 2023, is a family-friendly Arcade-style game designed to imitate the sort of Basketball-throwing games you tend to see in real-life arcades. This game is played only in handheld mode, and intended to be played with the screen oriented vertically (as in the header image), with players using the touchscreen to make shots at the hoop.

The presentation here is pretty decent given that this game only costs $2. The game uses 3D for both the balls and the hoop, even having little details like the balls reflecting off the boards at the bottom. That said, during the gameplay there’s no music and no sound other than the balls bouncing off of things (and depending on your settings, possibly a whistle to notify a penalty), and there’s only one version of the basketball game, when it would have been nice to at least get a few skins.

The balls themselves do get skins, and this is where those settings I mentioned came in, as the ball you use determines how the game is scored, with some balls scoring more points for each scored shot, but penalizing you for misses. It’s a nice addition that gives players a choice whether to go for accuracy or quantity of shots.

These balls are unlocked as you get farther into the game by scoring more points before the buzzer sounds and time is up. Players must reach specific thresholds to proceed into each subsequent “round”, which has the net you’re aiming for moving increasingly faster each time, ensuring a progressive difficulty curve that’s still in keeping with the real-life Arcade games that inspired this.

When it comes to the shooting itself, the touchscreen controls mostly work okay, but I’m frustrated that the game doesn’t indicate you grabbing and shooting a ball until your finger has already left the screen after the swipe. When you place your finger down on the screen, for all you know the ball wasn’t ready to be picked up and you grabbed nothing, which is frustrating whenever you make your shot and nothing happens, especially with the clock ticking down.

This control issue, the lack of variety, and the fact that this game can’t be played in docked mode are all complaints I have going against this game. But for only $2, if you want to get a videogame that imitates the arcade Basketball cabinets, Basketball Arcade will likely suffice, though I doubt you’ll play it for very long before the monotonous nature of the game leaves you bored.

tl;dr – Basketball Arcade is a family-friendly Arcade-style game designed to imitate Basketball-throwing games from real-life arcades. Played only in handheld mode with the screen oriented vertically, with players using the touchscreen, this game gets the job done with its visuals and gameplay, but is too monotonous to recommend, even for its low $2 price tag.

Grade: C-

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