Mozell extended him an invitation to work on Vol. With the help of EA Canada’s Director of Marketing Glenn Chin, Mozell tracked down the mastermind behind the Nike Freestyle commercial: Jimmy Smith, a creative director at the ad agency Wieden+Kennedy. We wanted to talk to whomever was responsible for being able to capture the essence of such skill and talent.” We wanted the moves in our game to speak for themselves, for the gamer to see them, feel them, and just be in awe of the talent on display. Just raw basketball and streetball talent. “No voice over, no special effects, no acting. “We were blown away with how the creative was all about skills and moves of the players,” Mozell said. In the commercial, anonymous streetballers and NBA standouts like Lamar Odom, Jason Williams, and Baron Davis take turns dancing and working the ball like a yo-yo in the spotlight of an otherwise pitch-black arena. Inspiration struck early in the form of the Nike Freestyle commercial, a two-and-a-half-minute spot that first aired during the 2001 NBA All-Star Game. “I kind of joke that I’m a method art director, I was just listening to hip hop non-stop when I was making that game.” “I was really into Jadakiss and Nas at the time,” said Gibbons. (There was goaltending.) When you went to dunk, your player was temporarily subject to lunar gravity, and he glided to the rim like a ballerina, like Jumpman. 2 did not seek to faithfully capture regulation basketball, but rather the everyday soul of the sport. The gameplay was fluid, dynamic, fast-paced-each game a 3-on-3 sprint to 21 points by 1s and 2s at streetball courts located around the United States. It paid homage to basketball as spectacle, as art, as cultural lynchpin. It framed basketball not simply as a sport played in identical, sanitized arenas across the country, but as a vital civic institution with its own history, music, and sense of place. Sure, new technology has granted us games like NBA 2K and its hyper-realistic graphics and gameplay-but realism was never the point of Street Vol. Even 15 years later, the game’s sense of style and spirit (and not to mention its soundtrack) have never been matched. 2, the last truly great basketball video game. Plus, if you have a PlayStation 2, Original XBOX, and/or Nintendo GameCube lying around and don’t have this…YOU need to get this.It’s been a decade and a half since Electronic Arts released NBA Street Vol. I highly recommend everyone to at least try and play the game, especially young hoop fans. While both were solid games, they failed to bring the hype of the second game. The NBA Street series would last four more years, with 2005’s NBA Street Vol. The International Men’s Magazine, Maxim even recommended to non-basketball fans by boasting, “even if you aren’t a hoops fan, there’s plenty of unintentional humor to appreciate: Seeing Yao Ming dunk on Bill Walton alone is worth the price of admission.” It received an 8/10 in its review. BBC Sport declared, “The atmosphere of NBA Street is enhanced by an excellent soundtrack including hip-hop tracks from the likes of Nelly and Nate Dogg, plus various sound effects from the street – traffic, sirens, crowd abuse, etc.” This game received a positive reception upon its release. Not only does it feature Jordan, but a whole bunch of legends such as Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, “Pistol Pete” Maravich, Connie Hawkins, and Julius “Dr. 2 contains that old-school flavor, thanks to the game featuring three different versions of the legendary Michael Jordan (Rookie w/hair, 1996 Bulls and 2003 as being a member of the Washington Wizards). The game also features songs by Nelly “Not In My House,” Benzino “Rock the Party,” and Black Sheep’s 1991 hit, “The Choice is Yours.” In addition to these, this game has a great soundtrack, thanks to the 1992 Pete Rock and CL Smooth hit, “They Reminisce Over You.” It plays when you start the game and is considered “the song of the game.” 2 features all of the then-29 NBA teams in the game, with four different modes such as being able to play a pick-up game, NBA Challenge (where you defeat every NBA team with legends and current players with a custom team) and Street School, to learn the basic moves and tricks to the game. Released for the Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft X-Box and Nintendo GameCube on Tuesday, April 29, 2003, EA Sports BIG made their sequel to the 2001 game even better than its predecessor. One of the greatest basketball video games of all-time – NBA Street Vol.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |