Basketbrawl was developed and published by Atari Corporation in 1990, for the Atari 7800. It’s a one or two-player tournament basketball game in which you can assault the other players (even your own teammates), in order to cause mayhem on the court and to try to gain the upper hand.

From the opening menu screen you can choose to play one-on-one or two-on-two games; choose easy, medium or hard difficulty, and one, three or six minute games. Past that you can then choose who you want to play as from a selection of nine characters. You must then score more points than the opposing team by any means necessary.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that Atari also released Basketbrawl for the Atari Lynx in 1992, and the reason for mentioning that now is because the Lynx version has features that the Atari 7800 version doesn’t have, and vice versa. For example: in the Lynx version players can face, and run and punch, up and down, but in the Atari 7800 version players can only face left or right. Which is a big problem as it seriously limits the gameplay. Also: in the Lynx version there are level passwords, in-game weapons, and taunts, none of which are in the 7800 version. On the flipside the 7800 version does have options for one-on-one or two-on-two games, and three different game lengths, which the Lynx version doesn’t have. The Atari 7800 also has far superior player animation to the Lynx version, but seems to have fewer backdrops… It seems to me that both the Atari 7800 and Lynx versions have their deficiencies, and neither are really up to scratch. Both versions, I think, are also too easy. If you have the time, and the inclination, you could easily beat the entire game on your first playthrough. All you have to do is punch the opposing player in possession, chase the loose ball down, then run to the basket and score.

It’s a pity that the Atari 7800 version doesn’t have the extra details that the Lynx version has – particularly players facing up and down the screen.

Basketbrawl could have been a great game – and is an appealing concept – but it just hasn’t been developed enough to make it as good as it should be and it comes across as half-baked. If you like the idea of an aggressive basketball game, try Arch Rivals instead.

Note: Basketbrawl on the Atari 7800 requires a two-button joystick to play. If you’re playing in an emulator you’ll need to configure a ProLine joystick to get it working properly.

More: Basketbrawl on Wikipedia