The game was one of the first to feature an NBA license, containing both real NBA teams and player likenesses and signature moves.
This game was played from a horizontal view (while later versions moved to an isometric view before ultimately moving to 3D on newer consoles). Celtics, released first in 1989 for MS-DOS-compatible PCs and later adapted for consoles in early 1990 for the Sega Mega Drive.
NBA LIVE 2003 DEMO SERIES
The predecessor of the NBA Live series was the NBA Playoffs series, which featured Lakers vs. As of 2021, there has not been any official announcements about a new game being developed in the series. Even with WNBA teams being added into NBA Live 18 for the first time in the series, sales continued to decline, with NBA Live 19 being the final confirmed release, and eventually leading to the cancellation of NBA Live 20 and 21. The series, which has had releases annually from 1994 to 2009, 2013 to 2015, and 2017–2018, is the successor to EA's previous NBA Playoffs and NBA Showdown series.īeginning in the late 2010’s, NBA Live sales had dropped off compared to their competitors, NBA 2K. NBA Live 2003 may well be the best basketball game on the PC, but that's the equivalent of being the best-looking girl in Wales.NBA Live is a series of basketball video games published by EA Sports. And even if you do want to own a basketball game, seeking out a budget version of a previous incarnation would be a shrewder move, as the data updates will only be of concern to aficionados of the sport. Ulitimately, the game isn't too bad in short bursts, and nothing more. Anyway, it's clearly more suited to the big screen, and the game shows its console roots in a sloppy fashion, with on-screen instructions urging you to do something or other with the second analogue stick.
Correct, but that still doesn't justify spending $30 to recreate it on a monitor. It Doesn't Make It Okīut hey, you bleat, that's what the sport of basketball is like, a quickfire high-scoring fastmoving game. For the man with the ball, a swift burst of turbo is usually enough to secure yourself a reasonable vantage point from which to shoot, an activity that requires little or no skill other than the ability to press a button. The crux of the problem is that it's nigh on impossible to defend, with your armoury restricted to little more than a half-hearted lunge or the occasional leap. No matter how realistic the stadia are, how accurate the players' faces look, how seamless - and occasionally amusing - the commentary is, no amount of gloss can justify a game that basically involves a tedious cycle of running up to a basket, sticking the ball in it, then watching your opponent do the same until you're told to stop.
If the true test of a sports game is its two-player mode, then NBA fails. All of those things are true of NBA Live 2003, but none of them are enough to sustain anything more than a few hours of interest. This year we're not going to get suckered into fawning over it just because it looks good, has plenty of options and delivers a game somewhere in the region of playable.
No sooner is the game reviewed than the disc is tossed aside like so much used pornography. But do any of us ever play it? Do we bollocks. We can safely say that it's a slam-dunking, hoop-busting extravaganza. Our enthusiasm has been mainly fuelled by the realisation that it offers a comprehensive representation of a game that we are largely unfamiliar with, replete with all the razzamatazz associated with high-profile American sports. We've traditionally been uncommonly generous to EA's annual basketball outing, regularly saddling it with all manner of plaudits.