Retro basketball games for DOS, Genesis and SNES

Basketball spent the 80s and 90s being pulled between two ideas of what a game of it should be. One side wanted the simulation: five on five, real rosters, fouls, substitutions and a playoff bracket at the end of the season. The other treated the court as an arcade stage, cut the rulebook down to what fits on two buttons, and made every dunk an event. Both traditions are here, spread across DOS, the Sega Genesis, the SNES, the NES and the Atari 2600, with the older half-court games sitting alongside them as the origin of the whole thing.

Electronic Arts built the line most of the sport's video game history runs through. It started with One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird in 1983 — half court, two players, a shot clock, and a backboard that could be shattered, after which a janitor came out to sweep up the glass. Jordan vs Bird - One on One repeated the format five years later with a new pair of names, a slam dunk contest and a three-point shootout. From there EA moved to full teams: Lakers vs Celtics and the NBA Playoffs introduced five on five with real teams and a playoff run, and the same lineage carried through Bulls vs Lakers, Bulls vs. Blazers and Team USA Basketball before turning into NBA Showdown and then NBA Live.

The arcade tradition is shorter but louder. Midway's NBA Jam (1993) reduced the sport to two on two, removed almost every foul, let players jump metres above the rim and set the ball alight after three consecutive baskets; the PC conversion is listed here as NBA Jams. Midway had already tried a rougher version of the idea in Arch Rivals, where shoving and punching opponents was part of the design rather than a violation. Konami's Double Dribble made its name on the cut-scene dunk animations that interrupted play, and Magic Johnson's Fast Break kept the emphasis on running the length of the floor.

Two smaller strands complete the picture. Street Sports Basketball from Epyx moved the game outdoors to driveways and vacant lots, where the surface and the shape of the court mattered as much as which neighbourhood kids you picked. The college game had its own shelf too: Coach K College Basketball, Dick Vitale's "Awesome Baby" College Hoops, NCAA Basketball with its behind-the-back Mode 7 camera, and the statistics-driven Pure-Stat College Basketball for players more interested in the box score than the dunk.

Titles marked as playable start directly in the browser through an emulator, with no installation and no registration. Most of them support two players on the same machine, either sharing a keyboard or using two gamepads, which is how they were meant to be played.