Street Hoop AKA Dunk Dreams AKA Street Slam (1994)

Game: Dunk Dream

Time to complete: 50min

==============================

Difficulty:5

Fun:6

Rating on a 1-10 scale

==============================

Alright it's basketball time, Neo Geo style. Released in 1994 by Data East for the AES, CD, and MVS systems, it's the lone entry into the world of basketball on SNK's classic hardware. No doubt a reaction the the popularity of NBA Jam in the early 90's, Dunk Dream (Japanese title) is a 3 on 3 street basketball game. Why it has so many different titles I'm not entirely sure, though I think it may have something to do with there being a popular Japanese animation called Slam Dunk that Data East wanted to take advantage of in the East. Beyond the plethora of titles, there is one other unique thing about this title in regards to localization. Below you can see the two distinct team selection screens based on if it was a US version or a Europe/Japan version. 

Teams from around the world, and look, the US is really good at Dunking...

And here we have the US version of the team selection.

So lets discuss the game. It's ok overall. Visually it's pretty colorful stuff. Not amazing graphics and I actually always thought it was released earlier then it actually was. Now let's talk music. Or should I say Hot Hip Hop Jams! I played this game on the Neo Geo CD so I'm not sure if this is one of those games that they aded a new soundtrack to for the CD release, but it has has some amazingly bad rapping about street basketball. I'm not even sure how to describe it. If I'm ever feeling motivated I'll rip it off the CD and post it so it can live on for all time. 

Ok now that thats out of the way lets discuss the gameplay. Nothing painful here. I've never been a big fan of the arcade style basketball game so I don't have a whole lot to judge it against. I played through it on single player mode, and in typical fashion, you need to beat each team to win the... well... I guess it's a championship? But I'm not sure it's every really referred to as one. Anyway, it's a decent experience, but you don't really get the feeling that you need allot of skill overall. It may very well be more challenging if you are playing against someone who knows how to play, but it just feels a bit repetitive against the computer. For example you can pass the ball which works well mechanically but there is really not much need to since the computer rarely successfully steals the ball from you. As a result I would often just walking my ass down the court and shoot a 3 pointer or slam the ball, my choice. This does remind me that the slams are pretty cool which was certainly a prerequisite in 94' for any self-respecting street basketball game. Overall I would be happy to play Dunk Dream again if I had the opportunity to do so against someone else. By myself? Not so much.