hey,

I tried out NBA in London a few weeks back. wrote this:

Had a day off today, and seeing as the weathers a bit crap, I decided to go see the NBA in Tottenham court.

First thing you notice it's a bit orange. Like they've spilt a large bottle of St Tropez over it. It also has lots of guys holding large orange melons all over the playfield too - I don't really care for basketball. Getting past that, I think it's a good-looking game.

There's no skill shot? You just choose your favourite team (woohoo!?) and twang the ball up the playfield where a pop up post knocks the balls into the pops. No lanes to light. It would have been nice to have some kind of skill shot, or something? Once the balls in play I enjoyed it. It doesn't seem that deep, with only a 6, or so, modes to light. That doesn't bother me too much anyway as I seem to draw to brainless games (my totan and star wars have enough depth for me – sorry! L ).

I do like flow though, and this game seems to flow nicely, partly because there's not that much on the playfield in the way toys. Only the hoop and a couple of saucers to hold the game up, and these don't hold the ball for any amount of time either. The outer loop is fine, but I would of liked to have seen something, maybe a spinner, on the right hand loop. It's just a loop with rollovers, nothing clever.

The clever bits all end up being targeted at the hoop – the main hoop ramp, the saucer launcher, and the right ramp all fire the ball at the hoop. Quite satisfyingly too, I may add. The drops are ok but you do get a lot of airballs off them resetting, as well as LOADS of airballs off a short post opposite the drops. I think they might have to rethink that area as it really lifted the ball in the air a lot.

I liked the basketball-spinning disc in the middle playfield. It doesn't spin all the time, maybe 60% of the time. Don't know what sets it off but the pops seemed to get it whizzing. Yeh, it adds a bit of randomness to the play but I felt it saved me as many balls as it did lose me balls. I did like the way it sometimes threw the balls into the standup targets occasionally. The really nice thing about the spinner is it reminds me of a basketball player switching directions to avoid opponents when running down the field, if you get my drift? Dunno if that's intentionally designed, or just me reading too much into it?

The sound was ok. The guy reels off player's names that have no meaning to me, and he says you've got MVP a hell of a lot. I have no idea what MVP is? I thought MVP was a large car for moving lots of people about? Or is that a MPV? Anyway, I'm sure a real fan will understand all the basketball terms and quotes. I liked the rubber sole squeak you get on the slings though. (update - i know MVP stands for Most Valuable Player now)

So, overall, I quite like this game, not the theme, but the game played great for me. No, I wouldn't / couldn't buy one, but I would play it again if saw it. I reckon it'd go down a storm in sports bar (in the US) or basketball stadium.

Oh, lastly, 24 was there too. Enjoyed that too but NBA was faster and felt better to me.

there's part 1 of martins review on pinballnews.com too.