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Play basketball on the computer

Sports in general is one of the strangest things to play on a computer. The whole point of sports is to keep you fit and healthy, while you may also win competitions and make a living of it if you’re good enough.

You may think that a great computer game can teach you skills and tactics in different sports, but the truth is that it doesn’t, because it dumbs down very complex physical movements to a relatively simple key combination.

At most, these games offer in-door entertainment and they work on your reflexes (to push buttons).

Even the recent development of motion-sensitive input devices like the WII has or the recently released Microsoft Kinect don’t offer experiences close to the real thing. These rigid devices detect a limited number of movement types and are very inaccurate. For example if you learn to play Tennis perfectly on a WII doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to hit a real tennis ball with a real racket.

Basically computer games offer fun, motion sensitive consoles offer fitness, but no combination of these two is similar to the real sports. For example playing basketball on the computer is very similar to playing soccer or football, although in real life you need completely different skills for them.

People have been playing on computers since the first text-based games were invented in the ’60s.

The first basketball games for computers looked like this:

Text based, but color graphics, and very little movement on the screen. The good thing about these games was that they stimulated the player’s imagination, mostly because there wasn’t much to see on the screen, just large dots (rectangular shaped so-called pixels).

The first more serious basketball game for computers came in 1990, and was made by SEGA. This game had more acceptable fake-3D graphics, which means that players could move in all four directions on the playing field and also jump, throw …etc.

Because it supports two-player mode many have played this game for many hours a day. It had most of the features of the latest basketball games played today. Basically game programmers just added graphics and better game dynamics, but you have the same controls as in 1990. Eight directions to move, pass, throw and a few tactical moves to fool your opponent.

One might argue that now it can be played in 3D and the viewing angle can be changed during game, but it doesn’t really offer anything extra, it just makes player orientation more difficult.

To play basketball on the computer you don’t need to invest in any software. If you’re not pretentious there are many browser-based free games that offer more complex game play than the old 1990s SEGA game, although most of them are aimed at kids.

For advanced gamers there are many basketball game titles playable on some of the slowest computers that might still work today. To be able to play you just have to distinguish the players by their numbers and the two teams. High detail graphics is not essential.

One of the biggest sport game developers is EA Sports with the “It’s in the game” slogan, you may want to check out their website.