Harlem Globetrotters: World Tour

The Harlem Globetrotters are world famous for their hardcourt exhibitions—gymnastic spectacles and capering antics that are so carnivalesque and "worked" that they are to professional basketball what professional wrestling is to amateur Greco-Roman grappling. For over a century, the Globetrotters have barnstormed mid-sized towns (mostly mid-western) to promulgate their hardwood hijinks, beating up on enhancement talent teams ("jobbers" in pro wrestling lingo) like the New Jersey Reds, the New York Nationals, and the infamous Washington Generals.

Inevitably, an institution so enduring would receive its own video game, and the Globetrotters have been around long enough to have attained that milestone twice over. The first virtual foray into sports-entertainment basketball was a five-on-five affair for the NES, released in 1990. While solid enough graphically, the game was fairly light on theatrics and heavy on the hardnosed simulation elements. In fact, it was so hard, it was not uncommon to lose by 50 points to the CPU—and that was when playing as the Globetrotters against the Generals on the easiest difficulty. 

Thankfully, the Globetrotters got the game they deserved 16 years later. This was Harlem Globetrotters World Tour for the Gameboy Advance. The game features a two-on-two, arcadey format very much inspired by the NBA Jam and NBA Hangtime style. This feels truer to the Globetrotters' unique sports-entertainment experience. And, also in fidelity with the Globetrotter's MO, when using the titular titans in World Tour mode or exhibition, the human player can absolutely destroy computer opponents like the LA Lashers, London Lords, and Shanghai Spirits (the Generals are, sadly, absent from this game). A one-sided game is fun at first, but by the fourth quarter it starts to feel a bit sadistic. Elsewhere on this blog, your correspondent has often championed the overly easy game, given that such offerings alienate no one; that said, with World Tour, things are a little too simple. If you're looking for real challenge, try challenging the Globetrotters with one of the jobber teams. With some divine intervention, you might do what hasn't been done since January 5, 1971—that fateful night in Martin, Tennessee when the Generals beat the Globetrotters.

If there is to be a third Globetrotters' game, the developers might not necessarily have to make the competition fiercer. Rather, they might focus on the Globetrotters' wrestling-esque approach and take a page from squared-circle simulations. The best of all wrestling games, Fire Pro Wrestling World, does not measure a player's success in wins and losses, which are somewhat immaterial in the world of wrestling. Rather, Fire Pro judges matches based on their quality—that is, the story they tell, and the high spots they hit—all of it digested in a "match rating" awarded at the end of a match. Perhaps a future Globetrotters game could leave victory for the Harlem side as a foregone conclusion, as it most always is, and focus instead on ability to pull off a sufficient numbers of behind-the-back shots, hot-dog dunks, and ladder-aided layups. That would better encapsulate the timeless Globetrotter experience.

Team USA Basketball

The story of the Dream Team begins not in 1992 but in 1988. That year, at the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, the United States men's basketball team suffered a disheartening defeat to the Soviet Union in the semi-finals and went on to settle for a bronze medal. It seemed unfair. Players from communist countries like the USSR were grizzled vets who had balled as teammates for years, yet maintained their amateur status due to dubious day-jobs they’d been assigned by their governments. For all intents and purposes, they were de facto professional basketball players. The USA squads, meanwhile, consisted of college players, legitimate amateurs who were thrown together every four years with very little opportunity to gel as a team. Even with that being the case, USA teams had only lost 2 games in all the years since basketball was incepted as an Olympic event in 1936 (the 1972 final marking their other defeat), but that wasn’t good enough for America, which of course demands total domination. Eventually, the FIBA, the basketball equivalent of soccer’s FIFA, came to see how unfair America was being treated, and permitted the United States to field a team of professionals for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

This wasn't exactly fair, either. What resulted from this allowance was the Dream Team, a collection of eleven of the greatest basketball players of all-time...and Christian Laettner. The team featured Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson, Larry Bird, Karl Malone, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, and Magic Johnson, among others. To say they dominated would be both an understatement and redundant. They won all their games at the 1992 Olympics by blowouts, the closest decision coming in the gold medal final, in which they squeaked past Croatia by 32 points. It would also be a redundant understatement to say that so mighty an ensemble of luminaries was a marketing force of unlimited potential. To be sure, a worldwide tide of Dream Team tie-ins washed over the consuming classes in the summer of 1992.

Laettner, relegated to the back row (and frowning)

One of these tie-ins was Team USA Basketball for the Sega Genesis. Published by Electronic Arts, the game was patterned after EA's NBA Playoffs series, and is nearly identical to the earlier release Bulls vs Lakers and the NBA Playoffs save for changes vis-à-vis timekeeping and court dimensions to accord with international basketball rules. And though the USA basketball team of 1992 was undoubtedly the best ever, the same cannot be said for its eponymous game. Team USA Basketball is, on the whole, more like Christian Laettner, the Duke Blue Devils' mercurial standout who found his way onto the Dream Team as the singular college player. Laettner, like early EA basketball games, seemed promising at the time, but would age terribly and be largely forgotten. Plugging in Team USA Basketball for present-day play, one embarks upon an extremely slow-paced rendering of international hoops. Team USA Basketball can be called immersive insofar as it is like being immersed in molasses. Nor is it easy to pick up and play. Having selected the Dream Team and proceeding on medium difficulty, your correspondent lost convincingly to Team Canada, which shot 95% from the floor. Keep in mind, this was Canada pre-Steve Nash. When you shell out cash for the Dream Team, you expect total American dominance, or at least some blissful sliver of it. Even the most casual gamer should be able to win by ten or more when playing as the Dream Team, especially against Canada pre-Nash. That’s what the Dream Team was (and what America is) all about—casual domination—and Team USA Basketball fails to deliver it.

As awe-inspiring as the Dream Team may have been, it didn't make for a good on-court product, and neither does its tie-in video game. If you want to play as the Dream Team in style, check out NBA 2K13—it's got the 1992 and 2012 USA Olympic basketball teams, and the former has all the speed, ease, and domination you'd expect of Jordan, Pippen, and Robinson (if not Laettner).