I remember one of teh first games I owned for my PSX was NBA Shootout. It was a pretty amazing basketball game for its time.

I remember before I bought it I was looking in the window of Babbages. There was a Sega Saturn and a PSX in the window playing demo games, I cannot remember what was playing on Saturn but on the PSX was NBA Shootout. I remember being amazed by the players being reflected off the 'shine' of the parquet floor and squeak of sneakers going up and down the court. I was not much of a console gamer, but I remembering being impressed by the game's attempt to make the game seem like a TV broadcast. Back then people could still buy a sports game and just play it...it is hard to do that today.

There is a wiki page that say the last game was Shootout 2004, but it doesn't explain why. I wonder if Sony lost the licence or if the game just stopped selling as well as EA's Live game? I do recall the 989 Studios has a lot of trouble competing with EA on football, and maybe the studios failure was due to that more than NBA not selling. If Sony could get back the licences they should make a new NBA Shootout game, and for old times sake I'd buy a copy.

Anyone else have any fond memories of the first NBA Shootout game?

@monkeyking1969:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/05/989-sports-cancels-lineup

Does 989 Sports even still exist? I think that may have been the issue (Sony was having trouble hanging with EA when dev costs for Sports agmes started escalating)

It's a damn shame that EA is pretty much uncontested these days in Sports games, Sports games really aren't what they used to be as a result because of it.

@slag: I wouldn't really say EA is uncontested as sports games go. NBA 2K destroys Live, MLB The Show is the only baseball game left, and Pro EVO is decent. They mainly just get a bad rap for buying the NFL license and killing 2Ks franchise which was on the verge of surpassing Madden. NFL 2K5 is imo the best football game ever made and I'm sad I'll never get to see what 2K could do with current systems but at least they got some measure of payback by effectively killing the Live franchise and they did it by making a superior product instead of just buying the license and rehashing the same crap every year imagine that.

I remember the first NBA Shootout game I played was 98 back on the PS1, liked it way better then Live. Gameday 98 was amazing as well, first polygonal football game ever I think. My brother and I played that all the time.