XP Arcade: Super Basketball

This column is “XP Arcade,” in which I’ll focus on a game from the arcades, or one that is clearly inspired by arcade titles, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Konami has made a ton of basketball games over the years, from the multiplatform Double Dribble, to a run of NBA-licensed titles, to producing ESPN’s own NBA licensed series. All told, they’ve developed and published 16 basketball games, all between 1984 and 2002, and it was the arcade-only Super Basketball that got them started down this path.

Super Basketball isn’t your standard offering in the genre, either. Instead of playing both offense and defense, you’re only on offense. And rather than playing through an entire game, you begin with a single minute left on the clock, down by a predetermined number of points. It’s your goal to score enough points to win before the buzzer, which becomes increasingly more difficult for multiple reasons: tougher opponents, and larger deficits to overcome.

There’s one final twist, though, and it will make or break your comeback attempt: whenever you score a basket, five seconds are added to the clock. Whenever you lose possession, though, be it by passing a ball out of bounds, charging an opponent and fouling them, a blocked pass, or a blocked shot, five seconds are subtracted from the clock. Which means you need to play, at certain points in your quest here, a perfect game of basketball to have a chance at winning. Oh, and whenever you crash into an opponent, even if they’re in motion, that whistle is going against you. The thing about a perfect game of basketball wasn’t an exaggeration even if it’s a little bit just for emphasis.

The setup is a bit funny, as you’re a team trying to move up the ranks against tougher and tougher opponents in a larger tournament. So, you start by facing off against JHS, which you will learn stands for Junior High School. You are a team of, presumably, adults, playing against a team of junior high kids. Which makes it that much funnier that (1) you begin down by 15 points with one minute to go, and (2) the player who sinks the winning basket rips their shirt off and jumps up and down in celebration. You showed those kids who’s boss, sprite from 1984 that somehow has visible abs drawn just for this very animation.

You’ll face a high school team next, then a college team, and get to the point where you’re facing teams representing entire countries. How do you always end up down by so much by the time there’s one minute left, whether facing off against literal children or the 1984 predecessor to USA’s Dream Team? This is left unclear, but at least you are always capable of a 2024-2025 Indiana Pacers-level of improbable comeback. Maybe you’re doing it on purpose to unlock your inner Tyrese Haliburton, getting kicked around until you can deploy the the basketball equivalent of an S-Craft or Limit Break.

There are three buttons to keep in mind as you play, one each for dribbling, passing, and shooting. Dribbling in the arcade original required individual button presses for each one, though, in the Arcade Archives release on Switch and Playstation 4, you can set that to be held down so that you “auto-fire” a dribble like you would if you were playing Xevious or something on a modern platform and didn’t want to press for each shot. It can look a little silly, but if you wanted to concentrate more on your directional movement than timing the button presses for dribbling — you only move while dribbling, regardless of whether you’re pressing on the stick, which is simply for directional purposes — then that’s an option for you.

Passing requires some directional input, as well, since if you just press the button to pass the ball will be fired off at whichever teammate is closest. Which might not necessarily be the teammate who is open. And since you lose five seconds for every turnover — and your opponent will catch that errant pass, whether they’re in high school or gearing up for the World Cup — you want to be sure that the pass is going where you want it to. Shooting has its own little wrinkle. Accuracy is better from closer, yes, and holding the button longer lets you get a better arc on your shot, which will lower the chances of it being blocked. Also important — but not necessary — is that you shoot while in motion. Pull-up jumpers are going to be better than standing and shooting, basically, or your best attempt at a layup that you can get in a game where you press the dribble button to move, that sort of thing.

There’s a special shot you can sometimes pull off as time is expiring, once per game. Basically a long-distance three — accompanied by a sound effect to let you know that this one is different — that is a buzzer beater that will go in. Except, since you gain five seconds every time you score, it resets the clock to five seconds and gives you the three points. Three-pointers are, generally, the wrong way to go about things in Super Basketball — they’re arguably better for ball movement than they are for scoring, a way to get the ball inside the arc so you can snag a rebound and then fire off a shot from much closer to the basket for two — but it’s good to remember that you’ve got this play in your back pocket in a moment of desperation. Scoring and adding five seconds, then scoring and adding five seconds — if you can get the ball downcourt and in the hoop in time — lets you perpetually play, and you might just pull off a win you shouldn’t have in the process.

Notice, in the above video, how the offensive and defensive formations differ on every new possession. You can’t just spam one play again and again, though, you can attempt to run it from different starting positions and formations. These rotations will change with every basket, meaning you need to adjust to new defensive alignments and locations of your own players on the court each time, while also keeping in mind that your opponents are going to play tighter defense — and swarm the basket more and more — the more you narrow the score. They’ll be willing to cede having you cross half court in order to put way too many guys in the paint to keep you from easily making it in there, forcing you to take longer, low-percentage shots unless you can figure out how to dribble your way in.

While you can be fouled — and then get to take foul shots, which are difficult to get the hang of timing-wise but not impossible — it’s much more likely that you will foul, so this is a dangerous game to play. You no longer lose time in a lost possession once you’re under 10 seconds, but nine seconds doesn’t leave a ton of room for error on your way to the basket, either. There are no half-court possessions here, you’re always starting from the other basket, and if passing is a bit blocked off due to a defensive formation, it’ll take you longer to get down there. Plus, shooting itself takes some time.

This might be just anecdotal, but it appears movement is easier if you attempt to go from top left to bottom right. Defenders have a harder time tracking you on defense this way, or getting in front of you to draw a charge. So some sort of passing game that revolves around that kind of downward trajectory for dribbling can reliably get you down the court in a hurry, so long as you continue to have open teammates to pass to. You can also just take it to the hole on your own if you’ve got a clear lane, but just be aware that this will eat more time than other methods.

Which is fine, in terms of having enough seconds left on the clock to win, but less productive in terms of scoring. For every second remaining on the clock when you do win, you get bonus points, the number of which increases depending on the difficulty of the opponent. This being an arcade game, scoring is a significant part of the experience, as much as clearing it can be, but at least here there’s no huge discrepancy between playing for score against playing to win. Winning is the best chance at a higher score, since the bonuses increases after every match-up, anyway, and the most effective way to win is also the most effective way to score: as quickly as possible, in order to ensure that you have plenty of time left on the clock in case you’re not sinking shots and need to try again. You also score more points for successful passes than successful dribbles, and there are additional bonuses for never falling below 10 seconds on the clock. Fast and efficient is the name of the game here, regardless of your intent in playing.

Super Basketball seemed to be mostly forgotten about for decades, until it was re-released for the DS through Konami’s Classics Series: Arcade Hits in 2007. There were no home ports in the 80s, or other compilations, until it hit Arcade Archives in 2025 — Double Dribble was the basketball game in which Konami decided to go all-in on the home ports, and the one they’re known far more for than this one-and-done outing.

If you’ve never experienced Super Basketball, and have any interest in sports games or this kind of arcade challenge, you should give it a go. I’m not shocked at how much I enjoyed it by any means, but more surprised that it was something I didn’t even know existed until it hit Arcade Archives: it’s got a perfect arcade-style rhythm to it, and a premise that both punishes and rewards in a way that has you on the edge of your seat, living and dying by every possession. It’s excellent, and the kind of thing more people should experience, if only as a reminder that sometimes the simplest gameplay hook, even attached to what is otherwise a fairly basic experience, can make for an unforgettable experience.

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