MAGIC JOHNSON'S BASKETBALL

 Melbourne House advertises MAGIC JOHNSON'S BASKETBALL as being _just_ like the
arcade game. Unfortunately, this is far from true. Although the graphics look
virtually the same and move with the same animation speed, there are severe
pauses when the program accesses the disk during certain sequences (such as the
falling of the ball through the hoop, or the switch to the free-throw screen).
While none of these pauses interferes with actual gameplay, they all interrupt
the flow of the game. Because this is clearly an arcade game (rather than a
team- or statistics-oriented simulation), it should be held to arcade game
standards: No other arcade game I've seen ever pauses in the midst of the actual
action to access the disk. (This review is based on the Amiga version; Commodore
64/128 version notes follow.)

 As if that weren't annoying enough, the sound samples are shoddy at best. The
basketball bounces off the floor with a decent thump, and the sound of sneakers
on the court is okay, but the looped sample of the crowd noise resembles no
crowd I've ever heard at a sporting event. (In fact, if my washing machine were
making this sound, I'd call in the Maytag Man for immediate repairs.) This might
be written off as a minor mistake _if_ there were any way to toggle the sound;
as it is, you must endure the endless, cyclical chugging throughout the entire
game, which becomes irritating real fast. Just like the arcade game? Well...not
quite.

 There's yet another small but bothersome bug in the game design. If you have
two floppy drives, you just insert the two distribution diskettes in the drives
and start playing -- no problem. If you use only one drive, however, after
inserting the first disk the screen goes blank. When this happens, the trick is
to insert disk two in the drive, but there's no indication either onscreen or in
the manual that this will solve the problem. (I bet Melbourne House will have
lots of returns because of this one.)

 For all that, gameplay is quite good. MAGIC JOHNSON'S BASKETBALL consists of
two-on-two play; you can select one of eight difficulty levels to begin, specify
either side, and opt to play against the computer or a human opponent. The
latter allows you to determine Period lengths.

 Control of the game is simple and precise, and entirely by joystick. Unlike
FAST BREAK (Accolade's three-on-three arcade basketball game), when you first
start playing MJB, you have a good chance of making some baskets. The players
are much larger and more smoothly animated (thus easy to identify and keep up
with). Switching between the two players is smooth, and clearly indicated
onscreen. The design of stick and fire-button combinations makes it simple to
choose the right moves at the right times.

 MJB offers neither the built-in plays nor the "Playmaker" capabilities of FAST
BREAK, and there is no information regarding player fatigue or ability. (I
couldn't discern any significant differences between players). However, you do
have personal fouls, back-court violations, and a nice free-throw option -- a
kind of arcade-game-within-an-arcade-game sequence in which you position your
throw, then wait for a "strength bar" to reach the right mark before releasing
the basketball.

 MJB is pure arcade; no attempts have been made to develop sports
simulation-style features. The short manual does include descriptions of various
plays, strategies, moves, and rules, all of which will be very helpful to
novices playing the game.

 The program comes on two disks and will run only on Amigas with 1MB of RAM or
more. There is no specification regarding models; I played it on an A500 with
1MB of RAM and Kickstart 1.2, without problems. The disks are copyable, and the
game can be installed on a hard disk. Some tricks using the ASSIGN command are
necessary before starting up, but they're described adequately in the manual.
Perhaps when played from a fast hard drive, the pauses in action that I
mentioned above are unnoticeable.

 I recommend MJB with qualifications: If you're looking for a dynamic,
easy-to-play, purely joystick-oriented basketball game, and you're able to
tolerate the glitches I described, MAGIC JOHNSON'S BASKETBALL can be a lot of
fun. But if such problems are likely to bother you (especially at this rather
high list price), then keep an eye out for Cinemaware's upcoming TV SPORTS
BASKETBALL. What I'd really like to see is a game that incorporates all the
detail of a good sports simulation, the fine joystick control of MAGIC JOHNSON'S
BASKETBALL, and the "Playmaker" and player statistics of FAST BREAK.

 COMMODORE 64/128 VERSION NOTES

 The C64/128 version of MAGIC JOHNSON'S BASKETBALL is one of the worst games of
1990. Its few good points -- a logical design and an overall smoothness,
basketball violations, and a fine mix of offensive and defensive moves -- are
destroyed by the general crumminess of the game. Other than perhaps the title,
this product has absolutely nothing in common with the coin-op version.

 The graphics are colorful and might have been okay, but they were barely
visible due to animation screwups: The bottom half of the screen could have been
a flicker demo. The physics of the ball bouncing off the floor, backboard, and
rim were hilariously bad, and surely were lifted from a game that requires feet
-- soccer or rugby or something. Like the graphics, the joystick might have been
okay, but the players kept disappearing, so I can't really tell for sure. The
sounds of the game were, oh...let's say they were interesting: No basketball
you've dribbled ever sounded like this.

 The C64/128 version comes with one copy-protected disk and an instruction
manual.

 Unless you're collecting bad software the way some people collect bad movies,
MAGIC JOHNSON'S BASKETBALL for the Commodore 64/128 is not a package you'll want
to own.

 MAGIC JOHNSON'S BASKETBALL is published by Melbourne House and distributed by
Virgin Mastertronic.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253