ESPN NBA 2K5 Review

Watching the evolution of sports games has been like watching a spastic child grow up to become a handsome and brilliant Master of the Universe. Now I'm not saying ESPN's NBA 2K5 is the pinnacle of sports gaming, but I will tell you why it comes pretty damn close - especially for all of us basketball fanatics.

Before I go on, however, I'd like to talk a little bit about the "Corky" Thatcher friendly games of the past.

In 1958, Bill Higinbotham and Bob Dvorak developed Tennis-For-Two, the world's first virtual sports game. The game itself worked on an oscilloscope and basically demonstrated the magic of Pong in green wave form. Electronic signals bouncing back and forth. Over the next two years, Bill and Bob demonstrated Tennis-For-Two to astounded audiences across New York, but it would take another quarter century before the next electronic sports game would work its way into the public eye.

It was 1978 - our parents were disco dancing, Carter was Prez and Atari released its arcade sports classic, Football. And if a title is any indication of the creativity behind this electronic ball of poo, it fit like a glove. Sitting on a whopping M6502 cpu with less than 1 Mhz of processing power, the only glimmer of hope for this inept beast was the unique roller-ball controls.

By the late 80's, the NES vs. Sega gaming war was in high gear leaving Atari's Football and most other first generation arcade titles collecting dust in dive bars across America. The fierceness of said battle brought us some of the most memorable sports games to date. With the likes of Tecmo Bowl, Punch Out, and All-Star Baseball, things were indeed looking up for the aspiring couch potato youth of the world.

The 90's brought a new era of 64 bit systems and remarkable graphics in the sports game arena. Even the game play for football, hockey and baseball titles were impressing the masses, but developers still hadn't given much attention to basketball titles. Just another example of whitey trying to keep the black man down.

In comes Sega's ESPN NBA 2K5.