- JP release: 29th January 1998
- NA release: 16th February 1998
- PAL release: April 1998
- Developer: Konami
- Publisher: Konami
- N64 Magazine Score: 71%
With ISS64, Konami gave the N64 a solid start with Football games on the N64. Their take on Basketball is the first serious take on the sport on the N64, so you would hope for similar results. Unfortunately, NBA In the Zone 98 (or NBA Pro 98 in Europe) bounces off the basket rim and just misses the mark.
Everything in NBA In The Zone feels slow and clunky, even swapping players seems unreliable. Helpful AI-controlled teammates are also an important part in sports games, and for a game like baseball it seems vital, but anyone you don’t control may as well not be there. From what little I know about Basketball, getting your players in a defensive position is a necessary part of the game, especially as you can’t tackle directly, but defending may as well not exist in this game.
After FIFA 98, the players also seem extremely outdated, with stick arms and legs, looking more like abstract monstrosities than human. The courts and crowds also look rather flat, resulting in a game that’s just janky and ugly.
Poor
The speed of NBA Pro’s players is measured in digital terms, not analogue – there are sperate run buttons. You may as well be using a D-pad. Tsk.
James Price, N64 Magazine #14
Remake or remaster?
Sports games have evolved over time.
Official ways to get the game.
There is no official way to get NBA In The Zone 97
Europe
Japan
North America
N64 Games by Date
1997: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
1998: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
1999: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2000: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
Konami were pretty much the only Japanese publisher that really gave the N64 some proper 3rd party support. While most of their non ISS and Goemon efforts didn’t turn out all that great, they certainly weren’t for lack of trying.
Here’s something you might be surprised by… combing through the credits as seen on Mobigames, not a single person who worked on NBA In The Zone 98 on the N64 had previously worked on any of the prior NBA In The Zone games that were released on the PS1; and stranger still? Looking at the credits for the PS1 version? Not a single person who worked on that game had worked on any of Konami’s other two basketball series that predated NBA In The Zone (Double Dribble and Run & Gun).
Konami have always been a very strange company. You’d think that they would’ve wanted to tap into the institutional knowledge that they had already built from their previous basketball games, but nope. This isn’t even all that out of character for them. As I previously explained in my Your Gaming Diary writeup for my playthrough of Castlevania Dracula X for SNES, Konami would often just throw everything out and start from scratch with staff who were completely new to a given established series. It’s no wonder that the company was so dysfunctional and it’s no small miracle that it actually did manage to put out so many stone cold classics throughout the 80s to early 2000s.