8 Best Basketball Video Games of All-Time

In a previous article I ranked which sports had the best and worst video games. Much to the chagrin of basketball fans everywhere, my rankings were pretty harsh on basketball games. My argument is that basketball is the most difficult of the major sports to portray in a video because nobody has really been able to perfect the defensive players' A. I. That being said, there have been some enjoyable basketball games over the years and these are the 8 best.

8. Bulls vs. Blazers and the NBA Playoffs
Who knew that a video game starring anything from Portland would actually be good? Granted the Blazers aren't the reason the game is good, it is simply the last, and therefore best, of the versus basketball series.

7. NCAA Basketball
This SNES game did not feature every college basketball team like today's games but it did feature teams from five major divisions. That was a lot of teams at the time and the full season mode was pretty new at the time. There was also a European version of the game that had fictional professional European teams.

6. Double Dribble
Double Dribble is a NES classic and one of the earliest basketball video games. Playing it now it will certainly seem outdated but at the time Double Dribble was better than most sports games with the exception of Tecmo Bowl and RBI Baseball.

5. NBA 2K
Basketball video games are one of the few sports games that I really prefer the older games to the newer ones. For some reason basketball games have not gotten increasingly better like the other sports, particularly football. The one exception is NBA 2K, which is probably the best non-arcade basketball game of the last couple of generations.

4. Run and Gun
Run and Gun was a fun arcade game back when arcades were still hip. I remember one of the reasons that Run and Gun was so popular was because you had the ability to alley oop to one of your teammates.

3. NBA Live 95
NBA Live on the newer consoles has never impressed me but back in the SNES and Genesis consoles NBA Live was a great series of games for its time. In fact, there was probably no sport that I played more (unless you include professional wrestling) but now the NBA games barely deserve visiting.

2. NBA Street
NBA Street was a pretty interesting video game. It was an arcade game with some creative trick moves but was also more grounded than the NBA Jam series. NBA Street also had some colorful characters and was something new in a basketball genre that was getting very stale.

1. NBA Jam
When it comes to basketball video games the NBA Jam series is king. NBA Jam was in a category with Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter as video games that always had a line waiting to play it when going to the arcade. NBA Jam featured unrealistic, fantastical dunks plus the ability to set the net on fire with your hot shooting or break the backboard.