I saw some gifs of this game on Bsky a few months ago, and it immediately made its way on my to-play list. You can see from the screenshots that it looks pretty good, but it looks even better in motion! Big, well-drawn sprites that were it not for the concessions made for the purposes of being in a game, could feasibly have been taken straight from animation cels, with animation to match. But, of course: there are many anime tie-ins that look great and don't have much else going for them, so is this game any good?
Before answering that question, there are some other things I really need to address. The main one being my lack of interest in basketball, and by extension, my ignorance regarding things like tactics and team positions and so on. Because even though this game is a tie-in to an anime about basketball rather than a real basketball league, it still takes a pretty in-depth approach to the game. Between selecting a team and starting a match, you'll be asked to assign team members to positions, and to select formations for your team to take when they're on the offence and when they're defending. So I can't really speak to how well the game handles these things, beyond saying that it's pretty funny that if you pick Shohoku High School's team, and just go with everyone in default positions, Sakuragi is left on the bench
Actually in-game, it all seems to work pretty well. There's a lot of sprite scaling going on as players run towards or away from the camera, which looks great. You use the d-pad for moving around like you'd expect, and the A, B, and C buttons do different things depending on whether or not you've got the ball. With the ball, A dribbles, B passes, and C shoots (I think, but I'm not sure, that shooting relies on some kind of probability equation involving your player's stats, their distance from the basket, and how long they've had the ball with them.). While if you don't have it, A gets in the way of the guy with the ball, B jumps to try and block their shots, and C tries to take the ball off of them.
The camera always looks in one direction, with the court stretching off into the distance, one basket all the way at the back, one right at the front. It keeps things simple, and it always being at the same angle allows for the aforementioned detailed, well-animated sprites. I think there might have been an arcade basketball game that used a similar set up, but I'm not sure about that. It works, and like I keep mentioning: it looks great! The menus look a little less great, but in a very charming, very nineties kind of way: lots of multi-coloured WordArt on display, for example.
From TV Animation Slam Dunk: I Love BasketBall is a pretty decent little game. I can't play it well at all, and haven't won a single match yet, but I've come close a few times! One thing I should also mention is that not only does it allow you to play matches with twenty minute long halves, but if you want to play story mode, you don't get a choice, and you'll have to play these insanely long matches, presumably racking up massive scores over time, too. For as much as I've praised the game, I haven't been able to get through even half of one of these real time matches. But there is a versus CPU mode (and a two player versus mode, of course) that lets you play with more reasonable settings. I think it's at least worth giving a try if you're curious, or if like any other normal person with good taste, you love sprite scaling.
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