In fact, basketball is still the only sport that developers have yet to accurately turn into an accurate game that you can play on your TV.  There are always imperfections or glitches that take away from a realistic feel.  Although some have come close, a certain something always ruins each game. A certain kind of foul system doesn't work realistically, or the passing system in the game is not quite perfect.  Poor shooting.  Not being able to make touch passes.  An inability to decide what dunk you want to do. Any one of these things can, and have, taken away from the true sense of real life basketball. 

Now, we still play these bastardized versions of the game since they are still pretty darn close but, every so often, a game comes out every now and then that just gets it wrong on every level. NBA Inside Drive 2000 is the most recent such game.  NBA Inside Drive 2000 isn't fun by any stretch of the imagination. It's a chore to play.  I had a great sense of relief once the game was over. Sometimes, I'd find myself unable to play all the way through a full game due to the mere fact that it's just so poorly done.  

Let me start by saying my favorite team is the Sacramento Kings, so naturally I decided to pick them first. Well, I started a regular game in 1024X768 with everything set to "on", as I normally do. The announcer, as in real life, announces the opposing Timberwolves team first. They came out very quickly and robot like.   My home crowd didn't boo them or anything. Well, no big deal... here comes my team, lets see what kind of introduction I get. Um...what? My team, not unlike a group of rusty androids, come waddling out as the announcer named our starting line up with no special music or flashing lights. In fact, the crowd didn't seem to care too much that we were taking the court, and I was starting to see why, since they were so lifeless and poorly animated. Oh well, no big deal, at least it can be an incredible simulation, right? 

Well, let me say that the detail on the players are terrible.  My man Jason Williams hasn't a single tattoo on his entire body. "Oh crap," I thought to myself, for realistic looking players is a pretty big deal for me. The player models are very blocky, all while sporting equally mediocre jerseys. Sure, they are more or less the color of the real life jersey, but they don't look the same, and the letters used for the players' names are very lackluster looking. Again, let's use Jason as an example: the back of his jersey has a "W" on the middle left side of his back, then on the top it says "ILLIAM" and on the opposite side of the "W" is "S". This looks stupid, to say the least. Right now, I'm disenchanted with the looks of the game, but I keep looking for good points.

The color commentator doesn't sound too convincing. He sounds, at best, like a mental patient. In fact, many times he's talking about the game with a weather motif. All of the "partly cloudy" or "ice ball" references get old, and very uncomfortable, as the game goes on. Is he a meteorologist or a color commentator? Furthermore, you hear these same phrases every game, without much change. Some things are kind of funny the first time you hear them, but just how many times can one person take the kissing noises he makes when describing lay-ups?? There is hardly any crowd noises to be heard, or music for that matter. Once in a great while, you'll hear something being played, but beyond that they might as well not be at the game at all. 

For the most part, teamwork can be tossed out the window. Give the ball to your best player, and let him go at it. Except for fast breaks or going for an open man on the perimeter, passing is only a novelty. You can take someone quick and agile enough, and simply try to get into the paint by pressing into that direction. If a defender is there, just drive around him, and you WILL get there. There's nothing realistic about being able to drive into the paint at will.  In turn, this makes using a post up move near the glass a waste of time. Why push your way into the paint when you can run into it? Defense is also lackadaisical. There are times when one can press the steal button not even be close to the ball, and it will pop out of the defenders hands as if  you used The Force on it.  

Now, one thing many basketball games get wrong is realistic play by certain players. Some players just don't dunk; it's a  fact. Yet, in the game world those players are turned into Dr. J, somehow. This is done in NBA Inside Drive 2000, but there's another aspect that's been added that's equally unrealistic. Everyone palms the ball and keeps it away from their opponent in the same manner. This makes the players, as individuals, seem unimportant. But, by this time, all the other negatives have taken their toll that it doesn't matter anymore that Mugsy Boggs can palm a ball and hold it behind his back just as good as Patrick Ewing can.

Well, one good point about the game is if you have a Microsoft Sidewinder pad, the buttons are already laid out for you to use. The button layout is pretty nice, but it's too bad that there are only two player speeds thanks to the "walk" button. You can also use a keyboard, mouse, or any another joystick, but I stuck with the Sidewinder pads. The control is pretty responsive, but certainly not realistic for the most part. The animation just doesn't look right, no matter what players are doing. There's a degree of jerkiness in just about every movement.

The options in the game are your standard fare. You can adjust difficulty levels, quarter length, and your resolution settings based on your computer. One option is to turn off instant replays, and I recommend you do this since the replays are very choppy-looking no matter what kind of computer it's being run on. There's an exhibition style play; a season; a practice mode, where you play on a blacktop court, and then there's the "today's games" option. This option is to let you see the games playing for that day, then you can play any of them, and choose what team you want to be. Well, that's the idea, at least. Too bad it doesn't work. I've done this three days in a row, and all three days not a single game that was playing was accurate. I'm sure a patch will cure this, but what a mighty patch it will have to be to fix this and the other many bugs within the game. It's just inexcusable to release a game of this "quality."

To make a long story short, if you love basketball, and you want to play in your own home, get NBA 2K for the Dreamcast or, if you want to stick with PC, NBA Live 2000. They're not perfect, but they're light years ahead of NBA Inside Drive 2000.

System requirements: P166; Windows 95/98; 32MB RAM; 90MB HD space; 4X CD-ROM; Mouse; DirectX 6.1 sound and video card.