NBA Starting Five Xbox

Konami's first basketball game since relinquishing the ESPN license offers a complete NBA license and five modes of play: Exhibition, Quick Start, Season, Playoffs, and Franchise. Improvements from the company's previous basketball games include a more streamlined interface, an increase in the number of polygons per athlete to 1,200, and the addition of over 600 distinct moves. A full lineup of 31 NBA teams and their players are available to choose from, with ratings and statistics based on the 20022003 season. Team rosters in the game are accurate as of August 12, 2002.

Broadcasters Al Albert and Clark Kellogg call the action from the booth as players perform a variety of offensive moves, including shot fakes, double clutches, alleyoop passes, direct passes using button icons, fakes, scans, and crossover dribbles. Defensive moves include faceups, handsups, intentional fouls, steals, and jumps to block a shot or to try for a rebound. Exhibition mode lets players choose two teams and whether or not they wish to control the entire team or an individual athlete. Up to eight players can compete in this mode using the PlayStation 2 Multitap.

Quick Start jumps to a game between two randomly selected teams, while Season involves guiding a single team through a schedule of up to 82 games. While competing, players can modify their team's roster, view the schedule, read about the league's latest transactions, and save progress to a memory card. Playoffs lets players jump right to the postseason as the top eight teams vie for the NBA Championship. Franchise follows the same format as Season and Playoffs modes, but players have the added OffSeason period in between consecutive seasons.

OffSeason has players participating in a rookie draft, determining which players to cut or to sign for a contract extension, monitoring the free agency pool, and trading with other owners from around the league. An option to create up to 25 athletes and then sign them as free agents is also available. The CreateAPlayer screen features a pointbased system where attributes, abilities, and skills can be dispersed. Abilities include endurance, quickness, speed, ball handling, personality, and inside shooting, among others. Skills can be positive or negative, with such categories as clutch, fast stamina recovery, choke artist, and injury prone being assigned to players. ~ Scott Alan Marriott, All Game Guide