Original Release: Giant Media, 2012, PSP / 3DS
A rare US release of the Top Trumps franchise, this is a simple card battle game that allows for going through a full NBA season (without actually playing basketball)
Top Trumps: NBA All Stars (PSP, Giant Media, 2012)
Where to Buy: The PSP Mini version was discontinued with all Minis in 2015, but there’s still a Nintendo 3DS version floating around for cheap
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
I’m not usually one for basketball games … which is good, because this isn’t one! It’s a card battle game that just happens to be set on a basketball court with NBA teams and players, based on the long-running “Top Trumps” franchise that was big in the UK but never really got a foothold in the US.
Odd merging of properties, then. Kind of an even odder approach to the gameplay. It’s a simplified version of Top Trumps where you move down the court by comparing stats for players between one of five areas – height, shooting percentage, freethrow percentage, playoff appearances and uh … one more that I forget offhand but I’m sure it’s in one of these screenshots. But there are also a few little arcadey mini-games mixed in. You have to manually control swatting at the “jump ball” to start each quarter, as well as aiming shots when you get fouled and make free throws.
There are five “slots” that represent the length of the court, you advance between them by winning a card faceoff while carrying the ball. Lose at one of these checkpoints and the ball gets stolen. The ball carrier selects a stat to use in the fight before their mystery opponent is revealed, and whoever is higher in that particular category wins. When you put together strings of wins you can earn “hustle cards” that can be deployed one time to either buff your guy or debuff the opponent. You can opt to try your luck on a shot once in range, or get a guaranteed two points if you bulldoze your way all the way to the end of the court.
And, since this is a trading card game, you can indeed trade cards. However, this only really applies to “season mode” which lets you start either with a team from the 2011-12 season or an “NBA All Stars” mode which, counterintuitively, starts you with a team of total scrubs and forces you to use sharp trading finesse to build a team of winners over the season. Each won game in a season gives you more “transfer points” with which to wheedle your trades.
I actually kinda like the base idea here, and the full NBA team/player license really helps with its general appeal. The issue is that they didn’t really seem to sit down and think out the balance all that well. If you have a team loaded in one particular stat, you can pretty much just march through most other teams. For example, I started out just dabbling around with the Utah Jazz on a whim, and their overall stats were mediocre but for some reason they have tons of guys with lots of playoff appearances under their belt. Spamming “playoffs” + the occasional 7 footer tallboi in the card battles basically let me beat up on 90+% of the other teams in lopsided contests.
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