Jordan vs Bird: One on One

The Good
The concept of this game is OK. The slam-dunk competition is quite funny, although I couldn't tell what made one dunk successful while another one failed. Maybe it requires VERY precise timing, but to me success appeared to come at random.

EA sports games from that time-period have that little bit of humor that their recent games miss. For instance, watch the two football players in the audience bang their heads together when they applaud, or watch Jordan fall to the ground after failing a dunk. Nowadays their sports games are all so very serious.

The graphics are rather good for 1988. The game has large digitized images of Jordan and Bird. Jordan is also fairly well animated during the slam-dunk contest. Remember that they had to use very simple sprites.

I don't have a very strong opinion about the music & sound effects. It’s done by Rob Hubbard, so I guess it’s pretty good. Personally, I always find it hard to tell one PC-speaker beep from another or tell why one beep A is better than beep B.

The Bad
The controls are a too simple: just the arrow keys and a fire button. The fire button is used for shooting, jumping, blocking, and stealing. Because the game uses such a small number of keys, there are not many different moves. The developers should have implemented a turbo key so you could make a sprint or a dribble key. The lack of such keys means it is nearly impossible to get past a (computer) defender. So when your opponent clears the ball, you basically have to make a 3-point shot and hope for the best. And if you don’t make the shot, you’re usually to late for the rebound. This takes a lot of the fun away. It’s a very serious design flaw.

The players move rather slow & cumbersome, the controls feel quirky.

The Bottom Line
Although the two-player mode back in the (late) eighties, there simply isn't enough gameplay here to keep me entertained. And I am a hardcore basketball fan. Jordan vs Bird: One on One is not without charm, but the novelty wears of fast. EA's other basketball game from that era, Lakers vs Celtics, is much better.