Posted on June 19, 2018
Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball – A Retrospective Of My Least Favorite Video Game EVER!
Scroll below and enjoy
presents a
A Retrospective
Of My Least Favorite
Video Game EVER!
Renter Beware
Ahhh… Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball – quite literally my GRANDEST disdain in the virtual recreation department to date! While most mediocre video game experiences come and go in life with the annoying relevance of a mosquito bite, there are some that stain your soul with an especially putrid and unforgiving stench that make it near impossible to ever forgive (…you hear that Bill – I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU $#@&^%# 
…sheesh sorry about that). You’ll try with futility to play something new to override the frames of memory that have developed in your head over this lackluster affair but the proverbial damage has already been done as a jaded aura of indifference is thrust upon your once-hopeful perspective beyond any control.
For me, the Super Nintendo’s exclusive futuristic basketball battle starring Detroit Pistons brute Bill Laimbeer 
delivers such negative merit across the board that it has forever set a low-bar of gaming judgement upon which to eternally draw comparison. I mean, it’s bad enough that Laimbeer happened to be one of the few appealing NBA stars that I actually knew as a kid but couple that with the sweet “battle-to’the-death” aesthetic that draped itself over one of my favorite sports and I was instantly hooked! Well just like a salmon fresh on the line, it didn’t end well for me either which is why I’ve decided to share my experience of this travesty in my life and its association towards my gaming criticism today with the ultimate agenda being both additional contextualization of The ‘Tude Dude’s perspective as well as a warning to stave off would-be retro spelunkers. So join me as we take a quick glimpse back at quite literally my least favorite video game EVER – Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball 
!
My memory of Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball goes all the way back to when I first received the Super Nintendo 
(along with Super Mario World) for Christmas in 1991. Ripping open that wrapping paper still ranks as one of my personal favorite gifts that I have ever gotten in my life (thanks GRANNY!) and my head was instantly racing with all the possibilities of amazing new games that were now available to me. You see, while my family had owned an NES when I was a kid, we got it sometime in the late 80’s after it had already been out for some time meaning I never got a chance to experience any of its hyperbole during its prime period.
The SNES, on the other hand, was the first console that I ever got while it was brand new which put me in an exclusive club (at least it felt like) that I hadn’t yet experienced. Suddenly, and for the first time in my young life, new sections at rental/game/toy stores were now accessible to me opening up what seemed like endless possibilities for gaming satisfaction! Now, I didn’t have to feel confined to just choosing from one area (the NES section in my case) as cutting-edge games with spiffy new boxes filled adjacent shelves of recognizable releases much to my eye’s delight. What an exciting problem to have and my little mind was going a thousand miles a minute trying to process all this fun new information.
After the first week of playing Super Mario World (my Dad and I beat the game by this point and we loved it), my long awaited excitement to dive into a brand new world for the first time had arrived as my Dad was heading to the local video store to rent some movies and he offered to let me pick a game for the weekend (containing excitement… can’t hold….ERRRR 
!!!). Looking back, my memory is fuzzy about the other options I had that day or if I was hurried or not to pick the game but it doesn’t truly matter since the damage is already done. Many times, I recall that we ordered pizza from the restaurant next door and sometimes this made my parents hustle my brother and I along when we were making our picks as kids so perhaps this was a contributing factor? Regardless of if this was the case or not that day, I will never forget what game I decided to rent for my first ever exciting foray into a new 16-bit world.
As I examined the brand new SNES area that had adorned itself in my local “mom & pop” movie store looking for my first game to rent, there was one title that stood out to me above all the others with a perfect combination of sports and attitude. So many awesome things on this stupid game’s box art I tell you it might as well have just jumped right off that shelf into my accepting hands . Even now, I look at the cover of Combat Basketball and it dupes me into playing it with a promising panorama of awesomeness representing some of the best highlights from ‘tude culture! I mean, you’ve got mohawked Double Dragon thugs, slam dunks, sweet metal combat suits and Bill Laimbeer… the NBA’s version of Rowdy Roddy Piper who would literally clothesline players who tried to drive towards the basket against him 
and one of my personal favorite players of all time. This looks AWESOME!!!
Reading the back of the box further cemented this feeling and instilled even more imaginative thoughts of a dystopian “Rollerball” type future within this game’s universe 
– (the following excerpt is the official description of Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball located on the reverse side of the game’s box) In the 1980’s and 1990’s, there was a legendary rough and tough bad boy of basketball. His name was Bill Laimbeer. Unfortunately, the league didn’t like his style of playing, so they forced him to retire. Now the year is 2030 and Bill Laimbeer has resurfaced as commissioner of the basketball league. He wants to get back at those people who made him retire, and play ball his style! He’s fired all the refs and eliminated all fouls. The players are armored, and the crowd throws weapons and mines on to the court. “This is basketball my way,” exclaims Laimbeer. “No wimps, no wussies! It’s not just basketball. It’s Combat Basketball!” – 
HELL YEAH!!! I love the image of Bill Laimbeer “resurfacing” (where did he go?) to become the league’s new commissioner. I imagine the NBA (or just “the league” as the back of the box puts it) and its executives shredding documents and preparing for complete shutdown amidst failing t.v. ratings and an uninterested fan base and just when it seems like basketball is about to go under for good… the boardroom doors swing open… steam fills the room… a dark silhouette starts to take shape… all right all right, it’s Bill Laimbeer. Let me try that again… it’s BILL LAIMBEER 
!!! 2x NBA champion and leader of the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons from the 1980’s!
“I’m sick of all these sissy fouls and primadonna players! Let’s fire all the refs, start punching people in the face and make fistloads of cash along the way!!!” With that “the league” felt confident enough to turn their entire operation over to the only man that could save it from their tenderfooted sensibilities 
. Sounds like a legitimate story to me! Also, it’s a nice touch to mention that he was “forced” to retire and now wants to get revenge on the people who did it to him adding an 80’s action movie layer of cheese to our bad boy hero. By the way… Bill looks freakin’ incredible for 73 (Laimbeer was born in 1957 and this game takes place in 2030) and the fact that he still wants to suit up and play as well as commission just shows how much more of man he is especially compared to the dainty current roster of athletes.
…All right so the cover is rad as HELL and as nostalgic for me as any other from my favorite period of virtual recollection which was certainly a major influence in this “very” important early-life decision! It basically reminded me of Smash T.V. 
and Arch Rivals 
smushed together which were 2 games that helped to shape my early adoration of ‘tude. Not to mention I have loved the NBA my whole life in addition to being a big fan of Bill Laimbeer (ranks #6 on my Top 10 Favorite NBA Players Of All Time list) so yeah… I rented it… and Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball gained the very prestigious honor of being the first ever new game that I inserted into my fresh Super Nintendo foregoing MUCH more impressive (and available) titles like Final Fight 
and Gradius III 
.
Upon my initial playthrough I can recall being intrigued with the customizing options as your offered a league mode complete with team editing (allowing for names and colors to be changed) and control of up to 8 squads out of 32 battling it out in a season which was not exactly expected. Pair that with the “high-tech” mode-7 startup screen of the future b-ball spinning its way into the hands of the titular hero and I was more than ready to dive fist-first into what I was SURE was going to be a successful Neil Armstrong-like step in my SNES journey. I mean, what could go wrong when you’ve got this crew of basketball hotshots straight-up SHOWING OUT for your game’s title screen 
? Time to press start…
*10 minutes later* “WHY Bill? How could you let this happen?” I was stunned – The game was bland, sluggish, confusing, sounded like crap and had some of the WORST graphics I had ever seen (top down Zelda-like view of a basketball court??? yeah we’re really playing with super power now… ugh) and believe me, I tried my heart out to make some kind of lemonade out of this pile of tarty unripened ferment since rentals were not something that happened all the time but it absolutely didn’t work… this game SUCKS hard (it’s a chore just to figure out how to shoot the dumb ball which is outright ridiculous) coalescing negative critiques in every single category! Now (up to this very moment), the memory of that extremely long weekend of trying to reconcile this depressingly awful rental has stayed with me ever since as a resonating reminder of innocence-lost during a time of unapologetic fun! Though I could elaborate further about Combat Basketball’s beyond-mediocre credentials, I’ll save that for a Retro Review (if my stomach can ever handle one) so let’s just say… give it a shot if you dare and taste the stench of Laimbeer’s armpits in virtual-form for yourselves 
!!!
Geez, how could this happen anyways? After such an exciting beginning to my Super Nintendo life with Super Mario World 
, the very next game that I play was THIS bad?!! To be honest, it kind of scared me for the future prospects of my new super powered behemoth that I had been proudly flaunting around my friends. Were these the kinds of games that I could expect to play on the Super Nintendo? How did this title even make it past the test phase?
Luckily, subsequent rentals such as Super Castlevania IV 
and F-Zero 
convinced me to let go of this fear and move full steam ahead with the SNES but forgetting Combat Basketball has proven to be an exercise in futility over the years for me. It was like Bill himself would mock me from the cover art as I would pass by the game in the narrow aisles of my local rental store. Even though I (of course) never procured it again, a seed was planted in my brain and I heard Laimbeer’s voice somehow ranting aggressive chatter into my plane of existence… “Your still playing that dumb sissy NBA JAM boy??? Why don’t you JAM in some Combat Basketball and be a real MAN 
!!!” or “What are you thinking renting that pansy NBA Live again maggot… You know there is no other basketball game… or game PERIOD, that can shine the shoes of my Combat Basketball 
!!!”
“Screw you Bill I’ll never play your stupid game again” I would yell belligerently back to him in my head (geez, I probably should talk to a shrink about this). “Combat Basketball is literally the worst piece of donkey crap that I have ever played in my entire life!!!” My disdain for this title only grew from there as it became the ultimate measuring stick for how bad a game was to me representing the absolute worst that my favorite medium had to offer with its combination of lofty expectation mixed with horrible execution.
For example – “Yeah Home Improvement 
blows chunks but at least it’s not Combat Basketball” or “Wow I hate Back To The Future II & III 
but I still think I hate Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball more!” Yeah, that about sums it up. Thanks for the memories Bill! Because of you I learned about video game buyer’s remorse, gained several psychological problems and discovered one of Larry Bird’s ugliest faces of all time 
! These many combined factors create a dung pile the likes of which The ‘Tude Dude has never encountered before or since and without question Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball is my least favorite video game EVER!
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