We have some outstanding tunes on the disk (I especially like ZAPP – More Bounce To The Ounce) but there are always personal favorites that get your b-ball blood pumping. Fortunately, the Jukebox is really easy to use. You’ll find there are three different song views. There is “NBA 09 Music” which displays all the songs that come on the disc, “My NBA Music” which displays all the songs you have on your PlayStation 3 and “My Playlists” which displays all of your playlists. Since they show up right inside the game, all you have to do is decide which setting to select.

You just highlight a song and then choose one of the four settings: Off, Menus, In Game or In Game & Menus. That’s it! You’re now ready to hit the court to your favorite tunes! The Jukebox supports both .MP3 and .WAV formatted audio files.

If you’d like to take NBA 09 The Inside for a test-drive go to the PSN store and download the free game demo. For more details, visit www.nba09theinside.com.

One of the coolest aspects of the Progression system is you don’t have to create a player to start banking Progression Credits. Just by playing the game you will be collecting Credits. Then should you decide to create a player after you have a nice amount of Credits, your Progression Player will start out strong and have a major impact for your team.

One of my favorite ways to use my Progression Players is to bring them onto a Franchise team. In order to get your Progression Players on your Franchise team you will have to make sure they are already created before you start your Franchise. In fact, building up your Progression Players before you initiate your Franchise will result in them becoming much stronger players while inside your Franchise.

If you’d like to take NBA 09 The Inside for a test-drive go to the PSN store and download the free game demo. Click here for more details.

There are few considerations you should ponder before starting your NBA road to glory. Do you want to play within the NBA salary cap guidelines and base your personnel decisions on real world economic constraints or would you prefer to play fast and loose with the signing cash? Do you want to be in the game? You can create yourself as a character, drop onto the team of your choice and lead your team to the top.

One tip here, if you want to bring a Progression Player into the fray, it pays to build him up in the core game before you start the journey. You can actually bring up to five Progression Players onto your Franchise roster. Progression Players inside a Franchise are subject to the same advancement and regression mechanisms as all the other players. That said, the stronger the player is when you initiate your Franchise, the greater player he will eventually become.

Another tip that will help you win it all is to set the team strategy sliders to match your personnel. If you build a team that likes to run and puts up a lot of 3’s, then make sure you set your strategies to take advantage of your players. Also the better you know your upcoming opponent, the more effectively you can set up your defensive strategies to counter their strengths. You’ve got a game-by-game chess match on your hands and attention to detail can prove to be the edge you need to carry the day.

There is a ton of other stuff I’d love to address here, but a blog is no place for a novel so I’ll wrap it up by telling you I am having a lot of fun playing Franchise in NBA 09 The Inside. Give it a play, I bet you’ll come to the same conclusion. After you get a chance to play it, let us know what you think. We’re listening!

On Friday, Amare Stoudemire came to our San Diego motion capture studio to perform, conduct some interviews and be photographed and filmed. Decked out in a black and blue mo-cap suit fitted with numerous sensors he shot jumpers, went through his free throw routine and then he unleashed some sweet dunks. This man can dunk with power and authority! It’s one thing to watch him tear it up on TV, but in person, close up, his athleticism and speed are really amazing.

A pack of journalists followed his every move using still cameras and movie cameras with lights illuminating everything in their path to an incredible degree. In fact they were so close during his high-flying dunks I was a bit concerned – for Amare, not the camera carriers.

After throwing down a particularly nasty windmill dunk Amare was ready for a bite to eat. He asked for a blueberry muffin and some water. About 3 seconds elapsed before he had the requested snack in front of him. Now here is where I couldn’t hold in the laughter. You’d think the journalists would turn off the cameras and wait for him to grab a bite and then turn the cameras back on. No way. They continued to film him as he took a bite off his blueberry muffin and had a sip of water. I suppose it’s all in a day’s work for an NBA star but it would unnerve me to be filmed while trying to have a quick bite. Not Amare. Didn’t faze him in the slightest. He was good-natured exuding a sense of humor throughout the entire session. Not only is he an amazing baller, he’s a great guy too.

With the mo-cap session concluded, he changed out of the mo-cap suit into a Suns uniform and the two of us sat down to play a game. It was Amare and myself playing NBA 08. Very cool. Amare suggested the loser of our game had to drop and perform 10 push-ups. I agreed and it was game time. He took the Suns and I selected Seattle. During the 5-minute quarter we traded baskets pretty evenly. You can tell he’s done this before, as he has some video basketball skills in his arsenal too! There was some light-hearted trash talk during our game but when the quarter came to an end, the Sonics had a 1 point lead. He was then whisked off for interviews as I basked in the glory of my 1 quarter victory. Since the game was never played to its conclusion we’ll never know who would have had to pay off the 10 push-ups challenge, but I like to think I’d be the one counting while he did the work.

If you’d like to check out some previews of NBA 08 for the PS3 hit: Gametap.com or IGN.com: IGN.com.