Our PSP NBA series is the only sports series that we know of that has been created from the ground up specifically for the PSP (as in, it’s not a port). Since it is not a port it can be optimized year-after-year to be tailor-crafted for the PSP. This has resulted in silky-smooth 60 frames per second gameplay and an absolutely feature-packed UMD.

Being on a portable system has been a huge influence on the design of NBA 09: The Inside on PSP. We have always tried to have a fast-paced game that could be played in short bursts. The on court action is quick and fun, plus there are a ton of mini-games to try. But of course, if you have loads of time, you can play multiple seasons in our new Franchise mode.

What we’d really like to talk about today is one of our favorite mini-games for this year’s version. It’s called ElimiQuest and it’s a little unorthodox. So we’ll start by explaining the development process and how it came to be.

Conquest

In NBA 07 for PSP we had the idea to do a turn-based game called Conquest. Our team is small and we try to get together about once a month to socialize, eat, drink and play a bunch of boardgames. We like to play a large variety from party games to strategy games. We’re all very interested in the game mechanics and where the strategy and fun of the game is.

All of this led us to create Conquest. When you begin the game, you choose a team and a city. That city connects to other cities that you can challenge or be challenged by. Whenever a city is challenged, the outcome is determined by playing a game of basketball with some minor rules changes. If the challenging city wins, then they gain control of the defending city and it’s team. If the defending city wins, then they get to swap one of their players for one from the challenging team. After each city has had a chance to make a challenge, then the players can be moved from one city to another.

The fun in Conquest comes from stealing another city’s players and building the ultimate team as you march your way across North America! This means that you get teams in Conquest that wouldn’t occur in the real NBA. The boardgame-styled map gives you more to think about as you plan your strategy. You can also upgrade your players and even earn retired players by controlling a whole division.

Elimination

When we started making NBA 08: Featuring Block Party for PSP, we knew that we wanted another basketball minigame that we could be as proud of as Conquest. We really wanted to change how you play basketball with this one. So instead of constantly using your best players to score, we wanted you to try to score with even the less skilled players.

To accomplish this, we decided that when a player had scored 6 or more points, they should be eliminated from the game. This meant that there would be situations with off-balance teams. You might have a team with only 3 players left going against a team with all 5 players. Naturally, this is an advantage to the player who was able to get a lot of his team to score before any single player got eliminated. The winner is the first team to eliminate 4 of his 5 players. This means that the points earned by the last remaining player are a waste. So you wanna be sure that you know which player shouldn’t score when you begin the game!

To help with the advantage in numbers, we decided to give a power-up to the team that eliminates a player. To help even out the playing field a bit, we took the best power-ups and assigned them to the lower rated players. The best players get the worst power-ups or, in some case, don’t even award a power-up when they are eliminated! This really helped to balance out the playing field of the various NBA teams in Elimination. Teams without big star players generally get better power-ups than the stronger teams.

So you have some decisions to make in Elimination. Do you try to spread out your points so that you maintain an advantage in numbers or do you try to eliminate one of your worst players to get a great power-up? Similarly, do you go the easy route and eliminate your best player and get a weak power-up?

ElimiQuest

Elimination turned out to be really fun in 08, so for 09 we came up with the idea to combine it with Conquest. The resulting un-imaginative name is ElimiQuest! It plays just like Conquest mode with the strategic map and capturing other teams, cities and players. However, instead of playground basketball, the cities face off in a match of Elimination.

As in Conquest, the players on the winning team that get the most points, rebounds or assists earn you medals to upgrade them. This means that if you really wanna upgrade someone, you’re gonna have to keep them on the court making assists and getting rebounds or have that player score 8 points (the most a player can earn in Elimination/ElimiQuest). Upgrading players in ElimiQuest is a little bit more important than it is in Conquest. If you have a poorly rated player who gets you a great power-up whenever he is eliminated, you should try to upgrade him so that he can be eliminated more easily.

Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, then thanks for reading! We hope that you all get to try ElimiQuest and let us know what you think in your posts. If there is enough interest, we would love to discuss some of the other minigames that we have like Shootin’ Bricks, Pinball, Block-A-Shot, Own The Court, etc. Unfortunately, ElimiQuest couldn’t fit in our PSP demo, but be sure to check it out for our regular basketball gameplay along with a few minigames. The whole game is only 30 dollars, and we think that it represents a ton of gaming value at a low price.

P.S. Check out High Velocity Bowling from the PlayStation Store for the PS3!!

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!

As fans we pay for our ticket and expect a show, and then we go home after a few hours and go on with our day. These athletes have to live with the wins, the losses, the injuries, the hype, the criticisms, the business, and the drama. We need to remember that these basketball players are humans and go through struggles of their own. We wanted to explore what kind of character and integrity it takes to endure that and still perform on the grand stage of the NBA. Flash and money is certainly part of that lifestyle, but stuff like that does not last the test of time. The integrity and value of a character’s heart does.

In the past we did this by creating a compelling storyline centered on a point guard, driven by a unique gameplay experience. This year we raised the bar and created 3 unique storylines focusing on all five positions with gameplay that is customized to their role on the court. With the advanced features of the PS3 we have gone beyond the sim experience in our product and put the end user in the drivers seat of an entertaining, cinematic experience. To really put you in that role we’ve created scenes on the court that set the user up for what he’s supposed to do. For example, the user will watch a scene in the team huddle during the timeout and the Coach will give you some direction as to what he wants you to do once the game resumes.

To further support that, we’ve added dynamic overlays to give you a quick snapshot of the list of goals we want you to achieve. The unique thing about this, is that we have the ability to put you in game winning situations. We will give you goals that direct you to make a specific number of shots, in any given amount of time. If your team is down by 8 points late in the 4th quarter, we will put you in the position to turn the game around. Although you have control over every person on the team, your ultimate goal is to achieve these goals with your created character. This type of experience also extends off the NBA court. The user will experience scenes in a blacktop environment where the action and dialogue become the catalyst for the mini-game right after. These scenes are also accompanied by a dynamic overlay that explains the rules of the game.

What makes The Life stand out as a feature in NBA 09 The Inside is the storytelling and unique way the gamplay relates to that story. The majority of our story scenes take place on a playable court, and dialogue within the scene actually applies to the game you are about to play. In the past loading screens and extra UI pages disrupted this experience. We’ve minimized all of that by loading the scene and game together before the scene is even played, and created dynamic game instruction overlays that appear while the scene is playing. This gives us the ability to enter the game following the story scene seamlessly without any disruptions. The most engaging thing about this experience is that you get to be the hero in games and scenarios partnered with some entertaining cinematics.

You won’t find a cinematic sports experience like this anywhere else. It’s a labor of love for us and we hope you enjoy the unique perspective we are bringing to basketball gaming. Above is a trailer we created that gives a taste of what you can expect with The Life mode. We have two other trailers that we’ll be rolling out over the coming weeks so keep an eye out for them.