Even though Midway lost the NBC license, what really made these games shine was the gameplay itself. On paper, the concept of adding another player to the court for each team sounds like it would be a good one, but in reality it doesn't appear to be the case. The court itself seems a bit smaller which is a bad thing considering there are more players on the screen. That leads to the second issue of the court feeling way too crowded, and the third person seems to get more in the way than anything. I don't mean they get in the way in respect to collision, but when deciding who to pick or who to pass it to, it can become cumbersome. Also, they've slowed the pace of the game down considerably. Don't play NBA Showtime before you play NBA Hoopz, otherwise you will feel like you're running in molasses.

Midway has included a fourth button move which allows you to back your way up to the hoop. However, this move becomes rather useless. I have yet found a reason to which I would use this move. Most of the time, I'm either spinning by the other player or moving my way out for a three. When I did use it, it wasn't possible to even position myself properly. You get much more movement in NBA2K1. It would have been nice if you gained some movement so that you could draw people in and then dish it to the outside for a three, but you can't.

For some reason, Midway has made it too easy to score, even for a game like NBA Hoopz. It seems as if you make almost all your shots, no matter how off they are, or where you shoot them from. It takes the skill right out of the game. On top of that, the AI itself seems to be much dumber than before, which results in an easier to play and easier to win game. For beginners this might be fine and dandy, but once you become fairly good at NBA Hoopz, it almost becomes a snore.

One of the biggest faults to the game is the lack of a decent controller configuration. Why companies only allow you to select from a few pre-set selections is beyond me. Especially when the previous incarnations had a perfectly fine controller configuration option. If you like using a joystick, you're almost out of luck, as it is impossible to set it to an arcade style setting.

A new feature Midway has added is an instant replay feature which can be called up at any time. Unfortunately it is a bare instant replay that only contains controls for play, forward, and rewind. Also, there isn't a way to change the camera angle which is disappointing.

To give the game some credit, unlike the barebones NBA Showtime, NBA Hoopz gives you quite an assortment of modes to play. Now you can play a single game, a season with settings for different lengths, a tournament to play with your friends, create a player, and some mini-games that will extend the life of the game itself. It's now nice to be able to play a season without being kicked back to the title screen to play the next game.

What the game has relied on in the past fortunately saves the game to some degree here. That is of course the multi-player game. You can set yourself up to have any type of combinations of one to four players, including three on one, but unfortunately for the DC version, you are limited up to four players only. Overall, the game is pretty fun in this mode, but at the same time they didn't handle the player selection as well as they could have. When you select your teams, each person gets to select a character but they don't stick to keeping that character. This leads to issues with selecting the character you want, and also passing to yourself when you don't want to. There is a bit of confusion which wouldn't be there if it wasn't three on three.

NBA Hoopz is a noble attempt by Midway but it ends up being not such a hot idea and rather disappointing. After playing a four player game in NBA Hoopz, we ended up going right back to NBA Showtime because it is overall, just a better game. The extra features are nice, and the three on three is a fairly nice idea, but the areas which are downgraded from NBA Showtime end up hurting the game in the end. Before you consider picking up NBA Hoopz, make sure you can play it multiplayer. Also, do yourself a favor and check out NBA Showtime first which can be found for about $10 these days. A real bargain and a better game.