NBA Street Showdown brings the fast paced, over the top, and outrageous B-Ball action to your PSP, and faithfully translated at that. Everything you love about the series is here; from the Game Breakers to the killer slams, NBA Street Showdown has game.

Visually the game lies somewhere between the PS2 versions of Volume 2 and 3 of the famous NBA Street series. The player models are excellent, providing a ton of great animations, crossovers, fakes, and of course slams. You have the assorted choices of either street uniforms or authentic ones. You also have your street courts that enjoy both day and night venues. The presentation is slick, and the effects off Game Breakers are always a remarkable sight. The only real downside is the detail of the real ballers has left a lot to the imagination, but that can be forgiven provided the disc space allotment. You will know who is who by design, but do not expect pure facial detail in replays or up close. Overall, the game looks pretty close to its PS2 counterpart.

Audio is a mixture of hoop style sounds and beats. You get all the shoe squeaking, rim shaking, net swishing goodness you would expect from any good hoops title. The music is a flavor of mostly hip-hop and R&B, which while not my style, does fit the game quite well. Provided of course is EA’s signature Pocket Trax that feature such artists as; House of Pain, Beastie Boys, MC Lyte, De La Soul, and many others who give the game the background and menu music a bit of old school flavor.

Game play is exactly what you would expect from the NBA Street series. You play your pick up game, try to do as many tricks before scoring, and pull off that big time game breaker to look oh, so pretty. The A.I. is good and fair, and you will find a decent amount of challenge on even the default levels. Once you master your skills, it will be time to bump that level up of course. The lack of a second analog has always bugged me with this handheld so far, but developers are coming up with ways around it, and so far it is working. This plays the same for NBA Street Showdown, as the right analog tricks have been moved to button presses. Not as easy to do, but can be just as effective once perfected.

NBA Street Showdown provides a wealth of options including, King of the Court which is the career mode where you create a baller and try to run the street tournaments and prove that you are the king. You also have your basic exhibition and online modes. Nothing real fancy about either of these, just good old fashion pick up and play modes. Two multiplayer modes will keep the game fresh even after the career mode has been completed. One is the Shot Blocker mode, in which you try to keep a player from scoring by serving up a shot of “get that out of here.” The other is Arcade Shootout where you see how many shots you can hit before time ticks away. Both of these modes can even be played Wi Fi, which helps if your buddies do not have a PSP. I would have like to have seen the slam-dunk contest from Volume 3, but I guess it will have to wait until next year.

It looks like we know which developer is serious about this PSP handheld, as a good portion of titles released thus far are by EA and EA Sports.. Lucky for us, they are all quality titles. If things continue in this manner, gamers will be happy with future copies of Madden, Burnout, and other great EA games to take on the go. As for NBA Street Showdown, you need to add this one to your library if you enjoy this series. If arcade basketball action is not your thing, then the choice is obvious for you.