Known for creating slick presentations in their titles, 989 Studios' latest effort is no different in that respect. The FMV introduction to NBA Shootout 2000 includes, of course, footage from actual NBA games combined with various added special effects that give everything that "cool" look. Different colored streaks will follow the players as they zip down the court looking for a pass or preparing to leap into the air and slam into the hoop. While it isn't something I'd particularly want to watch multiple times for the simple pleasure of it, it did get me pumped to get into the game and begin kicking some butt against my favorite rival.

In addition to getting players ready to jump right in with their introduction, the menus that 989 Studios has designed are also excellent. Having a clumsy interface can make viewing statistics and changing variables a nuisance, but the developers have created menus that are nice on the eyes and easy to navigate. Menus are a section that can be easily overlooked by the designers, but thankfully, 989 Studios has made sure that aspect was covered.

A surprisingly cool feature of NBA Shootout 2000 is the "create a dunk" mode. You can go in and pick from a wide variety of already created dunks and edit them to your liking by changing what position your player is when he takes off, etc. The title is a bit deceiving, since you cannot actually create your own dunk directly from scratch, but nevertheless, it's an interesting derivative that has not been seen in other basketball titles. Its that kind of originality that gives NBA Shootout 2000 the heads up in certain areas over NBA Live 2000. Another "create" mode is one that's becoming pretty standard in sports games nowadays, "create a player". There are numerous details that can be tweaked and changed to make the player exactly your own creation. It is possible to change things like the college the player attended, if they are left or right handed, the percentages of their personality (how good they are at rebounding, dribbling, dunking, etc.) and many others.

If you don't have total control over the player you are controlling as well as the rest of the team, then chances are the game is going to fall apart. Fortunately, NBA Shootout 2000 has a bunch of features that let you do most anything you would want to do with your team. For gamers who don't want to mess around with passing to any specific person and would rather have the game decide it for them, they can just hit the pass button and have that happen. Gamers who want to make sure they can pass to whoever they want when the want, however, can with the icon based passing system. By holding down the L2 button each of your team's players will have a button (square, circle, X or triangle) assigned to them, and by pressing that button it will pass only to that player. This makes precision plays much easier to accomplish, and it is difficult to go back to any other kind of passing.

More often than not, basketball titles handle shooting by requiring you to hold down the shoot button until your player reaches the top of their jump, and that will give the most accurate shot. NBA Shootout 2000 gives you the ability to stay true to that method, but also allows you to switch to a feature new to NBA Shootout 2000, Touch Shooting. What this means is that when you begin your shot there is a meter that appears and depending how long you hold it will fall into four areas: green, yellow and red and clear. Like I'm sure you've already assumed, getting it in the green range gives you a greater chance of making the shot from that area. It isn't terribly different from letting go of a button at a certain height, but it gives the impression of having more control over the action.

Overall, NBA Shootout 2000's graphics are just average. Having the player's numbers and names viewable on their jerseys is a nice addition and all, but the models are so pixelated that I had a hard time making out who was who most of time. Not helping is the fact that the player's faces look plain ugly. I don't expect the game's engine to be able to handle the player's changing their expressions throughout the game, but some of the faces that are plastered on the faces of the players make you go "huh?". More hurt is added by the slowdown that seams to appear when all the players on screen are going for a fast break down the court. It doesn't happen all the time, but I did find it taking place every so often.

Having the right basketball atmosphere can be key in immersing the player in the game, and NBA Shootout does a great job of utilizing tiny details to do just that. A couple of the more noticeable ones I found were the announcer giving background information about the team that has the ball, ranging from when they started to how the team has performed in the past. There was a slight problem with this, though. The announcer would be talking about a particular team when the game is going on, and the announcer's comments will lag a bit. Meaning, if one of his comments were to be "He misses the shot!" it might come a few seconds later after the play has happened because the previous comment had to be finished. It's a bit humorous to see it all happen, though it has no barring on the actual gameplay.