Hoops (1986 Video Game)
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''Hoops'' is a
college basketball College basketball is basketball that is played by teams of Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. In the Higher education in the United States, United States, colleges and universities are governed by collegiate athle ...
-themed 1986 video game published by Hoops for
IBM PC compatible An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central p ...
computers written by
Jeff Sagarin Jeff Sagarin (born 1948) is an American sports statistician known for his development of a method for ranking and rating sports teams in a variety of sports. His Sagarin Ratings have been a regular feature in the ''USA Today'' sports section from ...
and Wayne Winston, with additional coding done by Jim Klopfenstein. Billy Packer, the CBS basketball analyst, also provided defensive rating statistics for the game. The publisher ("Hoops") was run by Sagarin and Winston, and the game was sold only by mail order.


Gameplay

''Hoops'' is a game in which over 200 college basketball teams are playable in a text-only game, with strategy being changeable during the game by key-inputs. The teams featured in the game included historical teams starting from the 1950 CCNY basketball team to the 43 best rated college basketballs teams of 1986. The player selects teams to play against each other and players from each team that would be picked for the game, and then follow the game via a text-based play-by-play and scoreboard. In-game options include giving one team a home-court advantage or playing on a neutral court. In later editions of the game, the number of teams is increased to 428, fatigue was added as a factor in game-play, and 3-point field goals had also been enabled.


Development

The game began as a table-top game played using cards and dice developed by Winston, but this version proved laborious and time-consuming to play. When Sagarin, a friend of Winston's who worked rating basketball teams for a number of newspapers, bought a computer in 1985, Sagarin suggested converting Winston's table-top game into a computer game. Winston then enlisted Klopfenstein to program the game, and Packer was brought in to provide defensive statistics.


Reception

Reception of the game was broadly positive. Rick Teverbaugh reviewed the game for ''
Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...
'', and stated that "The game is full of flavor, full of teams and full of options that should delight even the most demanding fan of the cage sport. ''Hoops'' is steadfast in its perspective." Ed Burns, writing in ''
Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellen ...
'' in 1987, described the game as "extremely sophisticated yet marvelously easy to play", though he also criticised the fact that players did not get tired in the version he reviewed, and that the play-by-play notices were insufficiently tailored to individual players. Writing in March 1990 for
Strat-O-Matic Strat-O-Matic is a game company based in Glen Head, New York, that develops and publishes sports simulation games. It produces tabletop baseball, American football, basketball, and ice hockey simulations, as well as personal computer adaptation ...
's ''Strat-O-Matic Review'' magazine, Bart Ewing gave the game a negative review, stating that the game was boring, had too many fouls, and no way of keeping statistics from game to game, would be better with player cards, and that the player playing as coach has too little control over the game. A later May 1990 review in the same magazine written by Patrick E. Clark disagreed with this view, stating that ''Hoops'' was "a better game than I could ever imagined".


Legacy

Winston went on to become a Professor Emeritus of Decision and Information Systems at Indiana University, and Sagarin became a well-known sports statistician.


References

{{reflist 1986 video games Basketball video games DOS games DOS-only games