Basketball is a pure American creation, being the one major sport to have it’s origins completely in the United States rather then being an altered version of a popular sport elsewhere in the world, such as baseball, which is derived from Cricket. A simple game with simple rules but also a team game, which made it ample video game fodder from the earliest days of gaming, from the Atari 2600 to our modern high definition consoles.

Here we take a look back at the history of basketball video games over the years up to the end of the eight bit era.

Pixels and Peach Baskets:

Basketball was invented by Dr. James Naismith in 1891 as a winter sport to distract a rowdy class of athletes Dr. Naismith was in charge of at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts. The early games were pretty raw compared to the modern game, with only thirteen rules and a peach basket with a solid bottom serving as the basket.

Early video game representations were just as rough around the edges, the first being Taito’s Basketball arcade cabinet, renamed TV Basketball for the American market. – Read the rest of the article here from Classic Console Magazine (courtesy of Old School Gamer)!

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