Box Copy
There is no copy on the back of the box. Only a screenshot of the control scheme taken from the game.

Discussion
Well, it finally came down to this.

After what seems like almost four years of research, e-mails, archived web searching, and perhaps the luckiest break (make that breaks) in the history of my collecting , the page I have been wanting to write finally presents itself.

Welcome to the absolute pinnacle of faithful searching and the emotional help of an Internet room full of fellow collectors. Interesting enough, this story still doesn’t have a proper ending. But we’ll get to that later on.

Ladies and gentlemen, Game Rave proudly presents the first ever look at one of the rarest Demo Discs available for the PlayStation One – NBA 2 Ball.

Starting From the Beginning
To understand the path taken up to this point, we go back several years, to when rumors of the game first began to spring up. It was somewhere around the time I had achieved the complete PSX retail library of full games; I was just starting on the demos, Lightspan, and variants.

From interviews with the programmer, it appears that the game was given away as a promotional item at the 1998 All-Star game. No word on if it was to attendees, players, staff, etc - just that it was given out. There is currently no concept of how many were printed; most likely it would have been a a small print run. Current theories point to whatever the absolute minimum Sony would have allowed at the time, probably somewhere between 500 to 1000. Sadly, Sony does not share distribution numbers. 

Eventually one would rise up in Canada, of all places. Cue a few random encounters and incidents later, and one my best friends and fellow collector’s would end up sending it to me as a Best Man’s gift. Besides ruining any future gifts I’d get for such duties, a known issue with the disc deepened the mystery – it was cracked in one quadrant, with a smaller crack peeking out from the original.

Initial tests with the demo disc proved fruitless – it would simply hang at the Sony boot screen. Not even swapping the discs using the original Import Game trick worked. So with nothing working on the legitimate side, it was theorized that maybe a CDR of the disc could work, using an ISO checking program to possibly fix any errors. The reason for this is that the data can be clearly seen on the topside of the disc. The crack had not reached that portion yet.

Upon placing the disc in my original computer’s CD-drive, I opened up Explorer, only seconds later to hear the most gut wrenching, heart stopping, soul crushing sound I ever heard. The speed of the CD-Rom drive caused the disc to rip itself apart. I now had a demo disc in 2 pieces, not 1. A lot of alcohol was consumed that night. Trust me.

Eventually a lucky break occurred – I was able to contact the original programmer across the globe, and after a lot of e-mails, humor, and drama, an ISO was finally presented.

Then that didn’t work. See the Misprint Section for the rest of this sob story.

So what the hell is it?
NBA 2 Ball is a mini-game that was popular around the time of its release, and has actually been featured in some newer games. Game play is as follows: Two players take alternate shots from specific points on the basketball half court. You are required to shoot from at least three of the six locations, plus have the option of lay-ups. One minute is all you are allowed, and at the end of play the team with the most points wins.

The game engine is taken from the PlayStation / Saturn release NBA Jam Extreme. Interestingly, many of the game’s elements are still present in the demo. The most obvious being the ball’s physical properties: if you happen to ‘brick’ a shot, the basketball will actually become a giant spinning brick until picked up again. The court has been cut off at the half-way point, with any signs of team specific marks removed. The 2 Ball number locations have been added to the floor, as well as the logo at half court.

All 29 teams are represented, and each team has 3 playable members. All name entry and other menus have been removed from the source, so this is literally just a 2 Ball game.

Several announcer clips still remain from Extreme. Oddly enough, there’s only one song or background track in the entire game. It plays at the beginning title screen, and then acts as the timer music in game.

Control is probably the demo’s only real downfall, all things considered. It doesn’t support Analog, so trying to get the players into position can sometimes be harder then it should be. In NBA 2 Ball, the game is only 2 Players, so for this review I basically played by myself alternating controllers, hence why the video looks goofy. It also doesn't help that I suck at sports games. :)

Once the 60 seconds are over, you are shown the score, and can simply restart the game. That’s all there really is to it.

So What now?
As it's obvious from my postings, I am still searching for a non-cracked disc. Funny enough, in the time it has taken to finally obtain and review this demo, 4 other demos have popped up of even more rare games, one of which is now worse than NBA 2 Ball because there is only one known copy of that demo, where 2 Ball has...well...two.

The quest to 100% completion continues...

• There are currently only two known copies of the game in existence, mine and the original programmer's. Sadly...mine is a cracked disc. If you have a working real version of the game, I am offering $300 for any condition disc, so long as it works (as in it's still in one piece).
   
• The game was created using files from Acclaim's PlayStation release NBA Jam Extreme. In fact, there's a hint of it in the basketball itself - if you 'brick' a shot, the basketball will still revert to an actual brick on the throw. If you toss both CDs into a computer and check out the files, you can clearly see what was borrowed.
   
• The Player Cursors are actually color correct! While P1 is Blue and P2 is Red, if you both fall on the same team, the cursor blends into purple!
   
• Interestingly, there is absolutely no mention of any company, publisher, or otherwise on the actual CD sleeve or CD. Only the game's intro screen gives you a clue that Acclaim had some sort of any part to it.
   
• There is no actual 'end' screen to the game. Once the 60 seconds are up, you are sent back to the Player Select Screen.
   
• There is an odd 'reset' screen that will pop up if you press the Analog button on a Dual Shock controller. The game will pause and say "Controller Changed" - at which point you can then hit a button and choose to quit or not.
   
• Here's the complete roster of the game:
  • Dallas: Scott, Bradley, Reeves
  • Denver: Williams, Ellis, Stith
  • Golden State: Marshall, Bogues, Smith
  • Houston: Drexler, Elie, Olajuwon
  • LA Clippers: Vaught, Rogers, Murray
  • LA Lakers: Van Exel, Bryant, Jones
  • Minnesota: Gugliotta, Parks, Garnett
  • Phoenix: Kidd, Johnson, McDyess
  • Portland: Augmon, Anderson, Rider
  • Sacramento: Owens, Abdul-Rauf, Richmond
  • San Antonio: Robinson, Elliot, Johnson
  • Seattle: Perkins, Baker, Payton
  • Utah: Stockton, Hornacek, Malone
  • Vancouver: Reeves, Thorpe, Abdur-Rahim
  • Atlanta: Blaylock, Mutumbo, Smith
  • Boston: Brown, Walker, Barros
  • Charlotte: Divac, Phills, Rice
  • Chicago: Pippin, Rodman, Kukoc
  • Cleveland: Dumas, Kemp, Potapenko
  • Detroit: Williams, Sealy, Hill
  • Indiana: Smits, Jackson, Miller
  • Miami: Hardaway, Mourning, Mashburn
  • Milwaukee: Hill, Brandon, Robinson
  • New Jersey: Maclean, Gill, Cassell
  • New York: Johnson, Starks, Ewing
  • Orlando: Hardaway, Seikaly, Grant
  • Philadelphia: Jackson, Iverson, Weatherspoon
  • Toronto: Wallace, Jones, Stoudamire
  • Washington: Howard, Strickland, Webber
     
• The pole of the basket reads "Extreme" and features an octopus silhouette.
   
• Acclaim logos have replaced the Team placards in the background.
   
• Iguana Entertainment has been handling the NBA Jam series since the original releases on the Genesis and Super Nintendo!
   
• The game's complete ID code is SLUS-0-21481-90024
   
• The SLUS doesn't show up on the CD like it should - it's only on the Sleeve. The PSRM is intact.
   
• Sadly, with realization of the Swap Trick working for our ISO, we went back to the real disc and tried the swap trick. Sure enough the game hung at the boot screen. Which means there is still only one known working copy in the world.