Get Ready For The Most Realistic Video Basketball Game Ever! Playing Takin It To The Hoop for the First Time on TurboGrafx-16

If you like basketball, you're in for a treat. Whether you're five-foot-two, six-foot-five or seven-feet two inches, this is the video basketball game that really measures up to your expectations.

As you can see, the latest game I've played in my TurboGrafx journey is Takin' It To The Hoop, basically the TurboGrafx's version of Double Dribble, but with better visuals.

Takin' It To The Hoop is the first basketball game I've played on the TurboGrafx, and my first impressions were really good. The opening dunk cinematic immediately brought to mind the basketball excellence of Double Dribble on the NES, and the title screen also looks well animated and properly epic.

From the main menu, you can select a 1 Player game, 2 Player game, or Demo, which simply allows you to watch a CPU vs CPU match (which I tend to enjoy - I like taking bets on which side will win, and since I have no control over the outcome, it can be interesting to see how it plays out). 

For 1 Player you can choose from Tournament, League or Exhibition modes. Tournament is what you would expect, with eight teams competing in a round-robin. League is playing against all other teams one after another, and if you win all the games you are the champion. Exhibition is just a single game against an opponent of your choosing.

Like many basketball games back in the day, Takin It To The Hoop doesn't have actual NBA teams or players, so you are presented with a selection of iconic cities to represent some of the more popular teams around the USA, but of course none of the team names are used.

The game's visual style is somewhat cartoony, but not in a bad way, and it does a good job matching a player's onscreen character to their profile pic and the dunk/foul shot animations. Something other games don't do to the same degree of precision.

Of course the match begins with a jump off between teams, but even if you don't get the ball right away, you can likely steal it from your opponent.

You can take a timeout and swap players in your roster, which you will need to do, as they will grow tired over time and begin to move slower, allowing the other team to more easily steal the ball. They might also grow less accurate with their shots, but I'm not totally sure whether that happens or not.

Much of the action is just like any other basketball game. You run down the court to your opponent's basket, trying to dodge opponents and keep the ball from being stolen, then you can either try and shoot it in, or you can get up close and trigger an epic dunk animation.

Generally I found myself taking close shots and performing dunks for the majority of my points. In theory you should be able to make three-point shots as well, but I wasn't able to get any of mine to go in, so I just opted for two-point scoring. 

Unlike in Double Dribble, the dunk animation isn't simply window dressing. There is a meter at the bottom of the screen and you need to stop the marker in the red area in the middle in order to make the dunk successfully, otherwise the ball will bounce out.

Taking foul-shots was pretty painful. I didn't get fouled too many times (thank heavens) but when I did, I had no chance of getting the ball to go in. There is a meter at the bottom of the screen, and if you can stop the marker in the red area then your shot will go in, but this is MUCH easier said than done. The marker moves back and forth quickly and at uneven speeds, meaning it will speed up and then slow down, seemingly randomly.

My main strategy just involved trying to steal the ball from my opponent as often as possible and then passing the ball to my teammates closest to the hoop. I mostly just made two-point shots and dunks, but that is more than enough to completely dominate the other team most of the time.

You can watch my first time playing the game in the video below:

And I was very happy to see that the game also has a cheerleader half-time show. I think every good basketball game needs to have a half-time show.

If you want to check out EGM's review of Takin' It To The Hoop, see the image below. You can also see the EGM review for J.J. and Jeff, which was the previous game I played on the TurboGrafx.

While I don't think EGM was overly harsh in its critiques of the game, I do think the reviewers mostly missed the point. The game is the ONLY basketball game that TurboGrafx gamers had, and it was more than competent at providing a good looking and playing game. Other consoles might have basketball games too, but if you were a Turbo Kid, you needed to get Takin' It To The Hoop. 

I know I had fun playing it, and I can only imagine if I had a friend over back in the day and we played a bunch of head-to-head matches. Could have been a lot of fun.

Now that I've finished playing Takin' It To The Hoop, I'm ready to move onto one of the TurboGrafx's most iconic franchises:

Bonk's Adventure! The one that started it all.

I think I may have played this once or twice over the years, but honestly I can't recall at this point. Eager to dive in and really explore the TurboGrafx's mascot platformer.

Until next time...

It's JJ and Jeff to the rescue! Playing JJ and Jeff on TurboGrafx-16 for the first time

Welcome to the world of those two bungling detectives, J.J. and Jeff. 

As you can see, the latest game I played on my TurboGrafx-16 journey was J.J. and Jeff. Honestly I had no idea what this game was going to be like going into it, and it's crazy as shit, but ultimately much better than I thought it might be.

J.J. & Jeff is a side scrolling action game where you progress across each stage, dodging or fighting various animals and people, kicking your friend in the arse, and dodging bird turds that look like the poop emoji without the eyes. Oh, you also gamble once in a while with a slot machine, using the coins you pick up during the side scrolling sections.

The whole game is rather absurd, but generally has good graphics, and as usual the music is catchy and decent overall.

The main mechanic you have is a kick, and you not only use it to defeat enemies, but you can kick lampposts, fences and blocks to get fruits and special items, plus you kick doors in the background to open them.

The doors you open lead to either a brief (absurd) cutscene of what of the characters in a funny outfit and typically giving you a gameplay hint, and then it refills your health.

Or the doors can lead to a slot machine mini-game where you can wager up to five coins and then get extra lives, life refills or more coins.

Generally the game looks good, the controls are tight, and the gameplay is fun. There are definitely times when you encounter cheap enemy hits or instant deaths that annoy the crap out of you, but its not too bad.

You can watch some of gameplay of my very first few runs of the game in the video below:

Because the game has a bunch of cheap hits and deaths (but nothing you can't learn to avoid in future runs), I ended up seeing the Game Over screen often. 

I eventually looked up cheats for the game and discovered that if you hold the I and II buttons and press the Run button when the Game Over screen is shown, it lets you continue. 

Overall I enjoyed playing J.J. & Jeff and I'll probably keep playing it in the future. I didn't know what to expect going into it, but its crazy and I had a lot of fun.

The next game in my TurboGrafx journey is...

Takin' It To The Hoop!

Other than the fact that this is clearly a basketball game, and there are always a lot of copies of it for sale, I don't really know anything. Excited to finally try it out.

Until next time...

A Scale-raising Undersea Adventure! - Playing Deep Blue on TurboGrafx-16 for the First Time

Journey to an undersea palace in this fascinating (and scale-raising!) undersea adventure.

Well... it's official. I've played my first "bad" TurboGrafx game: Deep Blue

Now, I'm sure there is someone out there in the big blue world who will say they liked this game as a kid and it has redeeming qualities, but no, I just can't with this one.

Right from the outset, the title screen looks rather bland and it takes a few seconds for the title music to kick-in - very strange for a TurboGrafx game.

Then after pushing Run, I got into the game itself. Now there are plenty of bad shmups out in the world, but on a console like the TurboGrafx, with SO many great shmups, it seems even more egregious to have something so half-hearted (and half-assed) rear its ugly head.

From the moment you start playing something feels "off". The fish controls too slowly, the shooting seems odd, and the design and movement of the enemy fish just screams "budget title" in the worst possible way.

To be sure, there are powerups like most shmups, but a lot of the fish move in strange patterns that make it very hard to hit them, your fish actually can take quite a bit of damage before dying (probably a sign that the developers knew the game was hard because of poor design and made your fish take more damage before dying as a result) and I never even got to the "end" of the first level, if there even is one.

Absolutely everything about this game feel off and is unenjoyable to play. I think I'll be moving onto my next game rather quickly, as this was wholly unsatisfying.

You can see some of my painfully bad gameplay in the video below:

EGM rightfully eviscerated this game in their review (although they also crapped all over Ordyne, which is a masterpiece compared to this, so...)

Now that I've checked this one off the list, I'm quickly moving onto my next game, which will be...

J.J. & Jeff!

Not gonna lie. After the "awesomeness" of Deep Blue, I'm a little afraid how bad this is going to be, but nowhere to go but onwards.

Until next time...

SOS! SOS! Opi Is In Trouble! Playing Cratermaze for the First Time

Wouldn't you know it? You're on a friendly little trip through time with four of your best friends when suddenly - ZAP!

The latest game in my TurboGrafx journey is Cratermaze! I had never played (or even heard of) this game before, so it was a brand new experience for me.

Like a lot of the TurboGrafx games I've played so far, Cratermaze looks great with colorful, well drawn graphics. 

It opens with a series of cinema scenes to tell the story of how your friends have been captured, and the drawings are wonderful.

The game itself looks similar to Bomberman, from a point of view perspective and the cartoonish graphics. You can even unlock bombs at one point, and they function very much like the bombs do in Bomberman.

But, interestingly, the gameplay is actually closer to Loderunner than Bomberman, with your character able to open holes in the ground for enemies to fall into. Once you open a hole you wait for the enemy to fall into it, and then you have to close it to defeat them before they can escape. 

You also have to be careful not to fall into a hole you created, otherwise you get crushed and lose a life. Once an enemy is defeated, a small cross is placed where you defeated them, kind of like a grave marker, but then you can't create holes in those same places, which means you have to be strategic about where you place holes and lure enemies.

There is a locked orange (red) door in each level, and to open it you have to collect all the treasure chests (there is a counter so you can keep track of your progress), which then spawns a green key that in turn opens the door. Go through the door to progress to the next level, rinse and repeat.

You can watch gameplay from my initial run on standard difficulty in the YouTube video below:

You can also watch gameplay from my first run on "Difficult" mode:

Overall, I really liked Cratermaze, much more than I thought I would. The standard difficulty is really easy, almost more like a training run, then there is "Difficult Mode", which does make the game much more difficult and interesting. 

For some reason, EGM crapped all over this game back in the day, giving it a 5, two 4's and a 3. 

They complained the game was either too easy or too hard, and generally dismissed it. I disagree however. I really like the game, and its one of my favorite TurboGrafx games so far.

Now that I've played Cratermaze quite a bit, I'm ready to move onto my next game. 

The next game I'll be playing is...

Deep Blue!

I don't really know anything about this one, and I'm excited to give it a try.

Until next time...

The Journey So Far - The Next Phase

I launched TurboTimes back in November 2024, and published my first article on Nov 7th, where I revisited the launch of the TurboGrafx in North America.

At first I wasn't sure how my TurboGrafx journey was going to go, whether I would enjoy playing its games, and whether I would continue my journey (or for how long).

But now that I've been at it for almost five months, I can say I've very much enjoyed my journey so far, and I'm dedicated to continuing to explore and write about the TurboGrafx-16 for the foreseeable future.

That being said, I've decided to concentrate my games-writing entirely into TurboTimes, and start to slowly expand its content accordingly. "Going all in" as the kids would say.

Updating my Ko-Fi page to focus on TurboTimes was step one in the expansion, as I will be using it, plus my Gamatroid socials on X and Bluesky, to announce new articles dropping, ways to sponsor posts and request content, and other expansions and special events.

I will also look for ways to expand the readership of TurboTimes, and possibly launch a Discord or some other way for TurboGrafx fans to hang out, chat, and reminisce with each other. 

Any suggestions are appreciated, and will be considered as part of the expansion.

I hope you will join me in this next phase of my TurboGrafx / TurboTimes journey.

Until next time...