Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball

Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball released in 1991 by Hudson Soft, is a futuristic full-contact basketball video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Gameplay

Unlike in real basketball, players can physically check each other on the court without the threat of personal or team fouls. Destructive items such as bombs frequently appear on the court. The game often receives criticism for oversimplified controls (using only one button in addition to the directional pad to perform all in-game actions,) lack of injuries/destruction (like in Mutant League Hockey and Mutant League Football), and predictable AI. Bill Laimbeer, a now-retired basketball player for the Detroit Pistons of the NBA licensed his name and image to this game at a point in his career when he and his Pistons teammates were notorious for aggressive and physical play, in a Pistons era where they were known as the "Bad Boys" for this.

Setting

The game predicts a science fiction version of the year 2030 in which there are only robot basketball players (excluding Bill Laimbeer who has chosen to remain fully human). Basketball teams play in gruelling league matches where new players are bought and sold. Within this future, basketball uses a dedicated robot to perform the toss up at the start of each match as referees had been fired by Bill Laimbeer sometime prior to the year 2030. As a result, players now wear armor to their games and weapons are thrown from the audience.[3]

This dystopian scenario would go against the dedication men put into their sport in real life. Even the thought of robotic referees and lax rules would be condemned by most hardcore fans of the NBA due to the loss of referee jobs this would cause - undesirable in any economy. The safety that conventional basketball rules provide would also be eliminated by altering the rules of the sport from those depicted in the NBA Rule Book.