NBA Basketball

NBA Basketball showed 10 players simultaneously on screen — 5 on 5 — with figures having distinguishable head, torso and legs. On Atari 2600, basketball was two squares chasing each other. The comparison was embarrassing, and Mattel exploited it in every ad. Passes, 3-pointers, dunks, fouls: the system used the keypad overlay to select complex plays impossible with a one-button joystick. It was the game best demonstrating Intellivision's technical superiority — the reason George Plimpton smiled in those commercials.