Picked up Live yesterday and have had the chance to play about 5 or 6
games with the Bullets. I've never tried the '96 version for the PSX,
although I did have it for the Genesis and heard that it was not that
great for the PSX. I also had last year's Shootout, so my comments are
made in this light.  Following are my initial observations, IMHOs are
implicit throughout:

THE GOOD:

1. In short, it is simply amazing. There are far too many other positive
features to list here. It seems at every turn I am discovering things that
cause me to think, "wow - this is great."

2. The richness of the stats and options are unparalleled in any
basketball game, make that any sports game, hell, make that any video
game. You have the ability to track stats on runs and dry spells, among
many others. You can set options on how frequently the game invokes auto
replay, how closely offensive and defensive fouls are called, etc.

3. Seems like dozens of camera views during play and replays, many of the
camera views during play are actually useful.

4. Player graphics are now polygons, looking a lot like Shootout but
without the hunchback running and other drawbacks. Up close, you can see
distinctive facial features and player names on uniforms. From a distance
the animation is very fluid, although the player graphics look a bit
pixelated. Yet you can now clearly see the differnce between players (look
at Bogues compared to Muresan - kinda comical).

5. Court graphics are excellent, including items such as the Charlotte
honeycomb pattern in the key.

6. Rosters seem to be relatively up-to-date, with rookies on their proper
teams (such as Camby with Raptors).

7. Players missing for legal reasons, such as MJ, are replaced with Roster
players that look and perform like their intended counterparts.

8. Gameplay is much, much better than in previous versions of Live (at
least for the Genesis), most notably in the form of realistic tip-ins.
Steals and blocks are still a bit too easy at two lower levels, but are
fairly realistic at All Star level. There are far too many positives to
list here, but for example it will call an illegal defence if you guard an
area (it works, and it can be turned off in the options).

9. A wide range of plays can be called, with animated play diagrams. I
haven't tried this much yet, as the choices and configuration options are
overwhelming at first.

10. The player creation, trade and free agent screens seem to work as
advertised, although I haven't really tried them out yet.

11. A announcer, with voice inflections for home and away buckets. You
will get on-screen notifications of important and useful stats, such as
"Washington hasn't scored in 3 minutes."

12. Gameplay is slow. While this may be an irritation to some, I find it
allows for a more realistic sim.

13. Season length can be set anywhere from 26 games to a full slate.

14. Finally, someone has come up with a reasonably valuable use of FMV -
at halftime you can select "halftime show" which will display FMV
highlight clips of the team you are playing.


MINOR IRRITATIONS:

1. At first, the player animations from a distance will make you wonder.
The players do seem to glide and swivel on one axis. However, after a
while you will quickly get used to this and forget all about it.

2. It is much too easy for the shooting team on free throws to tip-in a
missed shot (seems to happen every time).

3. As in 96 for the Genesis, Starter mode seems much too easy and All-Star
much too hard. For example, using the Bullets, I beat Seattle by about 25
points in Starter, and lost to the Bucks by 10.

4. Some superstar players, like Robinson, seem unbeatable and can hit from
almost anywhere.

5. It is difficult to rebound, although this may be due to my own
limitations rather than the game, and may improve as my skills improve.

6. Load times for games are fairly substantial (about a minute at the
start of each game).

7. Announcing assists causes problems (see below) and really don't seem
necessary. I wish there was a way to turn this off. Also, the announcer
often gets way behind on the descriptions.

8. When playing 5 minute quarters (as I have for every game of the 5 or 6
I have played so far) the stats for other teams in the leaders section
seem to be based on 3-minute quarters (for example you will be far ahead
in points scored and far behind in points scored against). This is better,
however, than tracking stats based on full-length games, as is the usual.


BIGGER PROBLEMS:

1. Crashes. I don't know if this is limited to my copy, but it crashed
once while selecting a team in exhibition mode.

2. Temporary freezes whenever substitutions are made and the announcer is
in the process of announcing an assist during the previous basket. It will
be stuck in a loop that can be gotten out of using the start button.
Presumably if you turn of substitution notification you shouldn't have
this problem. Again, this may be a problem with my CD.

SUMMARY:

The most impressive game of any type I have played to date on the PSX. The
minor irritations listed above are far outweighed by the many positive
listed above, as well as the dozens of others I didn't have room or forgot
to list. I just hope that the crashing problem turns out to be an isolated
problem. 

Basketball fans looking for a great sim need look any further - same for
anyone looking for a classic game for the PSX, IMHO.

As always, your mileage may vary, and my comments are based on only a few games.

Hope that helps, and please feel free to add to the list or make an
corrections based on further play.

llaack@clark.net