Arcade Basketball Rules in Basketball Legends: Clock and Points

Short games, simple rules

Basketball Legends follows the old arcade idea of basketball: a few players, one screen and a short clock. It does not copy real league rules. This post covers the rules the game actually uses, taken from its own code. It also lists who made it, as shown in the in-game Credits screen.

The clock

• A match lasts 60 seconds of game clock, after a countdown and a whistle.
• The clock stops after every basket while the players celebrate, and while a super is being performed. A minute of clock therefore takes longer than a minute of real time.
• If the ball is in the air when the clock hits zero, the game waits for it to land. A shot that goes in counts and is shown as a Buzzer Beater.
• If the score is level at the end, the game plays 15 seconds of overtime. It keeps adding overtime until one side is ahead.

Training mode has no clock at all. You get the court to yourself to practise shots and moves.

Points

Basket	Points
Shot released from behind the three-point line	3
Any shot from inside the line	2
Dunk, including a Mega Dunk	2

Where you are when you release the ball decides the value, not where you land. A jump shot that leaves your hands behind the line is worth three. That is why a three, shown on screen as Three Point or From Downtown, is the best way to catch up in the last seconds: even a super dunk only gives two.

How the Tournament plays out

The Tournament is a knockout bracket of 16 teams, played either 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2, on Normal or Hard. Normal and Hard only appear in the Tournament. Quick Match and Random Match always use a fixed computer level.

• The rounds are the Round of 16, quarter-final, semi-final and final. The game works out the other matches in the bracket itself, and you see the standings between rounds.
• The computer gets stronger every round. Each round uses a higher computer skill level, and Hard starts above the level where Normal ends.
• If you lose a semi-final, you still play a third-place match.
• If you lose earlier, the game plays out the rest of the bracket and shows the final standings.
• Your bracket is saved. Back in the menu you can choose Continue Tournament, or start a new one, which wipes the saved progress after a warning.

Who made it

The game's Credits screen lists Konstantin Matrunchik (CEO), Yuriy Borozenets and Dmytro Borozenets (coding), Andrey Zdyshchuk and Roman Padaliuk (art) and Vasiliy Kachor (game design), with the HTML5 version "ported by iriysoft.com". The game is widely credited to the studio MadPuffers. The build hosted here reports version 1.0.10p on its main menu.