Play NBA Showdown Online

Summary

NBA Showdown feels like the quiet swan song of EA’s early basketball experiments, wrapping up the Playoffs line before the brand morphed into NBA Live. For the first time the SNES version lets you steer any of the 27 clubs from the 1993‑94 season, even the non‑playoff squads, and you can grind through a full 82‑game schedule or jump straight into a playoff run. The game’s flexibility was ahead of its time – you could set quarters to 2, 5, 8 or 12 minutes and even see tenths of a second tick away in the final minute, a detail that added a surprising layer of tension. It also broke a few conventions: it dropped the usual East‑vs‑West finals naming, slipped in real‑world ads from Starter and Topps, and sparked talk about star licensing when Charles Barkley opted out, nudging EA toward the more generic NBA Showdown label. Behind the scenes it was the last title churned out at EA’s San Mateo studio before the development hub moved to Vancouver, and it marked Michael Jordan’s final appearance on a SNES NBA game until the turn of the millennium.