About Basketball Arcade

Basketball Arcade publishes two things: browser basketball games we build ourselves, and writing about how to play them well.

That is the whole remit. We are not a games portal reposting other people's work, and we are not a basketball news site. We are a small operation that likes arcade games and thinks the genre deserves better writing than it usually gets.

What is here

Six playable games. Every game on this site was built for this site. They run in your browser with no download, no plugin and no account, and they use original artwork drawn in code — no team logos, no player likenesses, no third-party sprites. You can play any of them here.

Guides and articles. Practical writing about the genre: how shooting physics works, why timing windows feel the way they do, what a combo multiplier is actually worth. Everything in the guides hub has been tested against the games it describes.

Nothing else. No forums, no accounts, no newsletters you have to dodge, no progression system designed to bring you back tomorrow.

Why the site exists

Browser basketball games have been around for twenty-odd years and the writing about them has barely improved since the Flash era. Most of what you find is either a bare list of links or an article generated to fill a keyword.

The gap we are trying to fill is the middle: games good enough to be worth writing about, and writing specific enough to be worth reading. When our guide says a combo multiplier caps at x4, that number comes from the game's own rules, which are published on the game's page. When it says a shot from beyond a certain distance is worth three points, you can verify it by playing.

How the games are made

All six games share one small engine — about twenty kilobytes of JavaScript — that handles canvas sizing, input, scoring and the game loop. Each game then adds its own rules on top, usually a few kilobytes.

Some deliberate choices:

Original artwork only. The ball, hoop, backboard, court and players are drawn with code — circles, lines and gradients. Nothing is traced from or based on any real team, player or commercial game.

The windows are drawn on screen. In several games, the tolerance you are being judged against is shown to you: the green band on the power bar in Basketball Time Attack, the take-off band on the floor in Dunk Challenge. These are calculated from the same physics the game uses to judge you. We would rather make hitting a visible target the challenge than make finding an invisible one the challenge.

No hidden randomness. A correctly placed shot always goes in. A game where identical inputs sometimes fail cannot be learned, and learnability is the point.

No account, no server. Your best scores are stored in your own browser on your own device. There is no leaderboard, nothing uploaded and nothing tied to an identity.

How we choose what to cover

Right now every game we write about is one we built, which makes selection easy. As the library grows, the standard is the one we apply to our own work:

• Can a player tell why they failed? If not, the game cannot be learned and is not worth

covering.

• Does difficulty rise visibly? Invisible escalation feels like cheating even when it is fair.
• Does it work on a phone properly? Not "technically loads" — proper touch targets, no accidental

scrolling, rotation handled.

• Is it free to start, with no account? A game that gates the first round is selling something

else.

What we will not do

Being specific here matters more than a mission statement.

• No fake ratings. We do not collect user reviews, so we will not publish review scores. No

"9/10", no star counts, no "rated by 4,000 players".

• No invented statistics. If a number appears on this site, it is either from the games' own

rules or it is sourced and linked.

• No claimed affiliations. Basketball Arcade is not connected to the NBA, WNBA, FIBA, any

league, club or player, and we will never imply otherwise.

• No fabricated credentials. Our bylines are editorial identities, described plainly on the

authors page. Nobody here is presented as a professional player, coach or official, because nobody here is one.

• No manipulated dates. A "Last updated" stamp appears only on pages that have genuinely been

revised.

• No ads over the game. Advertising has a place in the page layout. That place is not on top of

the controls.

How the site is funded

Basketball Arcade is free to use and carries advertising in the page layout. That is the whole model: no subscriptions, no paid games, no affiliate links dressed up as recommendations.

Where advertising is active it is served by a third party and may use cookies. What that means in practice is set out in the cookie policy and the privacy policy.

If we ever add affiliate links or sponsored content, they will be labelled as such on the page they appear on, and the editorial policy will be updated first.

Who writes it

Two bylines. Jordan Mitchell writes the games coverage and strategy guides. Casey O’Brien edits everything, checks the claims and runs the review schedule.

Both are editorial identities for the writing published here. Neither is a professional basketball player, coach, official or employee of any basketball organisation. The authors page says the same thing in more detail, because we think it should be easy to find rather than buried.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, we want to know and we will fix it. The fact-checking policy describes how corrections are handled, and contact is the fastest route.

That applies to the games as much as the writing. If a guide describes a scoring rule that does not match what the game does, one of the two is wrong and both are ours to fix.

Contact

The quickest way to reach us is email: hello@basketballarcade.xyz, or through the contact page.