NFL Street 2 and the Proliferation of Streetball
The early to mid-aughts were filled with numerous attempts — some more successful than others — at merging sports with contemporary black culture and more specifically, contemporary hip-hop culture.
If there was one credo in hip-hop culture during that time, it was make everything over the top. Your jeans had to be big enough to engulf your Dada sneakers to the point where only the outsoles were visible. Your fitted hat had to be big enough to tuck both of your ears underneath it to the point where only your lobe was visible. Your rims had to be big enough to make people question if you were even riding with tires on your car. Your earrings, your chain, the medallion hanging from your chain, the shirt on your back, the stereos in your car, the belt on your waist: it all had to be big and it all had to be flamboyant.
Streetball had taken on a lot of the same cultural characteristics as hip-hop culture as a result of the big overlap between the people who navigated the two worlds. So for mainstream sports corporations like ESPN and EA Sports; adopting streetball as an official alternative to professional sports was a seamless way to ingratiate themselves into hip-hop culture.
Now streetball and street basketball in particular were nowhere near new phenomenons. Legendary streetball players like Joe “The Destroyer” Hammond, Earl “The Goat” Manigault and Rick “Pee Wee” Kirkland made their marks on the playground as early as the 1960s. But as we approached the 21st century, what separated this new era of streetball from eras of old, is it pushed the boundaries of athletic feats in ways that clearly distinguished its game from that of professional sports.
In professional basketball; crossovers, no-look passes, 360 windmills, self-alley-oops were all anomalies done by a subset of unique talents. But in street basketballl; flashy dribble moves, crazy passes and gravity-defying dunks became a way of life. Instead of there being just one man on the court with the gall of a Rafer Alston or Allen Iverson or Darius Miles, there were ten.
The same thing applied to street football and street soccer. In the NFL; making a one-handed catch like Randy Moss or Cris Carter was a rarity. In street football, making a one-handed catch was the goal every time a pass was thrown your way. In professional soccer; the cruyff was a move reserved for the likes of only Johan Cruyff himself, but in street soccer the cruyff was a tool that was used to embarrass opponents every time you had possession.
So now that streetball had clearly distinguished itself from professional sports, it was time that it had formed its own commercialized entities. You had the Entertainer’s Basketball Classic at Rucker Park and the And1 Mixtape Tour being aired on ESPN as players like Larry “The Bone Collector” Williams and Phillip “Hot Sauce” Champion dazzled viewers with their ball-handling escapades. You also had the formation of Slamball — a style of basketball played on trampolines with players wearing pads and helmets — being aired on Spike TV.
In the mid-2000s, The NFL began holding Skills Challenges during the Pro Bowl where the league’s best players would engage in competitions to show off their speed, strength, passing accuracy, kicking accuracy, and catching ability. This helped inspire a short-lived TV series called Battle of the Gridiron Stars where NFL stars like Chad Johnson, Peyton Manning and LaDainian Tomlinson would team up and battle each other in obstacle courses and tug-of-wars.
And in the world of video games, there were numerous games that were based on street sports. Whether it be the Midnight Club street racing series, the Def Jam street fighting series, the NBA Ballers series, the AND1 Mixtape video game adaption Street Hoops, Freestyle Street Soccer or Blitz: The League; they were all a part of a larger effort to immerse the sports world in hip-hop culture and thus, make sports more fun. And no game accomplished this feat quite like EA Sports Big’s NFL Street 2.
It all starts with its absolutely legendary soundtrack. Some of the names of the artists were familiar, but none of the songs were particularly popular at the time (although they sounded like they should’ve been popular).
The intro of the video game is backed by the hard-hitting rap-rock track, “Ground Zero,” by M.O.P.. There was “Disciple” by Nas, “Breathe, Stretch, Shake” by Mase and P. Diddy, “Halftime” by Ying Yang Twins, “Hey Now (Mean Muggin)” by Xzibit and Keri Hilson, and my personal favorite, “Tear It Up” by Yung Wun, DMX, Lil Flip and David Banner. All of these songs captured the essence of the game; flamboyant but rugged.
The hip-hop influence on the video game wasn’t just evident in the soundtrack, it was ubiquitous in the game’s overall presentation. Xzibit wasn’t just an artist you could listen to, he was playable character featured on the cover of the game. And just as hip-hop was in the middle of its Bling Bling era, so was NFL Street 2; as you could equip players with stunna shades, iced-out watches, iced-out chains and obnoxiously large medallions.
Also with 50 Cent being at the height of his popularity, it was only right that you could also equip players with bulletproof vests and G-Unit Reebok sneakers. Features like this that made it the gold standard for customization in sports video games at the time. And all of this greatness is before getting to the actual gameplay.
As entertaining of a sport as football can be, there isn’t nearly as much room for flamboyance on a play by play basis as there is in basketball. So to circumvent that, NFL Street 2 introduced “wall moves.” These moves allowed you to separate yourselves from the mere mortals who could do nasty jukes or tough catches on the field by being able to execute those same juke moves and crazy catches by jumping off walls.
This feature helped accentuate a lot of the real life attributes of NFL players. Randy Moss and Plaxico Burress weren’t just snatching passes from on top of defenders heads now, they were jumping clean over them. Clinton Portis and Edgerrin James weren’t just juking you out of your socks, they were having you dive head-first into brick as they jumped off of wall “hot spots” that could unlock NFL legends if the move was performed successfully.
It helped young gamers like myself learn about the strengths and weaknesses of NFL players and have fun while doing it. It presented real life athletes as mythical superheroes and helped a whole generation of kids become invested in watching football.
Oh and I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss the Gamebreaker, a staple of all EA Sports Big video games. After you gain a certain number of style points, you can unleash your Gamebreaker and enter a God Mode where your players can’t be tackled on offense and almost automatically pick off passes or force fumbles on defense.
For NFL Street 2 there was the Gamebreaker 2 where the play starts with a cut scene of you making some insane play and the amount of time you were in God Mode was doubled. And while actually being in the middle of a Gamebreaker was fun as hell, the real intrigue came in the strategy of when to deploy it.
Maybe your team struggles on defense so you rack up your style points on offense and use your Gamebreaker on the other side of the ball to make up for your deficiencies. Maybe you want to use your Gamebreaker, but your opponent also has one, and if you use it first your opponent can cancel yours. This game feature and its use is emblematic of how greatly NFL Street 2 balanced flair with substance.
Another thing that made the game so addicting is how many game modes there are. There’s the “Own The City” mode where your created player builds up his attributes and recruits other players onto his team in a series of tournament pickup games until they finally face Xzibit and his squad of NFL All-Pros.
There’s the “NFL Challenge” mode where your created team goes up against NFL teams in games with various objectives like gaining a certain amount of style points, forcing a certain number of fumbles, winning by only using run plays, etc. and you pick up NFL stars along the way as you beat the teams.
And finally there was the pickup game mode where NFL Street 2 became one of the first sports video games that allowed gamers to do fantasy drafts for single games (one of the first video games for consoles at least, as the Backyard Sports series on PC had us doing fantasy drafts back in the 90's). This gave you the option to put current players, created players and NFL legends on the same team. It was Madden Ultimate Team and 2K MyTEAM nearly a decade before Madden Ultimate Team and 2k MyTEAM.
There were also Street Events, mini-games devoted to specific attributes. There was Crush the Carrier, a hardcore version of keep-away where players would compete to see who could hold onto the ball the longest without fumbling.
There was Open Field Showdown, a 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 matchup of NFL players running head-on with the goal of scoring as many touchdowns as possible and preventing as many touchdowns as possible.
And finally there was the Jump Ball Battle, where the NFL’s best receivers attempt to outrun and out-jump each other for passes that are worth varying amounts of points. All of these events gave the game more depth than any other sports video game that was out at the time.
When you look at the baggy clothing the players are wearing and some of the dated slang that is incorporated throughout the game; NFL Street 2 was clearly a product of time and place. It encapsulated an era of sports and hip-hop culture that is long gone with its remnants dwindling by the year. In other words: it was as 2004 as 2004 could get.
Yet and still if you were to blow the dust off your copy of NFL Street 2 or order one for cheap on Ebay, you’d find yourself having just as much of a ball as you did when you were playing it back in 04 because the gameplay itself is timeless.
NFL Street 2 reminds us what the early 2000’s were all about while still immersing us into a universe so futuristic that video game franchises are struggling to catch up to it to this day. And that’s what makes it the greatest sports video game in the history of sports video games.
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