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This is the original project brief the repository was started from, kept verbatim in spirit so contributors share the same goals. See Architecture for how the code is organised today and How to Play for the short version.
NtBA is an open-source basketball game that recreates the look and feel of the late-1980s era of the sport on home computers — specifically the genre anchored by Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs (Electronic Arts, 1989).
It is a five-on-five basketball game built around a fixed, elevated sideline view of the full court, rendered in faithful 1980s pixel art: a visible, limited palette, a detailed hardwood court with painted markings, tiny individually-animated players, a crowded arena, benches, officials, and a period-style broadcast scoreboard.
The goal is to reproduce the experience of that era, not to apply a pixel-art filter on top of a modern game: recognizable action, readable player motion, and arena atmosphere.
The name is a deliberate pun — NtBA: Not the Basketball Association — an independent project with no affiliation to any real league. Team names, player identities and rosters are out of scope for now. What matters first is the game itself: court, animation, flow of play, scoring, clock.
The 1989 original was an early licensed NBA game that made specific, real stars part of the gameplay and presented the game like a broadcast, with starting-lineup introductions and a halftime show. NtBA asks whether that experience can be built faithfully, with modern tooling, as an open project — a love letter to a specific era of sports gaming, and an exercise in building a playable basketball simulation from first principles, pixel art included.
Historical footnote: the title celebrates the Celtics–Lakers rivalry, but the Detroit Pistons won the 1989 NBA championship. Nostalgia rarely matches the box score.
- Faithful, not filtered. Authentic period pixel art and presentation: low resolution, nearest-neighbour scaling, a deliberately limited palette, hand-authored sprites and arena.
- The game comes first. Names, rosters and real-league identity are deferred. A complete, playable five-on-five loop is the priority; generic fictional teams stand in.
- Own everything. Original sprites and sounds inspired by the era — never copyrighted game assets.
- Open by design. Public, open-source, GPL.
- Rust compiled to WebAssembly. Simulation, rules, ball physics, player AI and scoring live in Rust; the browser handles display, input and audio. The same core can later run natively.
- Online peer-to-peer play. Two players face each other directly, no central game server. Browser first, architecture kept compatible with a desktop build.
- Bot play. With no human opponent, an AI opponent plays a believable game. The same AI is the building block for filling a court with active players on both sides.
- Single-player versus AI is the first milestone: a recognizable retro court, ten animated players, a controllable basketball, a scoring loop, and an opponent that plays back.
- Player identities and rosters — deliberately out of scope initially.
- Exact internal resolution and palette — tune against reference research (see Reference Games).
- Online play: lock-step peer-to-peer over WebRTC with a small signalling service, an online lobby, peer-to-peer chat and challenges; see Online Play. Open items: cross-browser and cross-network verification, a TURN fallback decision, rollback and spectators.
- Desktop packaging — planned, but secondary to a stable browser game.
Beyond the 1989 EA game, two other games shape the target:
- TV Sports: Basketball (Cinemaware, 1990) is the graphics-fidelity reference. Its camera switches between a sideline view for transition play and an end-on view looking at the basket for half-court play, and it presents the game as a TV broadcast with a desk presenter and mock commercials. It also lets players create their own players. Those last three ideas are on the Roadmap and the issue tracker (presentation is far future).
- A slightly later EA basketball game is the reference for the floor, sprite and HUD look.
See Reference Games for notes and sources. As always, everything we ship is original.