Play Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs Online

Man, Lakers vs. Celtics on MS-DOS was such a big deal back in '89—first NBA-licensed game ever, which felt insane at the time. You got all the legends: Magic Johnson throwing no-look passes, Larry Bird draining threes, and a young Michael Jordan just starting to take over. Even the rosters were legit, pulling from actual playoff teams from the previous season.

Gameplay was simple but solid—pick your squad, set quarter length (anywhere from 2 to 12 minutes if you wanted a full sim experience), and go at it in exhibition or playoff mode. The computer AI wasn’t exactly genius, but playing against a friend? That’s where the real trash talk happened. Kareem’s skyhook was borderline unstoppable if you timed it right.

It’s janky by today’s standards, but for late-80s basketball fans, this was the closest thing to controlling your heroes. You could tell they were figuring out the whole "official sports game" thing as they went.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".