There’s an old saying, “He who laughs last, laughs best.” EA BIG didn’t invent the “extreme basketball” genre (subgenre?). Midway owns that particular honor, beginning with the classic Arch-Rivals and the original smash arcade hit, NBA Jam, but despite the Midway legacy, EA BIG has certainly done more than any other company in the last, say, five years to refine it.

Of course, there’s also another old saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That particular tenet has never held much sway with the folks at EA, and that hasn’t always been a good thing (I’m thinking in particular of the reinvention of Triple Play from the excellent baseball series on the Genesis to the homer-happy arcadefest of later years). In the case of NBA Street v3, though, not only is it a good thing, the result might just be one of the better basketball games around, “extreme” labels be damned.

Of course, when I say that EA Canada “fixed” the NBA Street series, what I really mean is that they completely rebuilt the sucker. Oh, some of the fundamental aspects of the game remain: NBA Street v3 is still a 3-on-3 hoopfest, and you still play the role of a burgeoning baller aspiring to street glory. The mighty “Gamebreaker” is still around, albeit changed, and the trick system has been completely revamped. And just to top it all off, sort of the vanilla ice cream on the apple pie, the graphics have taken on a decidedly more realistic hue.

We’ll get to that, though. For the moment, let’s start with the meat of the game: the career mode. As with last year, you begin by creating a player, and allocating Street points to his initial ratings set. Those of you familiar with classic RPG conventions may be interested to know that the cost of raising a given skill by one point increases as the skill in question is developed. For example, going from 9 points to 10 in a skill will be significantly less expensive than going from 39 to 40 points in the same skill. Of course, the custom aspect of the game goes beyond that. For example, you can also unlock different sets of clothing for your character to wear as he progresses through the game, and you even get to – well, have to, really – design your own court, which you can then trick out with different settings, surfaces, etc, all using those Street points mentioned earlier.

Once you get rolling, you’ll have a crew of three to start with, and as you defeat various squads, you’ll be able to lift players from the teams you beat to fill out your roster, just like both previous versions of NBA Street. Yes, you can still do this with the NBA players, but you must pay them Street points to gain them, and you have to keep them happy with a combination of playing time and (if you don’t give ‘em the PT) more Street points. And even after all that, they can still leave, so you’ll need to manage your superstars’ egos carefully.

The Career mode has gotten a bit of an overhaul from Street v2. This time around, Career play covers a certain number of days, and instead of trying to build from no rep to a big rep and playing all the events along the way to get there, this time around, there’s a list of events at your fingertips at all times, and the higher your reputation, the more events you have available to play…and the diversity level among the events is much higher in Street v3 than it was in Street v2.

So that’s the skeleton of the game, and there are already some pretty significant overhauls to consider. As we get into the gameplay itself, consider this: that’s just the beginning.

The trick system from the previous two games has been drastically overhauled. Instead of simply holding a combination of turbo buttons to pull off a move, the right analog stick has now been dubbed the “Trick Stick,” and movements of the “Trick Stick” in conjunction with the aforementioned turbo button presses. The result is a vastly expanded library of trick moves, and completing all of those moves unlocks books of additional moves. In short, whatever skills you thought you had in NBA Street v2, they are but pale imitations of the skills you’ll eventually acquire in Street v3.

Also, veterans of the series will remember that when the Gamebreaker was unleashed in the pass, it was basically a guaranteed two (or three) points with a stock animation of sick moves. That’s not the case this year. When the Gamebreaker goes off, you can use the Trick Stick to pull off moves in mid-air, increasing the trick points you get for doing so. It goes beyond that, though, since your performance on the court affects the rate at which your reputation develops, and if you’re gaining trick points at a prodigious rate, you can bet that your reputation will be growing at a similar rate.

Visually, it’s a little bit difficult to describe the changes between Street v2 and Street v3, at least in an aesthetic sense. It isn’t that the graphics for Street v3 are inherently any better or worse than they are in the previous versions, but they certainly have a much more realistic flavor to them than the cartoony stylings of the previous games…if you can ignore the Mushroom Kingdom crew, of course. There’s also a new lighting system, allowing you to play games during different times of day, and giving the court a different glow based on that time of day.

The sound, on the other hand, I wasn’t terribly crazy about. I’ve never been big on hip-hop, although it certainly fits with the atmosphere of the game, so that’s okay. The music itself doesn’t bother me so much as the repetition of it does. If you play this game enough, you’re going to hear all of these tracks repeatedly, and while they may never reach the level of “Let’s Get It Started” in The Urbz, eventually they’re going to grate on you. The same is, sadly, true of the commentary, although until the freshness fades, it’s certainly excellent.

The bottom line is that while NBA Street v3 is a must-own, those of you with multiple consoles are probably better served picking it up for Xbox or PS2 – not so much for any technical reasons such as graphics or gameplay, but more because they feature online play, while Nintendo remains inexplicably absent from the online arena, choosing instead to allow their mascots to grace NBA Street v3…as they will upcoming versions of Tony Hawk and Dance Dance Revolution. However, even if you only own a GameCube, absolutely pick this game up, because even without the online element, Street v3 is still excellence personified.