If you can get past the poor control and slow play, NBA Live '97 is extremely deep and beautiful to watch. A reviewer for Next Generation mentioned most of these merits but was a dissenting voice against the game, commenting that 'The super-slow gameplay just accentuates the basic flaws in a dying engine that desperately needs to be revamped. Critics praised the dramatic improvement in graphics and animation over the previous installment, the large number of options, the exhaustive playbook, and the custom jerseys created through the create-a-player feature. Most reviews for the original release on PlayStation were highly positive. With sprites, if you look straight down at them, it's like looking straight down at a piece of paper. We've got an overhead camera for some of our replay stuff that looks straight down. Plus, it's enabled us to make our cameras freer. You have infinite directions they can point in any direction. Second, you're not limited to eight directions. Now, again, you're limited to the set of motion data you can have but, first of all, they run at 30 frames per second. Now, when you move on to the rendered-on-the-fly guys, once you put the models in, you then have to apply the motion data to them. With sprites, you're limited to prerendered animations, right? You're limited to the number of directions you choose, the number of frames you have for each animation, and, of course, because you're limited to the amount of RAM you have on the system, you're not really able to do all the things you want. (son of Tarrnie Williams Sr.) explained the decision to have the series switch from using sprites to polygonal models for the players: Audio commentary was provided by Al Murdoch and Ernie Johnson Jr.

Sacramento Kings players Mitch Richmond and Tyus Edney were among the motion capture actors. The player animations were all created using motion capture.

It was also the first NBA Live released for the Sega Saturn. The MS-DOS, Sega Saturn and PlayStation versions featured polygonal models for the on-court players, thus marking it as the first 3D EA Sports Basketball sequel for the series.

The game was developed by EA Sports and released on November 1, 1996. The cover features Mitch Richmond of the Sacramento Kings. NBA Live 97 is the third installment of the NBA Live video games series.

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