RealSports Basketball was announced in 1983, but was never officially released for the original Atari platforms. Unlike the other games in the RealSports series, Atari decided to contract the programming of the game to Roklan who had recently done Crazy Climber for them. Although the game was finalized and given to Atari, they ultimately decided to not publish it. There's no concrete explanation as to why this was, but there may have been some concerns about the gameplay not being as polished as it should be.
A playable prototype (assumed to be 100% complete) surfaced online in 1998. A physical version (limited to 250 copies) including a box, manual, and cartridge was sold at the 2002 Classic Gaming Expo courtesy of Retrodesign. It was later included on AtGames' Atari Flashback plug-and-play consoles and, most recently, in the Atari50 compilation.
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