You'll more than likely coach your own games as this is the most enjoyable aspect of the game.  Like everything else in the game you have your choice of how much you want to control and how much to hand over to the computer.  You can control offensive and defensive strategies, substitutions, and tune your team's style of play with a number of sliders for options such as slow versus up tempo play, perimeter versus post offense, and percentage of three point attempts.  The games play out in real-time, with scrolling text play by play, an overhead view of the court which marks the location of made and missed shots, and continually updated game statistics.  You can pause the game at any time to change strategies, but can only make substitutions during game time outs.  A slider can be used to set the speed of the game clock to a tempo of your liking. 

The games lack fancy graphics - in fact there are not even any players moving around the court.  However, coaching the games can be quite addicting, and you'll be constantly fine-tuning your strategies and line ups as each game progresses.  This is a game for those who love the strategies involved in games like college basketball, something typical video basketball games do a poor job of modeling. 

As the season progresses, you can check the weekly polls to see if your team has cracked the top twenty, and even see a list of teams considered "on the bubble" for post-season play.  Speaking of the post-season, the game takes you through the conference tournaments as well as the equivalents of the NCAA and NIT tournaments.  Coaching your team through the March Madness games will generate even more excitement.  Watching the games play out provides almost the same level of tension as watching the real thing, especially if your team is down by four in the last minute or trying to hold off a furious rally.

Once the season champion is crowned, your seniors will move on and recruits will join the team.  You'll move on to the training phase, unless your poor performance gets you fired by your school.  You can also apply to coach at other schools or entertain offers from interested universities.  The season then begins anew, giving you another shot at the title.

Tournament of Champions will not win any awards for graphics.  It looks nice enough, but everything is geared towards functionality over flash.  The user interface is not very intuitive and it will take a little time to figure out how to access all of the game's features and make your way through the season.  The menus look the same whether their functionality is currently enabled or not, so only through trial and error will you eventually learn what functions are available during each phase of the season.  It would have been nice had the interface been implemented better, but those with a low patience level won't be attracted to this type of game in the first place.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 80%. This is not the game for the typical sports game player.  If you love pouring over sports stats and the strategy that goes into building a winning basketball program, you'll find Tournament Dreams to be both fascinating and addicting.

System Requirements: Pentium II 266; 64 MB RAM;  8 MB Video RAM;  60 MB Hard Drive Space;  Mouse.

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