Lifetime Basketball Double Shot Arcade Basketball Game Review.
I recently purchased the Lifetime Basketball Double Shot Arcade Basketball Game and figured I would write a quick review of the product and the assembly. It was kind of a fun little Christmas present idea for the family, which turned into a problem putting it together, and then turned to relief when we figured out the problem. Hopefully these tips will help you in the assembly process of your own system.Read the Double Shot instructions carefully!
This may sound like no-brainer, but I am serious when I say "carefully." First of all, there are many poles used in the construction of this unit; these poles must be used in the absolute correct position shown in the instructions to set up the unit properly. To Lifetime Products' credit, you cannot set up the unit in any other way than is shown in the instructions as the holes for the bolts and nuts will not line up properly. Second of all, the instructions say very nonchalantly that you should not over tighten the cap nuts (on page 18 of the instructions). The note at the bottom says to only tighten the nuts until they are "fingertight", meaning, use only your fingers to tighten until you cannot tighten any more. In any other instructions I have dealt with, this typically means that by overtightening you might bend the parts you are bolting together; or, you might strip the threads on the bolts. So, in accordance with these instructions, the moment we felt resistance on the bolt and nut we stopped tightening. Going through the instructions in this way, we flew through the steps and should have had the unit set up within an hour or so; but, we ran into a problem. When we got to the step that had us attach the parts lableled BMF and BLY (according to my instructions) - which are two poles connected together that come down diagonally from the back pole frame of the unit - we found that the holes did not line up to bolt this diagonal pole to the unit. At this point we went through a frenzy of reviewing all past steps, trying to force the unit into position, checking all parts, considering calling Lifetime Customer Service to complain (this would not have worked since they were closed, it just felt good to think we could have yelled and complained), and finally sitting down on the ground in defeat. At this point, just as we were about to box the whole thing up to return it to Lifetime as defective, I noticed the picture of the unit on the front of the box. The picture showed a portion of the system that did not look like what we had set up. There were a couple of poles that extended out from the back frame to which the poles mentioned above connected to on the bottom. The picture showed these poles angled down slightly, whereas ours extended out from the back pole frame perpendicularly. We then remembered the instruction from page 18 to not overtighten the nuts and we began loosening all surrounding nuts on the poles. To our overjoyment, the poles that had previously not lined up properly with the BMF/BLY poles now matched up perfectly as we could now angle them down. So the take home message is when Lifetime tells you to not overtighten the nuts and bolts, they actually mean they ought to be pretty loose so the poles can be moved into the right positions. After the construction was completed, we tightened the nuts so the unit had no wiggle.Review of Play on the Lifetime Basketball Double Shot Arcade Basketball Game.
After the angst buildup of putting the unit together, it was a great stress reliever to find that play on the unit was very nice. The overall construction of the unit is very solid and somewhat heavy, so there is not as much movement in this Double Shot as there has been in other previous Double Shot models. There is also not very much movement and an overall better design when compared with Sportcraft and Huffy arcade basketball games. Before we decided to get this unit, we went to Sports Authority to see what else was out there. We found a cheaper Sportcraft model, about $100, and played on it for a while. While for us any Arcade Basketball game is fun, we did not like the design of the system. In particular, we found the poles to be weak in design and the overall feel of the system to be all together too much plastic. Though at that point we had not seen the updated Double Shot game yet, we had read a lot about the unit and knew of the claims of it to be a better, stronger overall construction than comparable models. Now that we have seen both, I can definitely say that the claims are true. Another neat feature Lifetime Products has added to this arcade game is the use of infrared motion sensors for scoring. Previous Double Shot models, as well as all current competing Arcade Basketball models, used a plastic clicker to keep score. The use of plastic clickers typically results in two problems: one, the plastic clickers break and must be replaced; and two, during play, there is a possibility of faulty scorekeeping when the plastic clicker moves too much, resulting in missed scores and double-counted scores. From our expierence thus far, the score keeping with the infrared sensors is superior and incredibly accurate.Overall, I would reccomend the Double Shot system to anyone; but, I would also caution users to read the instructions carefully and take heed of my advice above.
