NBA in the Zone '98

Music

Interestingly, a few of the game's songs would later make appearances in some of the games in Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series, as In the Zone '98's composer, Yuichi Asami, also worked on that series, and his alias for those songs' DDR versions, NPD3, happen to be the initials of this game's Japanese version (NBA Power Dunkers 3)

The first track was After the Game of Love, introduced on the console version of Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix, which was based on the match results and credits music of In the Zone '98, but with added vocals, performed by Konami staff member Scott Dolph (under the alias Scotty D.). The lyrics themselves, while not particularly explicit, were rather risque, being about love-making, so when the song made it outside of Japan as part of Dance Dance Revolution: Konamix and Dancing Stage Party Edition, Konami decided to replace it with a version called After the Game, which was essentially the same as the original In the Zone '98 song. Oddly enough, North America would get After the Game of Love exactly a year after Konamix, when it was included as part of Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix, without any edits and still keeping an E rating. Ultramix's European counterpart, Dancing Stage Unleashed, did not get either version.

The second song appeared much later, as part of the 2010 Dance Dance Revolution (both the PS3/360 game and its Wii counterpart), fittingly under the name In the Zone. It's an arrangement of In the Zone '98's intro music, but, as with the previous example, with added vocals, more in the style of a rap song. The connection to its original source material is much more blatant in comparison to After the Game of Love, as the song's "jacket" artwork features a basketball with "IN THE ZONE" written on it in the exact same font and styling as in the original NBA In the Zone series logos, and the added lyrics are about basketball instead of something else entirely.

Both After the Game of Love and In the Zone would later appear on the arcade DDR installments, as part of Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix Plus and Dance Dance Revolution X3 vs. 2nd Mix, respectively, with both songs still being present on recent installments.