Sports games have had a hard time adapting to the handheld market, even the wide-screen Sony PSP. While a game on PS3 or Xbox 360 can come across like the Cartier of sports games, put the same thing on a handheld and suddenly it’s not just the graphics that suffer, but the AI, the feature set and more.

Of course, this year’s version of Sony’s NBA title, NBA 08 for PSP, is hardly a great example of depth and versatility. Even on PS3, the game lacks depth, still neglecting to add a much-needed franchise mode, and this time around axing the “popular for the last couple years” storytelling mode, The Life.

Apparently, Sony’s sports game folks think gamers on the go actually WANT their sports games to lack depth. Why else would they also deny users the ability to increase quarter-length in season mode from four minutes to something a bit beefier, like eight minutes? In fact, most of the user options are well hidden in the game’s interface, and even when you can track it down and set your user file to preferring 8-minute quarters, often when you save that and start a new season mode, you’ll find yourself playing 4-minute quarters anyway, with no way to even change that up.

It’s disappointing in the extreme, especially since Sony’s finally found a way to make their controls for the game on PSP a bit more accessible. Not that you’ll be facing CPU opponents who are all that crafty; the AI in the game is a funky, unpredictable beast that at times will play rock-stupid, letting you go up 20-8 in a half, but then often goes into unstoppable mode in the second half, outscoring you 38-10. There’s just no consistency to it.

Online play is built into the game naturally and looks like it might work well, but like its PS3 cousin, I could not find any opponents online – at all – to play against to more fairly evaluate the online mode.

The graphics in the game are acceptable by PSP sports game standards, but not by any other unit of measurement, and it makes one wish 2K Sports would get off their butts and bring both NBA 2K8 and College Hoops 2K8 onto the PSP. So far, though, no luck on that score.

Another area where the game falls apart is in roster accuracy; I put the PSP version of the game to the same “Minnesota Timberwolves roster accuracy” test that I used on its PS3 big brother. Again, NBA 06 for PSP is an utter failure on roster accuray.

Amazingly enough, the game is even worse than the PS3 version containing all-different roster errors, though the most eggregious is, once again, the complete MIA status of draft pick Corey Brewer. I mean, I can understand missing second-round pick Chris Richard. But Brewer was the seventh overall pick in this year’s NBA draft. How the hell do you screw that up? (And yes, they have the draft accounted for, because Kevin Durant and Greg Oden are in the game.)

Once again, that’s unforgivable.

About the only thing NBA 08 for PSP has going for it is a feature called Block Party, in which you get a ton of mini-games you can play online against human opponents. The company also claims it will offer weekly roster update files, but I already downloaded the first one and it still didn’t correct any of the terrible roster inaccuracies with the Wolves. It just looks like Sony would rather pretend Brewer doesn’t exist that patch him into the game. Whatever.

Also, there may be more mini-games available via download, perhaps as many as one a week, so the novelty of those might help maintain interest over the course of the season.

But I’ll take accurate rosters, deep features and a kickass franchise mode over Block Party any day of the week and twice on Sundays. After making strides the past couple seasons, Sony’s NBA franchise is strictly NBA D-League material.