This Week In Retro: NBA Jam (Patreon)

April 1993: Welcome to the jam

by Diamond Feit

Amongst video game fans, sports occupy a strange space. Perhaps dating back to high school cultural clashes, many self-described "nerds" happily profess a disinterest or total ignorance of professional sports teams, players, and history. Yet video games resembling popular sports were amongst the very first titles to exist, and long-running sports-driven franchises routinely rank amongst the top sellers year after year. At this point, more Americans recognize the late John Madden for placing his name on Electronic Arts' football simulations than his actual accomplishments in the National Football League or the broadcast booth.

While I grew up with a profound athletic deficiency, participating in but rarely enjoying sports such as baseball or soccer due to my raw incompetence, I developed a fascination with the celebrity-caliber athletes and dramatic clashes that dominated popular culture. This drove teenage-me to actively edify myself about the "big four" pro sports leagues in the United States: Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and the aforementioned NFL.

My self-motivated sports education couldn't have come at a better time for my local teams. The New York Yankees languished in the 1980s only to build a championship-level squad in the mid-90s. The New York Knicks and Rangers both reached elite status in the early 90s, with the Rangers actually ending a decades-long title drought in 1994. Best of all, the very first Super Bowl I watched live on television still stands today as an all-time classic contest, a one-point victory by the New York Giants.

Yet even though I managed to forge a passion for sports, this did not crossover with my interest in video games. Instead, I grew to loathe sports games, as I failed to find button-driven action as compelling as the authentic article which I watched on television. It didn't help matters that most sports games settled for make-believe teams and players rather than attempt to license real organizations or stars. The Atari 2600, the NES, the Genesis, the NEO•GEO…I tried my hand at various sports titles on all these consoles and never managed to develop a lasting interest in any of them.

Given my personal history with the genre, no one was more surprised than me when an NBA Jam arcade cabinet grabbed my full attention in April of 1993. The game featured every NBA team and an entire roster of real players—emphasis on real thanks to its digitized graphics which included the actual headshots of every participant. The courtside view and on-screen graphics all imitated the perspective of watching an NBA game on television, adding to its air of verisimilitude, but these pixelated players pulled off moves their flesh-and-blood counterparts could only dream of.

NBA Jam distills the game of basketball down to its most basic elements, retaining its core action of putting balls into hoops along with superficial trappings such as brands and personalities, but dropping everything else that might interrupt the moment-to-moment fun of running up and down the court. Pro basketball pits five players against five players, but NBA Jam is strictly two-on-two. A standard arcade cabinet supports up to four paying customers at once, but any vacancies are filled automatically by the AI. This means a session of NBA Jam runs the gamut from a solo experience, a co-op battle versus the computer, a competition against another human, to a full-on four-player contest.

The rules of basketball are similarly subject to omission in favor of simplifying the real game into an arcade simulation. A ticking clock and separate shot clock keeps the action moving at all times, forcing the side with the ball to advance or risk losing possession. Players automatically dribble the ball, so there is no risk of traveling, but holding onto the ball or jumping in place—e.g. faking a shot—does force them to stand still or pass. Grabbing an opponent's shot just before it enters the basket triggers a goaltending penalty, but otherwise NBA Jam has no referee and will never call a foul.

Removing nearly all infractions means not only eliminating free throws from NBA Jam but it encourages aggressive play on both sides. If you’re on offense, you cannot leisurely stroll up the court without getting hammered by a defender and dropping the ball, so the best strategy is to hustle towards the basket and pass, pass, pass. On defense, you want that ball, and though the crowd may disapprove there’s no penalty for shoving your opponent to the ground in order to take the rock.

Unrestricted tackling might sound like NBA Jam gives the defending players too much of an advantage, but in fact the opposite is true: Without ruthlessly tenacious defense to keep your superhuman opponents in check, just about any player inside the key can deliver a powerful dunk. These dunks in NBA Jam steal the show as they range from a simple overhand slam to soaring somersaults, all accompanied by thundering sound effects and a juiced-up announcer who exists in a permanently excited state.

With fewer players on the court, a shorter timer adding a sense of urgency, and a liberal interpretation of the rulebook, NBA Jam basketball games feature lots of fast breaks, rapid ball movement, and exceptionally high scores. At just three minutes a quarter, a full game of NBA Jam lasts less than 15 minutes, yet both teams can easily rack up over 50 points—especially if the CPU detects one team has a runaway lead and jukes the odds to let the trailing team catch up. This rubber-band AI which evens out the odds helps make the game more fun in player-vs-player matchups, but it infuriated me as a single player because it meant no matter how well I performed, the computer could always stage a miraculous comeback in the final minutes.

(My galaxy-brain strategy to counter this unfair situation was to insert a coin into the opposing team's slot and saddle them with one inert player for the entire fourth quarter. No amount of cheating can overcome a simple two-on-one)

But wait, you exclaim, what happened to "I grew to loathe sports games" as written above? NBA Jam defied the odds and completely took over my life in 1993 thanks to its hyperbolic, hyper-real reinterpretation of basketball. Unbound by physics and common sense, NBA Jam served as true wish-fulfillment, allowing me to become not just a competent baller, but an omega-level mutant. In real life I couldn't dunk if you gave me a stepladder and a trampoline, but when I hit the arcade, I could leap from the foul line, fly into the rafters, and then come crashing down onto the rim while the announcer screamed "BOOMSHAKALAKA."

Even though the fighting game craze was in full-effect and my NEO•GEO fandom grew in intensity with each new release, every day after school I made a fast break of my own to the closest NBA Jam machine in town and pumped six or seven dollars into the coinbox so I could get my dunk on. Some days I didn't even wait for school to end and would slip out during designated study periods to get in a quick slam. I had an added incentive to keep coming back because each cabinet saved player progress via a primitive user ID system; entering your initials and birthday created a permanent data file which recorded wins and losses. Like a fighting game, NBA Jam maintained a tier list of teams ranking them from weakest to strongest, and each time I played, the game would gradually pit me against more challenging opponents. Given the time of its release, and no doubt influenced by developer Midway's Chicago roots, the Bulls served as the "last boss" of NBA Jam, though notably without Michael Jordan as the NBA did not own his likeness rights.

Sadly, unlike Midway's other early-90s arcade smash with digitized graphics, NBA Jam never developed into a proper franchise. It burned bright, earning billions of dollars (yes, with a B), but after a dispute between Midway and Acclaim the brand fell into chaos and eventually shuffled off the court. Periodic attempts to revive NBA Jam as a property met with limited success; even though millions played and loved the original game, that hasn't translated into enough groundswell to get the title off the bench and back into shape. A 2010 release for the Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 remains the last NBA Jam game to see the light of day as of this writing.

However, the state of 21st-century pop culture has proven that no popular 90s relic can stay buried forever. If decades of nostalgia and goofy YouTube remixes can lead to a Space Jam sequel of all things, then I'm confident NBA Jam can make a comeback considering how both basketball and video games have more fans today than ever before. With the magic of digital distribution, a modern incarnation could handle roster updates and even offer special characters as à la carte downloadable extras. It might not make a billion dollars, since gamers are no longer paying by the quarter, but a faithful NBA Jam with online capabilities and customer character creation would certainly print money—or, as the saying goes, make it rain.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.