In this early excerpt from NBA Jam, a book from Boss Fight Books and author Reyan Ali coming in 2018, we learn about the night the development team from Midway let arcadegoers get their hands on their innovative, soon-to-be-legendary basketball game for the first time.
Sports Illustrated have published a great oral history of the original NBA Jam’s development, which includes gems like “I was down on the monster dunks, I have to admit. I loved the NBA for what it was; I didn’t want to turn this into a clown show.”
U.S. presidents—fictional or not—have had a major impact on video games. When a game has something to do with the United States, there’s a good chance the Commander-in-Chief is gonna show up.
Source code is among some of the most valuable finds that archivists can make. Thanks to some auction purchases, one preservationist now has the code for Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and NBA Jam Extreme.
If you want to play the 1994 Tournament Edition version of NBA Jam, but use LeBron James and Steph Curry instead of Shawn Kemp and John Stockton, then Hogs With A Blog have done you a great service and modded today’s superstars into yesteryear’s classic game.
Popular production company Rooster Teeth posted a new video in their Immersion series. Looking at game myths, this newest episode sees what would happen if one of the best things about NBA Jam was real.
A former Midway Games employee is raising money on Kickstarter for a documentary called Insert Coin, a look at the studio in the 90s. At the time, Midway was pumping out classic after classic—NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat, Smash TV. Looks interesting!
Remember the pure genius that was thatscoutisaspy's recreation of the Game Grumps absolutely losing it to Sonic '06? If you don't, do yourself a favor and get acquainted.
Well, this is strange. Chris Sanner of Operation Sports spotted a survey looking for people in the Vancouver area to serve in a focus group on a "New NBA Concept." EA Canada, in nearby Burnaby, for years was the studio responsible for the label's NBA products, right up to the ignominious cancellation of NBA Elite 11.
ESPN brought in Tim Kitzrow, the boom-shakalaka announcer of NBA Jam, to call this package of college and pro dunks.
Wow, EA Sports updated the roster for 2011's NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. The last one was nine months ago.
For the politically-inclined, Bill Clinton's speech last week at the Democratic National Convention seemed a slam dunk. Or, as this video shows, a collection of slam dunks, punctuated by the odd MONSTER JAM.
Here's video footage from what the folks at gaming archive website Nintendo Player say is an unreleased, R-rated prototype of the old Super Nintendo game NBA Jam.
News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:
EA Sports has confirmed to Kotaku that NBA Jam: On Fire Edition will be getting a roster update. The publisher's preceding silence on the subject had led some to believe it had abandoned post-release support for the 2-on-2 arcade basketball game.
We rarely get to see the process by which a video game is pitched to a publisher, even today in an age of developer diaries and all-access marketing. It's even rarer we get to see how a game was pitched all the way back in the early 90s.
The inability to switch off between players was one of the few drawbacks of an otherwise rollicking NBA Jam revival last year. It required some clunky manipulation of your starting lineup and defense, for those who actually played it, often left a man open as you instinctively swarmed to the guy your CPU partner was…
If you thought Elise, Mac, and Kaori were hot stuff on the slopes, wait'll you get a load of their moves on the court in the NBA Jam: On Fire Edition.
With the NBA lockout looking like it will wipe out a lot of games this year, some basketball video game makers are looking outside the league's real life rosters to create enthusiasm and interest. NBA 2K12 for example, is bringing 15 of the sport's greatest players to life. NBA Jam's going with goddamn honey badgers.
Trey Smith was showing off the new NBA Jam, subtitled the On Fire Edition at a recent EA gaming showcase. People were playing the new version near him while we chatted about how the new game will have better artificial intelligence. He seemed even more excited that the game is downloadable for Xbox 360 and PlayStation…
