NBA Jam threw out most of basketball’s rules and kept the stars. Two players a side, no fouls, and dunks from ten feet in the air, with the faces of real NBA players stuck onto the bodies of local college players filmed in Chicago. Score three baskets in a row and the announcer shouts “He’s on fire!” while the ball trails flames. By later accounts it became one of the highest-earning arcade games ever made, the home versions sold millions for Acclaim, and Shaquille O’Neal, according to its designer, bought two machines, one for home and one to take on the road.
Fast facts
- Developer: Midway, part of Williams.
- Lead designer: Mark Turmell, earlier co-designer of Smash TV with Eugene Jarvis.
- Announcer: Tim Kitzrow.
- Released: arcades, 1993; home versions from Acclaim in 1994.
- Teams: all 27 NBA teams, two players each, 54 players in all.
- Graphics: digitised sprites of real people.
Making it
Williams had been digitising real people since NARC, and the same Chicago studios had just made Mortal Kombat. John Newcomer, the designer of Joust, recalled that after Super High Impact Football “Ed wanted to do Mortal Kombat and Mark was looking to start a team to take the High Impact formula to the next step with basketball”. Turmell told Retro Gamer that the NBA was “a natural fit for digitising: it had different characters, real-life personalities”.
The team started with three-on-three, but deciding which player a pass should go to complicated the controls, so they cut it to two-on-two. “We really wanted to make it simple to pick up and play, which was actually a lesson I learned from Eugene,” Turmell said.
The bodies were real players. Turmell drove round Chicago playgrounds, DePaul University and the YMCA looking for them. Nintendo Power reported in 1994 that most of the moves came from Willie Morris Jr., a young Michael Jordan fan filmed against a blue screen for three days. The team then swapped in the heads of NBA stars and made them about ten per cent larger, so players could tell who was who. The dunks grew in the same way. “I just did a dunk and thought ‘that’s cool,’ then had [the character] jumping a couple of feet higher and went ‘well that’s cooler,’” Turmell said.
Michael Jordan was not in it. He was in the version tested in Chicago, Turmell recalled, but had to be removed when he left the NBA.
Playing it
Each side has two players, and the controls are a joystick and buttons to shoot, pass and turbo. Players can shove opponents to steal the ball. “There are no rules or fouls, and the only call is Goaltending,” Sega Visions explained. The game also helped the side that was behind: in its Genesis coaching tips the same magazine noted that a team’s shooting percentage “increases substantially when you’re losing”.
The “on fire” rule was Turmell’s idea. “We felt the game needed another layer of pizzazz and interest,” he said. Two baskets in a row bring the call “He’s heating up!” A third sets the player on fire, with extra speed and deadly accuracy. Newcomer thought it “made the playing strategy very clear and gave an exclamation point visually when you see a blazing ball and net in embers”.
Tim Kitzrow, the play-by-play announcer, “would just ad-lib stuff like ‘Boomshakalaka!’ and ‘He’s on fire!’”, Turmell said. Both lines stayed with the game. Sega Visions asked of the Genesis version, borrowing another of his calls, “Is it the shoes?!?”
Secrets
NBA Jam was full of hidden extras. Early arcade versions had secret playable characters from Mortal Kombat, characters based on the developers with boosted statistics, and a hidden tank game, written by programmer Shawn Liptak, that could be played without paying. Operators and distributors complained to Midway about the free game. Turmell still had a letter that said “your programmers are out of control”. Later versions removed many of the secrets.
The secret characters used initials and PIN codes, and many of the PINs were birthdays: Turmell’s own character, MJT, was 322, for 22 March. In the Super NES version, codes published in spring 1994 unlocked Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
The money
Retro Gamer reported in 2013 that the game set a record by taking $2,468 in one week at a single location, and that it earned over a billion dollars in quarters in its first year. The NBA had at first refused to let its logo appear on the cabinet, because it associated arcades with seedy downtown halls; Midway made a video of suburban family entertainment centres to change its mind. Turmell said Midway paid the NBA “something in the order of $25 a cabinet”. After the game was out, he added a Seattle player, Gary Payton, to a special version for a distributor there. Shaquille O’Neal, Turmell said, took one of his two machines on road trips, so the game became “a sort of ‘insider’ game for the NBA”.
Home versions
Acclaim had the rights to Williams’ coin-op games at home, and announced NBA Jam at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1993. The Super NES and Mega Drive versions (the latter on Acclaim’s Arena label) arrived early in 1994, and Edge’s charts for June 1994, priced in pounds, had them at number two on the Super NES and three on the Mega Drive. Iguana Entertainment, which had an office in Middlesbrough, listed NBA Jam “for various platforms” among its recent titles in a recruitment advertisement that year. A Game Gear version kept the 54 players and the “On Fire” rule, and a Game Boy version was in progress by late 1994. Acclaim’s chief executive, Greg Fischbach, told Edge in 1998 that NBA Jam had sold four million copies and Tournament Edition two million.
Sequels
- NBA Jam Tournament Edition (1994) added more players, power-ups and injuries. Acclaim’s Super NES version saved records for 16 players.
- NBA Hangtime (1996) was the next game from Turmell, Sal DiVita and Midway’s NBA Jam team, with bigger players, created players and, at last, alley-oops.
- NBA Jam Extreme (1996) was Acclaim’s own NBA Jam, released in the arcades first.
- NFL Blitz (1997) applied Turmell’s formula to American football.
- NBA Jam (2010), from EA Sports, was developed by EA Canada for the Wii. Tim Kitzrow returned as the announcer.
Sources
- Nintendo Power issue 51, August 1993, p. 110: the Summer CES report; Acclaim’s NBA Jam “in the works”.
- SNES Force issue 10, March 1994, pp. 22–25: the Super NES version (Acclaim; 54 players from 27 teams; advance copies as competition prizes).
- Sega Visions, April 1994, pp. 22–24: the Genesis version (Arena; “no rules or fouls”; “On Fire” with three consecutive baskets; the announcer’s “Boom-shaka-laka!”; “Is it the shoes?!?”; the catch-up rule) and the Game Gear version.
- Nintendo Power issue 59, April 1994, p. 55: Bill Clinton and Al Gore codes for the Super NES version.
- Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 20, May 1994: the Super NES secret characters, including Clinton and Gore.
- Edge issue 9, June 1994: UK charts, p. 86; Iguana Entertainment advertisement, p. 88; Williams as distributor of the arcade NBA Jam.
- Nintendo Power issue 62, July 1994, p. 58: Mark Turmell, lead designer; Willie Morris Jr.’s three days of filming.
- Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 26, November 1994, p. 110: Game Boy version in progress.
- Nintendo Power issue 70, March 1995, p. 10: NBA Jam Tournament Edition (power-ups, injuries, records for 16 players).
- Nintendo Magazine System (Australia) issue 37, April 1996, p. 8: Acclaim’s NBA Jam Extreme, arcades first.
- GamePro, July 1996, p. 20: online conference with Mark Turmell, Sal DiVita and “Williams/Bally/Midway’s NBA Jam design team” on NBA Hangtime (larger court and players, create-a-player, alley-oops “finally”).
- Edge issue 59, June 1998, pp. 22–25: Greg Fischbach on the sales of NBA Jam and Tournament Edition.
- Retro Gamer issue 116, July 2013, pp. 38–41: “The making of NBA Jam” (Turmell and John Newcomer on the design, Kitzrow, the filming, Jordan, the secrets, the NBA licence, the earnings, Shaquille O’Neal, NFL Blitz).
- Electronic Arts, “EA announces Tim Kitzrow as the voice of EA Sports NBA Jam”, press release, 14 May 2010 (web, secondary): EA Canada; Wii; autumn 2010. https://s204.q4cdn.com/701424631/files/doc_news/2010/05/1/469764.pdf