Collection essentials #291: NBA Jam (SCD)

If you’ve been following this series then you might have been surprised at the absence of NBA Jam up until now, as it didn’t appear among my SNES or Genesis games. That’s because my preferred version is this one, on the Sega CD!

This is a game from the highly successful American arcade game developer Midway, who had been around a while by the time they released this game in arcades in 1993. They had developed non-traditional arcade sports games before, and in fact this wasn’t even their first such basketball game, as they had previously made Arch Rivals. But NBA Jam skyrocketed way past them to new heights of popularity. In fact, this is one of the absolutely top most successful arcade games of all time. If you spent much time at all in arcades in the ‘90s, you are almost certainly familiar with NBA Jam.

I’ve explained before how “arcade-style” sports games often don’t try to go for a realistic design, and instead focus on fast-paced action that’s easy to pick up and play. NBA Jam is the perfect example of this. The game features real NBA teams and players, but rather than a five-on-five match, instead it’s two-on-two. Many regular basketball rules do not apply, as there are no fouls, for example. The three-point line still exists, and goaltending does too, but that’s about it. This helps keep the game simple and straightforward, easy to understand even for people who aren’t very familiar with basketball. In addition, if you’re controlling your team alone (as opposed to two human players controlling the two players), you won’t even fully control one of your two players even if he has the ball. The computer will control their movement, though you can still order them to shoot or pass.

The game features three buttons, two of which change functions depending if you’re on offense or defense. There’s a button for shooting and jump-blocking, a button for passing and attempting to steal the ball, and a “turbo” button which will make your character temporarily move faster when held down. The turbo button can be combined with the shoot button when close to the hoop for big, fancy, ridiculous dunks. Which brings me to another fun part of NBA Jam, the lack of realism. Dunking is often greatly exaggerated past what is possible in real life, with players jumping extremely high in the air before coming down (which you can’t do otherwise). There’s also the “on fire” mechanic; if any one of the four players on the court gets three baskets in a row before the other team scores next, he will be “on fire” and the ball will ignite. That player will be able to use “turbo” as much as they want and they will hit almost any shot they take. The power-up goes away the next time the other team scores, which typically doesn’t take very long, but it’s still a thrill to achieve it and can help tip the game in your favor.

Another fun thing about NBA Jam is the now-legendary announcer, whose work became so popular that he went on to do similar work in future Midway sports games, and now most retro gamers even know his name, Tim Kitzrow. He doesn’t quite do a play-by-play call of the game, only piping in with exclamations or short sentences, but it’s just the right amount to complement the action. His most notable and memorable lines are from when someone makes a shot, with lines like “Razzle dazzle!” and “Boomshakala!”, and most famous of all, “He’s on fire!” when a player has achieved their third score in a row for the special power-up. These voice clips are iconic and often repeated among gamers who were around in the ‘90s.

There are also some fun cheat codes in the game to make things even more wacky. As I believed I mentioned once or twice before, “cheat codes” are pretty much a lost art and you almost never see them in modern video games, but they used to be very common. This game has cheat codes to do stuff like play a game with infinite turbo or infinite “on fire”, or to play as a variety of secret characters, most famously President Clinton.

My own history with NBA Jam largely involved playing it at friends’ houses, as I didn’t own it growing up. I don’t think I played the arcade version very much, because surprisingly the arcades I frequented the most didn’t have it from what I recall. This Sega CD copy shown in the photo was one of the games gifted to me by my cousin’s husband when he donated his childhood video game stuff, and I instantly was very pleased with it in comparison to the SNES and Genesis versions. The loading times are longer because of the game being on a CD, but the audio is a vast improvement, and the graphics are pretty good despite not quite being exactly the same as in the arcade. 

Sadly Michael Jordan did not appear in this game because they would have to get a special license to use him and they opted not to. However, there was a special version of the arcade cabinet made for Jordan himself which had him in the game! 

You knew NBA Jam in some form had to be on this list. It’s the most iconic sports game of its kind, and despite sequels, the original game is still totally worth playing and always a good multiplayer option. An absolutely iconic essential.