Now, this is what I'm talking about! Game publishers are finally digging deep into their classics, updating them for modernity, and making them available for download on the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. NBA Jam, one of the most beloved sports arcade games of the last generation of gamers… wait, what? It's not an XBLA and PSN title? It's a $39.99 retail title released by the (current) most money-grubbing publisher on the planet, Electronic Arts? Can I start all over again?
For those gamers just graduating from elementary and middle school, NBA Jam was a fantastically popular series of arcade and cartridge-based console games that turned basketball into a wild, rim-shaking, backboard-breaking jamfest. Four players could play two-on-two games with the hottest players in the NBA, with point guards raining threes, power forwards jumping 40 feet in the air to dunk, and shooting guards breaking ankles on their way to an easy basket. Extreme athleticism was on display in the NBA Jam series, and it was paired up nicely with the Jordan-Barkley-Malone era of big name superstars.
Today's NBA features more teams but less true stars, and re-launching NBA Jam could be a solution to that problem, if tweens everywhere suddenly know every team's two to four best players by name, face, and playing strengths. EA Sports had a brilliant plan - release their newest NBA Live title, redesigned and renamed to compete with the popular NBA 2k series - and include the Midway classic as a pack-in. Then, reality struck. The new redesign wasn't ready for prime time, and the new game (NBA Elite 11) was shelved. The bean counters at EA scrambled for a way to grab some quick hoops dollars, and came up with the worst idea they could have - release the pack-in bonus as a nearly full-priced retail game. Yuck.
From a positive perspective, gamers could have sunk $60 on an admittedly awful NBA Elite 11 with NBA Jam in the box, so this is really a $20 discount, right? No, wrong. NBA Jam is a simple game that belongs on XBLA or PSN, and the decision to ship it to retail brought along a lot of dead weight. In addition to the higher cost, the game is hampered by horrible load times, an absurdly lengthy campaign mode, and some of the worst background music I've ever heard. It's great that NBA Jam is on the market again, giving today's kids the chance to enjoy its madcap action, but when they have to wait half a minute for the next menu to pop up, the "Play Now" mode seems like a cruel joke. NBA Jam is the essence of immediate gratification - a couple buttons, very little skill needed, and you're rolling. It was perfect for tossing a quarter (or cartridge) in and playing mere seconds later, not for loading screen after screen of titles, settings, and rosters.
The music, as I mentioned, is just terrible. Not "the reviewer doesn't get hip-hop" terrible, just clear-cut "repetitive, generic, wanna-be hip-hop" terrible. One song in particular grated on my nerves so badly I had to mute the game - the constant "Ah-hah!" shriek in the background reminded me more of Mr. Hankey (South Park) than a musician. On the plus side, the commentary is original, not too repetitive, and pretty funny. Lines like "No hoop for you!" made me laugh, and the tone is perfect for the action onscreen. The other sound effects are typical of the genre, thankfully not bogged down with constant sneaker-squeaking like some past basketball titles.
The graphics are nearly exactly what you might expect from an NBA Jam title, with one notable exception: the player's heads aren't actually rendered in real-time 3D, so instead of having smooth movement from all angles, there are maybe eight different angled head images, so the heads pop from right to up-right to up, looking a bit like paper-based animation (again, think South Park). Additionally, some of the characters seem less accurate than others - Bill Laimbeer looked more like an XBL avatar than an All-Star enforcer. None of it looks bad, though, and the "He's on fire!" effects are just as cool as they were fifteen years ago.
NBA Jam initially featured only one gameplay mode, but EA decided to overpack this game with a whole bunch of modes, some more annoying than others. First off, you'll jump into the tutorial Jam Camp, which stupidly forced you to use the analog stick controls rather than the buttons, despite the fact that the buttons work fine in the real game. What's more, you have to complete it, or the game with remind you every time you're on the main menu. On the plus side, completing Jam Camp unlocks Big Head Mode, which is the game's bread and butter. On the bad side… oh, the music. There's a campaign mode that runs the gamer through their entire division, and winning it all forces them to face off with some classic greats, a fun element that re-introduces players you've forgotten. These veterans pop up in the campaign Remix mode as well, which is even more wild and wacky than the standard mode.
Remix mode offers game types like Domination, a "king of the hill" style game where your two-man team has to hold colored spots to score points, and Backboard Smash, which requires you to break the backboard before the other team. Unfortunately, there are some awful modes mixed in, like "21", which pits as many as four players against one another in a shoving, punching, occasionally scoring half-court snooze fest, and the horrendous boss battles, which feature big-time players knocking you around the court for three minutes. Yay! The boss battles are some of the most aggressively un-fun gaming I've played recently. While Remix mode has some cool features - what other game can you hear "Mark Price with the D!" - the lack of leveling up or player progression and the incredible length of the challenge makes it feel more like a chore than a game.
There are other downsides - games often feature more pushing than an entire season of the Fox sitcom "Shovin' Buddies", and the game's Xbox Live lobbies are nearly completely empty. I repeatedly searched for a game for an hour before finding a match, and there's no waiting room to determine if there's anyone else searching. This makes online-specific achievements like First Time for Everything and Start to Finish very difficult to grab. Plus, the go-to move in the Xbox Live circles is the three pointer… even with non-shooters, threes were raining constantly. The balance wasn't there, the gamers weren't there, and therefore, the fun wasn't there.
I was immensely disappointed in NBA Jam. EA managed to take something simple, original, and fun and turn it into a bloated, slow-loading, expensive flop. Hopefully next time around they'll know their limits and make the sequel a $15 downloadable game with updated rosters and fast hard drive access.
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2.0