A big announcement will happen on January 11 from Electronic Arts.
A big announcement if you ever hung out with me at Peter Piper Pizza during junior high and/or are my brother/roommate from college.
NBA Jam is coming to the Wii. It’s going to be in stores, versus a digital download, so we might see some new content. I would be okay having Kevin Johnson take on Hakeem Olajuwon again (remember that dunk? I do.)
For my brother’s sake, I hope they let Kobe be a playable character. I remember that Michael Jordan had his own licensing, so the biggest #23 fan (the only #23 fan) in the family had to choose between Scottie Pippen and some guy with goggles.
How many sites mentioned Horace Grant today?
I could mention how I modeled myself as a player after Mark West, making three obscure basketball references, so that the announcer could yell, “The bloggher’s on fire!!!”
But I wouldn’t want to get a big head. [rimshot]
Semi-related posts:
More info about the game:
The Limited Edition Team of Michael Jordan and Gary Payton
“Payton didn’t make the cut to be in the (first arcade) game, and of course, Jordan pulled himself out of the licensing of the NBA, so we had to pull him out of the game,” explained Turmell. “But one day, I got a phone call from a distributor out on the west coast who told me that Gary Payton was willing to pay whatever it cost to get into the game. So we told him what to do in terms of taking photographs, so he sent in photographs of himself and Jordan, saying, “We want to be in the game, hook us up.” So we actually did a special version of the game and gave both players all-star, superstar stats. There are only a handful of these machines, but Jordan and Payton did end up being in one version of the game.”
The Pack-A-Shaq
“Shaq actually bought two machines,” said Turmell. “He kept one at home and then, if you can believe this, they shipped the game with them on their road trips, setting up the machine in their hotel rooms as they traveled. The players would play, then get someone to pack it up and ship it off to the next city.”
The Pippen Jinx
Did Scottie Pippen’s ratings really drop when he played certain teams or was I just the least clutch shooter every time I played Detroit? “It’s true, but only when the Bulls played the Pistons,” explained Turmell. “If there was a close game and anyone on the Bulls took a last second shot, we wrote special code in the game so that they would average out to be bricks. There was the big competition back in the day between the Pistons and the Bulls, and since I was always a big Pistons fan, that was my opportunity to level the playing field.”
The One Where Drazen Petrovic Haunted the Studio
“We had already finished making ‘NBA Jam’ when Drazen Petrovic died,” said Turmell. “The game had already shipped and he was on the Nets. So we had all of these coin-op machines around, and one night we were playing ‘Mortal Kombat’ and there was a ‘Jam’ machine next to it, and all of a sudden the game started calling out ‘Petrovic! Petrovic!’ And this only happened after Petrovic had died. Everyone started freaking out. Something weird was going on with the software, and to this day, if you have an original ‘NBA Jam’ machine every once in a while it will just yell out “Petrovic!” It’s wild.”
Just remember to shoot for three from the corner.
And pass to Tim Biakabutuka…wait, wrong game.