– Unlockable players
– Cheats
– Classic campaign mode (play every NBA team, 3 players on each, 2 vs. 2 boss battles against the likes of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird)
– Remix Tour will take you twice as long, rules are changed
– There is a counter to the shove move as it was too powerful
– Player controlling the ball can roll away from a defender
– Triangles show when players are off-screen
– Off-screen players can run more quickly
– Every character has two dunk faces, a happy face, a negative face, front/back/slide shots face, blurred face images for transitions
– Trey Smith, director: “If you’ve thought about it, chances are we have too and it’s going in. It’s such a big part of the experience… I hope you’ll see that a lot of care has been put into keeping the old school [stuff] in this game, and we all know how important those cheats were… there’s a lot of unlockable content in this game…I’ll tell you right now, Big Head Mode is available as soon as you play through the tutorial. So right there, from then on out, if you want to flip that switch and go Big Head Mode, you can go crazy, right from the get-go. Being able to play with all those funky things, it being an arcade title and Jam being known for the quirkiness, we have a little bit of creative license to play around. Yes, it’s a basketball game, but above all it’s a game for gamers, and gamers like messing around with stuff… I think we have over 100 unlockable characters, teams, Privileges and other bonuses along the way.”
– More from Smith: “We have a really cool – it’s kind of an achievement system – we’re calling ‘Jam Challenges’ and that’s how you unlock things, so if one of the Jam Challenges is ‘score 100 points in a game’ and you complete that challenge you get a special presentation element and then that unlocks something, so every Jam Challenge is attached to an unlockable. We’ll have some other unlockables too.”
– More from Smith: “For the Classic campaign, right now, based on the difficulty level – we have four in the game – you’re looking at anywhere between 10 and 20 hours gameplay, and then in Remix Tour, it took one of our testers 35 hours to play through. And it’s not like it’s the same game over and over again – we’re changing it up constantly… that element of surprise is something that I think the original Jam had, where you’re just playing it and all of a sudden something magnificent happens – that’s what we’re trying to do: kind of keep you on your toes, trying to keep you going ‘just one more game because I want to see what’s next’. And we’re dedicated to delivering – every step of the way – to give you a juicy nugget of Jam goodness.”
– More from Smith: “They’re developing into something that’s bigger than we ever thought [they would be]. I can’t go into specifics but I think we’re really going to surprise people with some big moments. It does hark back to the old classic videogame boss battle where you play ’em and they just seem like titans and unbeatable, and then the more you start to recognise patterns, you find that weakness – that Achilles heel – and you exploit that weakness to beat them and there’s that ‘aha! That’s how I do it!’ [moment]. I think the closest thing, in a sports game, that comes close to what we’re playing with is really a Punch-Out!! kind of scenario, and in an arcade basketball game that’s something we’re pretty excited about. It was something we threw out early on as an idea, and the more and more it’s developed and the more and more depth that we’ve got in the experience, I think it’s going to be a really compelling thing.”
– More from Smith: “There are a bunch of different ways to play basketball, and sometimes it’s not a 2 on 2 experience – there are other ways to play, and that’s kind of where we’re going with it. We might flip the camera around and give you a different view other than that classic 2 on 2 cam. You might play some half-court games. And some things might pop up on the court and change the way things are going on and introduce some new strategies for people to play. Some game modes are going to be catered towards big dunkers, other game modes are going to be built towards maybe an outside shooter or all-round player… we’ve got one game mode built around what we feel is one of the defining moments of the NBA Jam experience, and we’re taking that experience and building an entire way to play around it.”
– More from Smith: “Back in the day, they didn’t have legal departments with 50 people in there, watching that stuff. They could just throw people in games and pray [nothing would come of it]… the landscape has really changed when it comes to licensing and that kind of stuff. It’s not easy, but this game has been in development for over a year and a half now, and as soon as we knew we were Jam, we started fishing around and we started getting people onboard. These processes take forever. There’s somebody that I talked to in the first week, and we’re still trying to lock down that deal. That is a big one. I think everybody’s going to be very satisfied – at the very least – at who we’re bringing in, and I think there are going to be a couple of ‘oh my gosh, I can’t believe they got …’ [inclusions].”
– More from Smith: “We’re going to have Magic and Larry Bird, but the one additional thing I can give you: if you’re playing with your favourite original team in the original Jam, chances are you’re going to be able to play with them in this. So if you had a favourite match-up back in the day? Chances are you’re going to be able to play with those guys.”
– More from Smith: “We’re running at 60 frames per second on the Wii… and our animation and gameplay system is something that’s not used on the Wii very often. It’s a tool called ANT – I don’t know what it’s an acronym for, but it’s [used in] Madden, NHL, FIFA, Fight Night – all of our big titles have used it, and [using it] we can important any animations from Live, from NBA Street, from our old Homecourt – we can just plug them into our game and make it work.”
– More from Smith: “Just being able to chop off a player’s head and throw a high resolution texture there saves us a lot. And you know, it’s just like in the original Jam – having the crowd and everything in 2D, it’s got that depth to it and we’ve got some bells and whistles so we can spice it up a bit, but that’s all processing power that we can put towards gameplay, that we can put towards animations, that we can put towards effects, and again, it’s just standing on the shoulders of that original team – those guys were super smart with how they did it.”
– More from Smith: “Mark Turmell didn’t just make Jam, he also made Smash TV, NHL Hitz, NFL Blitz – he’s probably the true pioneer of arcade sports titles. Just a legend… It’s that arcade sports experience – it’s pick up and play, anybody can hop in and have a good time, and it’s like a human highlight reel: you get to do all the cool stuff right away. You don’t have to invest eight hours, or 30 hours into a season campaign or career, so having him come in was amazing… he pushed us really hard, asked us lots of hard questions. When he said the game had to run at 60fps we were like ‘are you kidding me? We’re going to be left with, like, two stick men on the court,’ but our guys are really smart – they stepped up to the challenge, and it absolutely makes a difference. And we didn’t really leave any visuals on the way – the game still looks great and it’s running at 60 frames. He’s all about the gameplay experience and that hyper-responsiveness, that twitch experience, so the jump to 60 was the biggest push that he gave us, but [there were also] lots of little things [too]… I mean, not only was he the original designer, he was the original programmer, so he knows everything that’s going on under the hood… we’ve got everything in the game now, it’s just massaging it along the way, and he’s going to be a key component [in getting it right].”
– More from Smith: “Jam was just the perfect fit [for Wii, but as far as other versions go] it’s something that we’re just going to have to see… we know what’s going on, we read the message boards, we know the comments, of course we want Jam on everything we can get it on. We want as many people to play the game as possible, but right now we’re just focused on the Wii, and as far as what the future may bring, it’s not up to me, but if it does well, fingers crossed.”
– More from Smith: “We’ve still got some time left. I’ll be honest with you, we’re not there yet, and getting it to run as well as we need it to, to be as snappy as we need it to be online, is going to be a monumental feat if we pull it off. I don’t want to commit to it because we might not get there. We’re not going to put something out there that’s half-ass. If we’re going to do it we’re going to do it right. We’re absolutely looking into it.”
– More from Smith: “At last count, I think we were at around 1500 [entries], and the competition, it’s really tough right now. We’re going through, and I think we’re trying to pick the 64 best ones, and then we’re going to do a vote on Facebook. It’s exciting, and it gives back to the fans. You guys helped us get this game greenlit. We had to say ‘people want this game! We have to make this game!’ and we’re trying to think of as many different ways as we can to give back to the fans and bring you guys into it. This is a game for all of us. We’re not creating something brand spanking new here, this is something we all know, we all love and we’re just happy to be a part of it.
Thanks to Rucker for the tip!
