A new NBA Jam game coming to the Wii has me a little worried.
See that screenshot there? Those are my memories of NBA Jam … just insanely fast paced 2 on 2 basketball that I would play the shit out of in the arcade. Sometime this year there’s going to be one coming to the Wii. As one may fear, it supports motion control. But from what I read on Kotaku, you can also turn the remote sideways and just use the directional pad and use it as … well … a real controller.
I don’t play many sports games, after a 20 year hiatus I finally picked up a baseball game (The Bigs for the PS2 and The Bigs 2 for the 360 if you’re wondering). But I do like to play the arcadey titles. And NBA Jam definitely fits into that. I STILL own both the original and Tournament Edition for the Sega Genesis, and I still pop them in from time to time to see those tiny, grainy graphics and muffled grainy voices. But since Tournament Edition, the series hasn’t just gone down hill … it’s plummeted face first into a bed of spikes.
NBA Jam : Extreme on the Playstation 1 was alright, but that 3D look just didn’t add a whole lot to it … and unlike the original, it hasn’t aged gracefully at all. I’ve got it going behind me and the announcer sounds bored and the players look like demons or something. And the gameplay just doesn’t feel quite right, maybe it’s just the aged PS1 3D graphics. I don’t know. And don’t even bring up the Windows or Saturn versions. *shudder*
While the Xbox and Playstation 2 representations of the game, it just didn’t seem to have the same type of magic the original had, even though it does offer 3 on 3.
Maybe it was the arcade atmosphere and the magic of being able to play those arcade games at home with the use of platforms like the Genesis and the SNES back in the day that we just don’t have anymore since arcades are, for the most part, dead.
But here’s the one screenshot we’ve got so far to my knowledge of EA’s NBA Jam for the Wii.
I’m both a little annoyed that this game is coming to the Wii (hopefully it’s just a timed exclusive or something) and kinda refreshed because releasing it on the LEAST capable platform in regards to hardware makes sense in keeping the spirit of the original alive. So long as they don’t inundate us with pointless motion controls. But this also means it probably isn’t going to have online support as well seeing as how there aren’t THAT many Wii games with it. And if it does I wonder if they’ll make us use those retarded friend codes.
In any case, the screenshot looks great. And I’m definitely eventually going to get it. But I’m not holding my breath on it being any good.
Here’s a link to an article Destructoid’s Samit Sarkar wrote called “5 Things EA Canada should do with the new NBA Jam” that you should read. And hopefully the developers of the game caught wind of it because it’s a great article.
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