New NBA Jam Faithfully Reimagines the Original

Arcades have had their share of successful sports games, but before the heyday of Golden Tee or Big Buck Hunter, there was NBA Jam, the ultimate in simplified, friendship-jeopardizing gameplay. EA's new NBA Jam wrests itself from the hands of developers who tried too hard to make the franchise "modern," when that's the least that needed to happen. What we get now is a nearly pitch-perfect refresh of Jam that connects with how a generation remembered it: a two-on-two basketball game that barely played by league rules.

The centerpiece of this NBA Jam is the Classic Campaign mode, the traditional gauntlet of all of the NBA's teams -- beat one, and it's right on to the next. There's little else to it, but it's there where you'll get the best of what the game has to offer: violent shoves and steals, the bombastic (and repetitive) announcer, the showboating slam dunks, and of course, the players' cut-out-style heads that never stop looking goofy on their polygonal (and well-animated) bodies. But that more than works, and it's a genuine wonder why no previous Jam developers tried such a head-slappingly obvious approach after the original arcade game.

If Jam only included the campaign like the original, that might have been enough, but the Remix Tour mode is where Jam goes in a different direction. Like Campaign, Remix Tour has you battling the entire league, but in groups of three minigames selected among Remix 2V2 (a flashier exhibition game with power-ups), Smash (whoever dunks the most and smashes the opponent's backboard wins), Domination (keeping hotspot circles colored in by scoring points), Elimination (lowest score between three separate players gets booted), and 21 (like Elimination, but the first to 21 points wins).

Calling them "minigames" is probably the wrong term, though, because even though the Remix modes have simple rules, they can go on for quite a while -- the countdown clocks in the non-2-on-2 modes are a little too long and make the games a little too tense, and power-ups in Remix 2V2 don't pop up as often as you'd like. Plus, it always seems like the side without the ball is the one that lucks into them.

Remix is also where you'll unlock NBA Jam's one-on-one boss battles, a bullet point well-touted in PR material, but they ain't much, outside of something to make you go, "Hey, it's Shaq!" True to their names, these are definitely videogame bosses; in other words, great big assholes. Just trying to beat Larry Bird in his game of 21 left me utterly defeated as a man -- manage to get the ball from him and he instantly gets "on fire," and his dunk when on fire is a bomb that scores three three-pointers in one go. Intimate knowledge of the game's controls, and more than a little resolve is what will get you past these battles.

For all of the good stuff in the core game, the outer shell of NBA Jam is a little underdone. Although the game freely supports the Classic Controller or a remote-only configuration (and it plays just fine no matter what), getting through menus the first few times can be a chore, as the game only goes by the Wii Remote and Nunchuk buttons. In other words, if the menu shows that you push the A button to confirm something, it's actually the B button on the Classic. So if you or anyone else is playing with anything but the default controllers, you'll have to ignore the lies the menu tells you. It's a small oversight that can cause big annoyance. If you're playing with a first-timer, you may just want them to use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk to avoid further confusion.

And playing with just the Wii Remote and Nunchuk is nothing more than fine. Basic flicks of the remote perform shots or swipes/steals if you're on defense. By no means did the developers get fancy with motion control, nor should they have, and in that case, there's nothing bad to say. But hardcore players will only recognize it as a way to start playing if you don't have a Classic Controller.

One questionable thing about NBA Jam is the lack of online multiplayer, which became the chief complaint of message board jockeys once it was known (perhaps because they had no complaints about how it looked). Does it suck? Yes. Does it make the game suck? No. While online play in sports games is even more expected than it would be in an FPS, I'll risk sounding like an apologist in this case: It's NBA Jam, for god's sake. One of the bigger reasons that original garnered so much popularity was the sheer fun of four guys crowded around a cabinet, whooping and swearing with every in-game shove, dunk, or three-pointer. That kind of experience will never be obsolete, and you still get it here. Maybe not everyone who loved Jam back in the day can gather some friends for a few friendly indoor games, but still -- and I know it hurts to realize this -- it's good fun for all ages, so local-only play isn't the end of the world.

In terms of looks and basic play, this new Jam is exactly how the original should have been upgraded for this generation, and to have that come from a by-the-book publisher like EA Sports is in itself an accomplishment. But in terms of variety and friendliness, it just needs a little more polish in other aspects to feel like a complete product (and no, I don't just mean a high-def resolution). Nevertheless, it heralds a bold new era in arcade-style sports games. Now, about that football game Midway made...