Nintendo Okie

Today we get a chance to talk to one of the members of the NBA Jam Development team about the upcoming Wii game.  This interview was originally conducted before the news broke that the game was no longer a Wii exclusive.  We’ll get to find out some of the reasons why it changed, how you’ll be able to control the game and so much more fun stuff.

Thanks so much for joining us today. Can you tell us who you are and how you’re related to NBA Jam?

Sure! My name is Trey Smith and I am the Creative Director of NBA JAM. I’ve been working on the game since the very beginning, over 2 years ago, before it was even called NBA JAM.

NBA Jam is a property that many people remember very fondly, mostly for spending insane amounts of quarters in. Can you tell us a little about this reboot of the franchise and what we can expect to see?

Well first off, you won’t be needing any quarters. In all seriousness, we’ve taken great care in making sure that our version of NBA JAM on the Wii is everything you remember about the original and a whole lot more. It looks, sounds, plays, and most importantly feels just like it did back in the day, but we’ve added a lot of bells and whistles that just weren’t possible 17 years ago. If you are a true JAM Fan you will be able to hop right in and start dunking, blocking, and shoving right away. And I’m confident that the gesture controls are really going to surprise some people by how much fun they are. We put a lot of time and effort into making sure they feel intuitive, responsive, and above all extremely satisfying. It’s one thing to dunk on your buddy’s head with buttons, but it feels that much better when you’re using a gesture.

The game’s don’t feature full size rosters, but will every member of the actual NBA team’s roster be available to choose from? If not how did you go about choosing who will appear in the game?

Correct. Just like the original JAM we’ve limited our rosters to the Top 3 Players on every team. These players were actually selected by you guys, the fans, via a contest we held on Facebook awhile back. As you well know, there have been some big trades since then so we worked with the NBA and used our best judgement toadjust the rosters since then, but we have always defaulted to what players the fans wanted to play with from the contest.

Players love control options and I know there are going to be some in this game. Can you tell us which control options players will be able to choose from?

Yup. First and foremost we have our gesture controls which utilize the WiiRemote and nunchuck. Again I encourage you to at least give them a try before you move towards our other control schemes. They are really fun! Then we have the ability to flip the Wiiremote sideways and use the D-Pad to move and the buttons to shoot etc. And we also added the ability to play with the Classic Controller and the Classic Controller Pro. Supporting those controllers was not in our original schedule but people mentioned that they wanted them on the message boards and such so we squeezed them in.

Why isn’t the GameCube controller supported?

We went for what we thought would be the 4 most popular control schemes that people would want to use to play JAM. It was a tight squeeze to get the Classic controllers to work as it was. In order to support the GameCube controller as well it would’ve meant cutting some of the cool things we have in store for Remix Tour and we didn’t want to do that because we think you guys are really going to dig them. Especially the multiplayer games and Boss Battles.

What different types of game modes will be available to choose from?

Well, we have 2 full-blown “Campaign Modes” that you can play either Solo or Co-op. Classic Campaign is the classic worst to first ladder tournament from the original NBA JAM, just like you remember it, and Remix Tour is a mish mash of awesome new game modes including Backboard Smash, Domination, Boss Battles and more. There are twists and turns and surprises around every corner in the Remix Tour and we can’t wait to hear what you guys think of it. Between those 2 Campign modes you’re looking at a minimum of 40 hours of gameplay. But I think the real longevity of our game is in the Multiplayer. All of the game modes in Remix, as well as Classic 2 on 2, can be played with 4 players. It is our hope that JAM lives on your shelf right next to Mario Kart and Smash Bros for anytime you have friends over and want to game it up on the Wii.

One of the most fondly remembered aspects of the earlier games were the secret characters, like Bill Clinton. Will there be any secrets that we can expect to be on the lookout for?

It wouldn’t be NBA JAM if we didn’t have some really cool secret characters to unlock and discover. But for now, my lips are sealed.

Can you talk about some of the new power ups that will be in the game?

Sure thing. We’re going for a blend of some power-ups that everyone is familiar with (Speed and Accuracy boosts) and then tossing in some new ones. POWER is pretty cool because it gives your Dunk rating a temporary boost meaning that you’re less likely to get blocked and your shoves throw your opponents twice as far. RUBBER is there to counter the shove and it works kind of like the “I’m rubber your glue thing” when someone shoves you when you have RUBBER they are the ones that get tossed to the ground. And the last power-up, Minimize, is more of a debuff and it shrinks your player for a couple seconds, which is pretty funny to see. Especially in Big Head Mode. It’s tough to get a shot off because you are so easy to block but it does make you immune to the shove. They key to power-ups for us is they weren’t just there for fluff. The power-ups needed to add depth and strategy to gameplay and I think they do.

There is also going to be boss battles this time. How will these work? Will you be playing against some of the NBA Legends that are included in the game?

Our Boss Battles are “1 on 1” games against “super-human” opponents where you have to recognize patterns and exploit weaknesses. Think Punch-Out. You will face a mix of current NBA Superstars and a handful of some of the greatest legends ever to play the game of basketball.

Online play has been talked about for the game. Has this been worked out and can we expect to see online play for NBA Jam?

We’re not there yet unfortunately, but we haven’t given up hope yet. We’ve said since day 1 that if we were going to do Online on the Wii that we had to do it right. We haven’t been able to maintain a rock solid 60fps online yet and we’re not going to put it out there unless we do.

This seems like one of those games that might have made for a good downloadable title. What went into the decision to make this a retail game? Was it simply a matter of there being too much content for the WiiWare service to handle?

Yup. Way too much content for WiiWare. NBA JAM is a HUGE game in terms of depth, 2 full blown campaign modes, a multitude of multiplayer experiences, and over 100 unlockable secrets. Once you get to check it out I’m confident you’ll see why we made the decision to make it a retail game.

You recently held a contest where fans could submit some lines for the announcer to say. How many of those lines made it into the game and are there any that didn’t make the list that you thought were funny?

5 lines made it into the game, which is awesome. We also put their names in the credits for helping us out. There were so many lines that didn’t make the cut that I thought were great but if we put them all in than it takes something away from the people that the community chose. The fans helped us get this game greenlit so it’s been awesome to be able to get them involved in things like this and thru our Facebook page.

There are rumours floating around that the game might be making the jump to the Playstation and the Xbox. Can you talk about this at all or is the game still a Wii exclusive?

For the record, NBA JAM was exclusive to the Wii for the first year and a half or so of development, but there was an overwhelming outcry to see JAM realized on some of the other platforms. It was then when we were asked to break off a chunk of the JAM team to put together a little something something on the PS3 and X360 to thank people for checking out NBA Elite 11. But the Wii remains the only place where you can play JAM with gesture controls and experience all of the cool things we’ve got cooking in Remix Tour, which is essentially half of our game.

Do you expect this to be a long running franchise again or is this a one time only type of game?

We’ve got big ideas just waiting to be realized if we get a chance to do another JAM but as of right now we’re focusing on making this one the very best it can be.

When can we expect to see NBA Jam in stores?

NBA JAM will be on the shelves October 5^th.

Is there anything else you’d like to let fans know before we finish?

The team and I would just like to say thanks for being interested in NBA JAM and for being a part of bringing it back.

I think that about wraps it up. Thanks so much for joining us today.

I’d like to once again thank Trey for joining us today.  The game’s shaping up to be pretty good.  If you want to get the complete NBA Jam experience the only place to get it is going to be Nintendo’s Wii console this October.