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The Beige Years

NBA JamThe Night a Chicago Arcade Knew It Had a Hit

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NBA Jam's on-court bodies were Chicago amateurs, not NBA stars; one of them was a club bouncer.

Midway built it after a flop, watched it become the highest-earning arcade game in the history of the industry, then lost the name to Acclaim.

Subject
NBA Jam, the 1993 Midway arcade game: Mark Turmell's team, the digitized players, the NBA license, 'he's on fire', the earnings it made alongside Mortal Kombat, and the home ports, 1993
Chapters
8
Sources
8
Credits
4
Corrections
0

Sources

8
  • Interview5
  • Book2
  • Article1

Numbered in the order the description lists them. Read dates are when the page was consulted; the live page may have changed since.

  1. [1]
    Book Reyan Ali, *NBA Jam* (Boss Fight Books, October 22, 2019), excerpt published as

    'He's on fire!': How a club bouncer starred in the making of billion-dollar arcade hit NBA Jam

    No online copy on file
  2. [2]
    Book Reyan Ali, *NBA Jam* (Boss Fight Books), excerpt published as

    The Night They Turned On The First NBA Jam Machine

    No online copy on file
  3. [3]
    Interview Sports Illustrated Alex Abnos and Dan Greene

    NBA Jam: The Oral History

    No online copy on file
  4. [4]
    Article Mark Turmell, Sal DiVita and Tim Kitzrow

    Classic Game Postmortem: NBA Jam

    No online copy on file
  5. [5]
    Interview Matt Leone

    The Rise, Fall, and Return of NBA Jam

    No online copy on file
  6. [6]
    Interview Jon Robinson

    The Gamer Blog: You don't know Jam

    No online copy on file
  7. [7]
    Interview contribution Mark Turmell

    favorite memories

    No online copy on file
  8. [8]
    Interview VICE Sports Alex Wong

    Man on Fire: The Voice of NBA Jam's Most Iconic Lines

    No online copy on file

Image & music credits

4
  • License unknown3
  • CC BY-SA 3.01

4 photos, from the hosts linked below. Each file name links to the file's page, which carries the full license terms.

#UseFileAuthorLicense
1 Photo assets/supplied/nbajam title screen.png Frame from AL82 Retrogaming Longplays, "NBA Jam Longplay (Arcade) [4K]", YouTube, 2022 (Midway, 1993) License unknown
2 Photo assets/supplied/nbajam gameplay c031.png Frame from AL82 Retrogaming Longplays, "NBA Jam Longplay (Arcade) [4K]", YouTube, 2022 (Midway, 1993) License unknown
3 Photo assets/supplied/nbajam starring stephen howard.png MAME 0.289 recording of the nbajam attract mode License unknown
4 Photo Full machine photo of the Getaway Pinball machine..JPG Furutanian CC BY-SA 3.0

Corrections

No corrections logged since publication.

Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] with the timestamp and the source that contradicts it. Corrections are logged here with the date.