#56: NBA Jam: Tournament Edition (1994, SNES)

Someday I'll be able to tell the lovely story of the time I asked for Final Fantasy II (since renamed Final Fantasy IV) for Christmas and was mildly disappointed to instead receive a brand new copy of Final Fantasy III (a.k.a. Final Fantasy VI) instead - it being a title I had never really heard of but which would soon blow me away and vaunt itself to the top of my favorite games list for quite some time. Instead I get to tell you about the time I got NBA Jam: Tournament Edition when I had asked for regular-ass NBA Jam instead. At the time I figured, well, this is just as well. It even had more players (including my favorite at the time, Scott Skiles) and the ability to choose your on-court roster at any given moment. Really a fantastic idea. But it turns out, whereas adding substitutions to something like Tecmo Super Bowl served only to enhance an already excellent experience, here it seemed only to ruin it.

How such a thing could occur really boils down to what the developers hoped to gain through the addition. For Tecmo, it would at least seem the addition was done simply as a way of flexing their technical know-how (since your better players are almost always going to be starting anyway - unless you're the Pats with Steve Grogan) and adding the ability to include injuries in the proceedings. How they didn't muck it up lies in the fact that this is the extent of what it added to the game. Granted, condition was new as well - meaning sometimes, if a player wasn't 'feeling' well his backup may prove to be better - but these conditions never changed during the game itself, in fact if you weren't doing a season you'd never experience this effect at all. So ultimately, while this wrinkle may effect pre-game planning, it never got in the way of the (excellent) core gameplay.

The creators of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, however, thought it would be a simply splendid idea to, in addition to allowing players to select their on-court lineups, to add stamina to the original NBA Jam. This was really a terrible, terrible idea, because it rather directly interferes with what made NBA Jam fun in the first place.

I can absolutely imagine hardcore NBA Jam fans welcoming adding this layer of strategy over the original product - they mastered what was already available, so all the more wrinkles the better. For the rest of us, however, who simply enjoyed NBA Jam for the arcadey title that it was, this layer is simply off-puting. I'm going to want to play with LJ and Zo for 4 fucking quarters, and I should be able to, ass-holes. Don't make me sub in Hersey Hawkins. I'm also sure as hell am not going to want to worry about being attacked during the game itself (as this saps stamina), or being attacked while attacking to steal the ball. The whole whack-a-mole strategy certainly could work if the brawling were fun (look at the success of Smash Bros.) - but it isn't such a brilliant idea when your brawling is so overly simplistic.



All of these are reasons NBA Jam: T.E. can't stand up to NBA Jam, combine that with the fact that NBA Jam wasn't that good to begin with (which will be discussed when we get to NBA Jam), and you're left with something simply better avoided, even with Scott Skiles.

NBA Jam: Tournament Edition
Publisher: Acclaim
Developer: Iguana (port), Midway (arcade)
Released: 1994
Obtained: Christmas 1995 (Gift)

4.5/10