He's on Fire

With all the basketball I watched last month got me thinking of the greatest basketball game of all time (and really the only one I’ve ever liked) NBA Jam, this month’s inductee into the Scooter Hall of Fame. I have owned three different copies in my life, for the Super Nintendo, and both Playsyation’s. Hopefully when I finally upgrade to a next generation console, there will be a new version of the game waiting for me (sadly there isn’t one yet).

What makes NBA Jam great, and sets it apart from other basketball titles, is that it is a simple two on two arcade style game that isn’t bound to the five on five rules that just don’t translate well to console games. And since it isn’t bound to any rules there are plenty of fun modes like if one of your player hit three straight shot he is “on fire.” And I mean that quite literally as he is engulfed in flames and his shots burn the nets off the rims and allows that player to score from pretty much anywhere on the court, from half court to the stands to even from behind the basket.

Oddly enough the most unstoppable player in the game was Gheorghe Mureşan of the Washington Bullets and if you went with Big Head Mureşan, your opponent would just quit knowing there was no way to beat them unless they broke out Big Head Shawn Bradley. Even then your chances were not good. In my dorm in college, there was a big screen television in our lobby and we would always talk about the elusive four way Big Head Mureşan on the big screen but sadly we never hooked up the Playstation to it for fear that the TV couldn’t handle all that Mureşan. Maybe when I upgrade to the HDTV, we can hold a reunion and finally hold our four way Big Head Mureşan game.