Walk into any pizza joint or any other arcade center now and you won’t see any basketball video game cabinets. Basketball just doesn’t really translate well into the arcade style of fun. Normal arcade machines continue to taunt you and make you pound in quarter after quarter, but why would you do that to play your standard run of the mill NBA Live-type game (especially if you are losing)?

One game to change all that was NBA Jam. With it’s over the top dunks, unlockable celebrities and catch phrases (not to mention fireballs), it caught your eye and your ear as soon as you walked into any loud arcade room. EA has brought this beloved franchise back from the dead arcade of yesteryear to infect a new generation of gamers. Read on to see if it’s a slam dunk or the boom-shaka-laka should have stayed in the arcade.

The core of NBA Jam lies in it’s fun pick up and play mode of just playing a quick game or two. Branching off from this formula, EA has gone a step further and added in Boss Battles and cool features like tearing down and shattering the backboards. Both definitely extend the gameplay and are a step in the right direction, making these features something that NBA Jam could have eventually done had it continued on the arcade route. They’ve even gone so far as to implement a Career Mode to take down your close regional opponents, then making your way across the country to make your way to the top. Overall, NBA Jam has got a lot of content and reasons to come back.

The presentation of NBA Jam is just like you would expect it to be. The courts and players look absolutely amazing for a Wii game. Obviously the crowd fades to black after the first couple of rows of fans, but the courts, sounds, commentary, players and animations are all top notch for the less powerful Wii console. You can definitely see where the focus of the game is: the gameplay. All of the screenshots I have seen prior to playing were mostly pulled from the famous “Big Head Mode”, so starting off out of the box I was let down at the size of my characters heads. Only NBA Jam would do this to me. Get through the quick tutorial of how to play and the Big Head mode is unlocked. Whew!

Everything you do in NBA Jam is recorded in stats. From how many times you do a successful alley-oop, to how many times you steal the ball and pass it to a teammate, your actions are recorded and you get game stamps (or mini-achievements) for each one of your accomplishments. Want to unlock Dennis Rodman as a playable character? Just go out there and perform ten successful shoves in one game and you got him. For collective gamers out there like me, this extends the life of the game dramatically, pushing me to play more and go for the next celebrity or politician. I’m a completion-ist (yes, not really a word), but that describes me and my experience with NBA Jam. Now I need to go off and defeat the Beastie Boys team to unlock them.

The controls for NBA Jam are where I have the most issue with the game. And if you have some “on their way out” batteries in your controllers, good luck trying to play NBA Jam. About middle of the way through my 2nd loss in a row I changed them out and proceeded to dominate on Easy. So okay, I’m doing great now that I have new batteries. I ramp up to the Medium difficulty (there are Hard and Insane difficulties) and I proceeded to lose three straight games in a row to the CPU. Come on! Really? I gotta pussy it up on Easy for awhile? This also could be because of the constantly repetitive control scheme. I simply didn’t want to do it over and over again.

Matt and I both got to play NBA Jam in the EA booth at E3 this year, and we were both pleasantly surprised by the intuitiveness of the control scheme. Flick the wiimote up, time your release of the ball and then flick the wiimote down to perform a jump shot (if further out from the basket), or come in and do the same closer to the backboard for a classic slam dunk. The dunks with this motion felt great at the time (not to mention rubbing it in your opponents face) but this timing scheme in the middle of a fast paced arcade basketball game versus the CPU just didn’t fit. Too much is happening on the court. How about a simple button press for a jump shot?

You also have the option to use the classic controller for NBA Jam or the Wiimote by itself turned sideways. The classic controller seemed like a great option for me, but still instead of flicking the Wiimote up and down now, I was resorting to flicking the right stick up and down to perform jump shots and dunks. This was simply too much. Move with the left stick and shoot/dunk/jump/block by flicking the right stick. Throw in the fact that you have to do this on defense and your flicking this damn controller for quite some time. If only I could assign my own button assignments to the classic controller.

NBA Jam is a classic franchise that has risen again and should be given its props for being a great game. It really is (despite some minor control issues). Anyone looking to re-live their younger days should absolutely pick up and play NBA Jam again. It’s worth it.

I will also say this: If you have an Xbox 360 or PS3, you should probably wait for the boxed release on those platforms. Online play will be mega sweet versus your friends, but for those of you with a Wii-only household, NBA Jam for the Wii has got a lot of legs and different modes to keep everyone busy for quite some time playing it. Some of us older arcade cabinet NBA Jam fans are introducing this to our young kids on the Wii. They will then add the classic lines “Boom-shaka-laka” and “He’s on fire!” to their vocabulary. All great things in my book.

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.

NBA Jam is available now for the Nintendo Wii for $50.00.