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[wweboy]

Remember it? NBA Jam for the Super Nintendo and every other system out during the mid 90’s. Now NBA JAM is back for the 2003-2004 NBA season. Entitled NBA JAM 2004. But does the game still have the same appeal that it once did with such games such as NBA Street and such?



           When I first saw NBA Jam I thought of the classic game for Sega and I rented it I popped it in my Xbox and you get three different modes of play exhibition, NBA Jam tournament, Legends Jam tournament.

Exhibitions is just a pick up and play against the computer or a friend. I would also like to add that you can have four people play at one time 2 on 2 and one comp or 3 on 1 and 2 comp etc.

Jam Tournament is taking today’s teams and you picking a team and winning as many games as possible.

Legends mode was great and it looks like Acclaim took a lot of time making this part of the game. You pick your favorite team today and face them off starting in the pre 70’s era of basketball. The pre 70’s is in black and white and the announcer sounds lke he is from the time period because of the remarks he makes and what not. The music also gives you the feeling your in the era because they had Elvis playing and a few other noticeable old track to keep the feeling alive.

Presentation Rating 8



           I found the graphics to be great and a pain. First off the court is very small and you can run from one side of the court to other in two seconds and I found that annoying. The players themselves are miss-modeled and the head to miss proportioned to the players. I found the replays to be very good during some of your insane dunks the replay would have colored backgrounds and a camera would click and the replay would frezze during it and showed the most spectacular parts of the dunk. I still think the graphics would have been better if they would have left them the way there were. But on the other hand the dunks look cool and continued to look amazing with the new graphics. I’m kind of up in the air when it comes to new being better or worse. The dunks are amazing you can do front flips alley oops that are over the top and yes you can still burst into flames.

Graphics Rating: 6



           Game play is the most import part of any game in my mind and I found the game play poorly done. There is no defense and basically you’ve got three ways to get the ball. Steal, Knock down or block the ball. It takes patients to get the fundamentals down and blocking is just near to impossible unless you’re on fire. I’ll get to that in a minute. I found the court to be too short and the three on three game play kind of hinders it because there isn’t much room and it seem liked all your players were squished together and had to shove each other around for room on the court. The computer is very difficult to play against. They score easily and when they get on fire you got unlimited turbo but when the computer is on fire they block EVERYTHING and all your dunks. I found it very difficult and hard to learn.

Gameplay Rating: 4



           One last thing I thought was great there is “Jam Store” Where you get your points rewarded and you can buy classic arena’s and gear for your created players. Speaking of that you can create your own player and tell them exactly what traits you want.  I didn’t mess around with it too much. My final thought is the game is alright but it could be better I found the tournament mode to be great and the legends to be fun. The dunks are still fun to pull of but the computer is to difficult to get hang off and you want to break your Xbox before you start getting the hang of the game. The jam store is also good because you have something to work for plus there are many cheats to make the game fun. My final rating is 6.7 out of 10.

[CapriCoke]

I agree with you on almost everything, but it is far to easy imo.  Once you have beaten a tournament, and you use the jam points to build your custom char, you can max out every stat + buy the extra stat giveing gear so you have 23+ in almost everything, it just makes it unstoppable.  Ive had 220 to 16 point games.

[simonm2000]

Well thats easy to fix play with real characters only...
I think this is a decent game, although single player is fairly easy. multiplayer is good.

[saulin]

CapriCoke what exactly do I need to buy to make my character have 23+ points?

I have 20/20 in everything but that is as far as it goes.