Uninterrupted - The Real Stories of Basketball Episode 3 - NBA Jam
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00:00In 1993, two words would revolutionize the world of sports arcade games.
00:11Welcome to NBA Jam!
00:15NBA Jam.
00:16NBA Jam.
00:17NBA Jam.
00:18NBA Jam.
00:19NBA Jam.
00:20Turned us out.
00:21Me and Gary was video game fanatics.
00:24I went and bought 40 machines.
00:29Guys come up and say, I would never lose with you.
00:31I wish I'd shot that well in the NBA.
00:34Boom shakalaka!
00:35Boom shakalaka!
00:36Boom shakalaka!
00:37Midway's NBA Jam quickly became one of the best journey ever.
00:42People were screaming and running around the arcade.
00:44There was a lot of fists going through walls out of frustration.
00:47This is bad, man!
00:48This is bad!
00:49I can't get down on this basketball court the way that I used to, but I can definitely
00:58still play that NBA Jam.
01:00NBA Jams, man.
01:02This is where it's at.
01:05But the game's creation is a four-quarter slog towards victory.
01:08It was a gigantic task.
01:11It was not uncommon to work 80, 90-hour weeks of seven days a week.
01:15Like, we literally, with the mouse and keyboard, were stripping out the images frame by frame.
01:21Then a block shot by the NBA.
01:24The NBA didn't want their name associated with arcades.
01:26You know, arcades is where people get drugs and, you know, hookers.
01:29Could cost NBA Jam the entire game.
01:32Thank you for viewing this work in progress.
01:35So they said no.
01:36If we can't have the NBA license, how successful can this game be?
01:39Alpha Boogers!
01:40Boogers!
01:46Legendary players, iconic teams, and epic moments in Hoop's history that changed the
01:51culture forever.
01:53Turning to the heart and soul of the game, both on and off the court, this is Uninterrupted,
01:59the real stories of basketball.
02:02In the mid-1980s, the arcade business had reached its apex for most consumers.
02:08But for some, it was never seen as a fad.
02:14Especially for 6'5", Mark Tramiel, who was a leader of the industry, the video game industry.
02:22Hi, my name is Mark Tramiel, and I'm the game designer and lead programmer of NBA Jam.
02:31As an adolescent, Mark was seen as a boy wonder.
02:35And by his early 20s, he was labeled one of the hottest designers in a rapidly growing
02:40field.
02:41So in the early 80s, the video game cartridge business just kind of imploded.
02:45It just died.
02:47People thought that video games were a fad.
02:50So I had to kind of figure out what I wanted to do with my career, and I headed to Chicago
02:55to work with Williams Electronics, making coin-operated games, the actual arcade games
03:00you put quarters into.
03:02For a diehard Detroit Pistons fan born in Bay City, Michigan, Mark's new job in the
03:07Windy City will first be a blessing, then a curse.
03:11My first couple of years in Chicago were just great, because the Pistons were beating up
03:15on the Bulls.
03:16I feel they appear with a little emphasis there.
03:19In the late 80s, the Detroit Pistons, led by Isaiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, and Bill Laimbeer,
03:26dominated the league.
03:27Thomas with a great move, changed hands in the air to get a big basket.
03:32Winning the 1989 NBA championship.
03:39I'm living there right downtown.
03:41I'm watching the Bulls begin to flourish and grow.
03:44But the Pistons just had so much fun beating up on the Bulls.
03:50The Pistons win their second straight NBA title in 1990 by steamrolling the Chicago
03:54Bulls.
03:55And the game's over, and the Pistons have won the world championship, back-to-back.
04:02Pistons fans believe they've embarked on a decades-long dynasty.
04:06I was making bets that when they met again, that as soon as the Pistons won, they were
04:11going to run the Bulls out of town, start fresh.
04:14Detroit Pistons, heading back to the locker room.
04:17Their season has concluded, while the Chicago Bulls advance to the NBA championship round.
04:25The Bulls won, they beat the Pistons, and they never looked back.
04:33And then it was really hard to live in Chicago.
04:35But not for everyone on Mark's crew at Williams Electronics.
04:39I was a huge Bulls fan.
04:41I'd been following them for about 10 years at that point.
04:44My name is John Carleton, and I was on the original NBA Jam design team.
04:52We're testing the game.
04:53He would play as the Pistons, and I would play as the Bulls.
04:58And then we'd play for money.
04:59I lost so many bets.
05:02But Mark has a plan to turn the odds in his favor.
05:05I had to do something to get the Pistons back over the hump with the Bulls.
05:09Pippen from the three-point line, no good!
05:13But that will come later.
05:15After working on some other projects, Mark's biggest gamble is whether he can design a
05:20popular sports-themed arcade game.
05:23Something folks at his growing new employer consider a long shot.
05:27Williams Electronics projects $200 million in revenues this year.
05:31When I joined Williams Electronics, they quickly became Midway, Valley, Atari.
05:36They conglomerated everybody.
05:38Midway expects to do at least that well.
05:41Both companies are riding the crest of the video wave.
05:44But Mark and his team aren't exactly treated like company all-stars.
05:48The big shots were across the street at Midway Games and the fancy offices.
05:52We were in the factory, Williams, and they actually made all their video games and pinball
05:55games on the floor, just right outside of the sound studios where the sound guys were.
06:00Welcome to Tim Kittsgrove, the voice of NBA Jam, on fire, this is Boomshakalaka!
06:07It was a dirty, grimy, old, like 1940s, 50s kind of factory vibe.
06:12And with this woman at the front desk, you know, behind the glass, like,
06:14Hey, you, sweetheart, what's your name?
06:16Okay, hold on.
06:17John, you got someone here?
06:19You know, it was that kind of place.
06:21The design office was kind of a grimy place.
06:24Smoking was allowed in the workplace, so I feel sorry for all the people that had
06:29to sit around me smoking, but I wasn't the only one.
06:33Midway was like if you let a bunch of high school kids just go loose in a legitimate,
06:38you know, business environment.
06:39Squish your head, squish your head.
06:42My name is Sal DeVita.
06:44I was a game designer and an artist and animator on NBA Jam.
06:50We were just left to run amok with whatever ideas and thoughts we had.
06:55Very little management oversight.
06:58Our CEO would pop in every once in a while.
07:00As long as he liked what he saw, go along with it.
07:02There was pressure to get a game done.
07:03They wanted games done every 12 months.
07:06Life of a video game is basically six months to a year, depending upon the popularity of
07:12the game.
07:13But there was no kind of top-down from management what type of games to make or categories to
07:19pursue.
07:20We're only limited on video games by the video game designers' and engineers' imaginations.
07:26In the late 80s, Midway releases its first arcade game, Xenophobe.
07:31The company is counting on the public's fascination with aliens to pump quarters into the game,
07:37but it never blasts off with gamers.
07:41Their next attempt is Rampage.
07:44Players control three creatures who storm through the cities to level up when the town
07:47is reduced to rubble.
07:51But it fails to rise from the ashes.
07:55And total carnage is, well, ends up inciting the arcade game's sales department.
08:05So the arcade was seen as something that was probably going to be phased out pretty soon,
08:10unless we had some monster hits.
08:13And everyone inside the company wants to be on the squad that makes that happen.
08:18There was a lot of competition inside Midway.
08:20The teams were kind of isolated.
08:22They were rewarded for getting their games out first.
08:26John Tobias, who was my art partner on those first couple of games, he moved off to work
08:30with Ed Boon to co-create Mortal Kombat.
08:35I branched off to work on NBA Jam.
08:38And so it felt like we had to one-up each other.
08:42And Midway was structured to give royalties to these teams that were really excelling.
08:47And you always wanted the best talent to be working on your game.
08:51Teams working on video games in the same studio oftentimes have tension over budgets, tension
08:57over, hey, that was my idea, and you put it in your game before I got it in our game.
09:03And those tensions will only accelerate as the designers embark on a revolutionary change
09:08in how games are made.
09:10We were trying to learn how to do the digitized graphics.
09:14Digitized graphics, recording human actions in a studio.
09:19And then transferring them to the game characters will be the most transformative technological
09:24achievement in the history of video games.
09:27Ed and John started recording things on film and getting those pixels on the screen.
09:33And then I did the same on the sports side.
09:36Eric's ambition is to release the first arcade game to use digitized graphics, both to beat
09:41the Mortal Kombat team and be the guide responsible for keeping Midway competitive in a rapidly
09:46changing industry.
09:47Plus, he's feeling the pressure to deliver a smash hit after all the hype surrounding
09:52his boy genius arrival.
09:57But he chooses an unproven kind of game to do it.
10:00Sports games were really kind of an untapped market in the arcade business.
10:06I've been hearing this so-called sports expert talk about his realistic home video baseball
10:10game.
10:11Well, I've played real baseball.
10:12And I also played the new Atari Real Sports baseball, and I like it.
10:17While Mortal Kombat will be a technological leap in fighting style video games, the rudimentary
10:23visuals in most sports games means adding digitized graphics could be transformative.
10:28So the challenge really was, is there a audience?
10:33Will players want to play a sports-based game versus some of these other shooters or fighting
10:39games?
10:40But I'm a big sports fan.
10:42I'm a big basketball fan.
10:44And so basketball just seemed like the natural application for the digitized graphics.
10:53Once I decided to make a basketball game, then I needed to get the actors that I could
10:59digitize to put onto the screen.
11:01So I set off to find some talent.
11:04I went to every inner city court that I could find.
11:07I watched players.
11:09And I saw this kid that was just dunking the ball.
11:14He was moving around.
11:16And that was Willie Morris Jr.
11:19But we ended up with four guys.
11:21Stephen Howard, Todd McLaren, Tony Scott.
11:26So this was in the springtime, the season's over.
11:28We just happened to be in the gym, shooting around, getting ready to play a pickup game.
11:32My name is Tony Scott.
11:34I am one of the original secret characters of NBA Jam.
11:40And this guy is in the gym, and he's watching us play.
11:44And got up the courage to, you know, approach him, tell him who I was, what I was up to.
11:49Hey, look, would you guys be interested in being a part of a video game?
11:53And we're looking at each other like, what is this about?
11:56And finally, he's like, here is my business card.
12:00We figured it was an opportunity to make some money for a college student.
12:03It was huge, especially for me at that time in my life.
12:07Once I decided to make the basketball game, we just started filming, just started learning.
12:11We're going to need the, you know, the same arm and the shot ball.
12:15It's thrilling to me to be watching NBA games and contemplating what makes this dunk exciting.
12:23Trying to put things on the screen.
12:28We didn't know if it would be a side view game or a, you know, first person perspective.
12:34Working out those details, plus some technical difficulties, delay Mark's basketball project.
12:40And in October of 1992, the Mortal Kombat team takes just eight months to build their first arcade game utilizing digitized graphics.
12:51Scorpion wins.
12:53The video game world is forever changed.
12:56I think Mortal Kombat's success was just gargantuan.
12:59Imagine doing a game like that with, you know, four or five people in eight months or something.
13:04It's crazy.
13:06It developed a following that was so committed to playing the game,
13:12that it was seen as something that would help the company maintain its video game production.
13:21Mortal Kombat was the first really big successful game for Midway.
13:27Flawless victory.
13:29And it set new records on the coin box.
13:32It was making seven, eight hundred dollars a week.
13:35So it really kind of set the industry on its side.
13:40And raises expectations for the game Mark's team is developing.
13:45But it also buys Mark time to explore an idea that would transform NBA Jam from just another basketball video game into something bigger.
13:54Much bigger.
13:55It wasn't until I started to work on the first dunk where I started to noodle with it and make the guy jump a little bit higher and then a little bit higher
14:04and thought, well, that's cooler and maybe I can add the spin.
14:07And I started looking around at what we had recorded.
14:11OK, all right.
14:12And that's when it kind of took on the flavor of that over the top basketball.
14:19But most of the team wanted to be realistic.
14:22And by jumping too high, you know, it's a different kind of a product.
14:26The dunk was exaggerated.
14:28And all of a sudden you have these fake graphics that were in there.
14:30And I was like, oh, my God.
14:32Push back, push back.
14:33Over the top.
14:34Totally ruins the game.
14:35Carnival stuff.
14:36Which it did.
14:36You know, this is just too much.
14:38How did you try to sort of win them over in your vision?
14:41Yeah.
14:42Well.
14:47Video game designer Mark Tramiel's vision for a basketball coin-op arcade game with over the top, unrealistic graphics gets an over the top reaction from the rest of his team.
14:58I was just in shock.
14:59I mean, it was just spectacular to look at.
15:02But what it meant for the game design was like, oh, my God, this changes everything.
15:07Mark's colleagues, John and Sal, fear they are helping to create a joke in the gaming world with them losing their job in midway games as the punchline.
15:15And it doesn't have to be this way.
15:17We have other options.
15:18Mark, let's talk about this.
15:21With the game already behind schedule, Mark must convince his team to join him on this exaggerated leap of faith.
15:29And he had this big grin on his face, like I could tell Mark had come on to something that he was not going to back down on.
15:35The game was going to go over the top.
15:38Mark now runs with the concept, hoping his basketball on steroids will one day best Mortal Kombat in a battle for arcade dominance.
15:47But it's going to require a lot of extra work to execute his vision.
15:50First, they need to figure out how best to videotape players to then digitize and insert them into the game.
15:59The shorter, the longer, because that's uncomfortable, man, and me doing this is more uncomfortable.
16:05We ought to look at some tapes on that.
16:06Well, we'll probably see what they feel comfortable with, too, right away.
16:09And while Mark is sure of NBA Jam's eventual success, each new idea is met with renewed skepticism from the team.
16:18One of the engineers and I were complaining as we were walking to lunch about the lack of kind of pizzazz or excitement around our burgeoning demo.
16:29And that's when we came up with the idea for the on-fire mode.
16:32We're two! Heating up!
16:34He's on fire!
16:35Monster Jam!
16:36He's on fire!
16:37We brought that idea back to the team.
16:40Fire was the thing that really set me off.
16:43It kind of had lukewarm reception.
16:45There was a lot of fists going through walls.
16:49Because most of the team wanted to have more of a simulation-style game.
16:55Fire became so powerful.
16:57The rules for fire were if there were three shots in a row, you got on fire.
17:01He's on fire!
17:02So it was like overly powerful.
17:04And it was just a game about fire.
17:06So I wouldn't even give Mark the art to do that with.
17:10He said, well, I'm not going to add fire for you.
17:11I'm not going to give you explosions.
17:13So Mark steals them from the first game he designed at Midway.
17:16I had explosions from Smash TV.
17:20So I simply started to add the explosions, the fire, the smoke effects to the ball
17:26using old art.
17:27Of course, he went around and he's the team lead, so he can do whatever he wants.
17:33And I inserted them as a trial, as a prototype.
17:37Everybody else liked it, but I really just wasn't a fan of it.
17:40Fire wasn't the only feature that led to heated arguments.
17:43So some of the things that we had conflict over was shoving, pushing people down.
17:49Shoving people around was good with me.
17:51Bump him, bump him out and get the ball.
17:53Mark was going, OK, that's a fun thing to do.
17:55And then I said, are we going to have fouls?
17:57But the choices being made were, it's got to be fast.
18:00It's got to connect to the spinal cord of the player.
18:03So everybody's falling asleep watching this guy shoot a free throw.
18:07And so you can argue about it.
18:08And once it's in the game is when you find out, does it work?
18:11And you know, free throws didn't work.
18:13But shoving did.
18:16Lays it up.
18:16Rejected!
18:20NBA Jam is coming into focus as a first-of-its-kind digital graphics sports game.
18:25It's finally time to bring the players that Mark has recruited to life on the computer screen.
18:31We brought them into a studio.
18:32We had uniforms for them.
18:34I created a shot list of all the different categories.
18:37You know, the blocking, the steals, the spins.
18:40We got it.
18:42The process of having to create roughly 100 players
18:47was seen as a gigantic task.
18:50We needed players that would be scalable.
18:55So their proportions couldn't be, let's say, Manute Bowl.
19:02Or Spud Webb.
19:03Look how high up he is.
19:05Five feet seven.
19:06So we looked for a common kind of middle ground base,
19:10like a forward or a tall guard.
19:12Yeah, see that foot movement was...
19:15Yeah, everybody's unique, yeah.
19:18Mark said, all right, look, we just want you to freestyle some stuff.
19:22OK, that's good.
19:26They all have their own style, their own moves.
19:31And so not only did we get their own style,
19:33but we also got their take on how the NBA players would move.
19:39They walk us through, hey, look, do some of these moves
19:42without a basketball.
19:44OK, all right, that's good.
19:46There was a blue screen.
19:47We're wearing these blue uniforms.
19:50I thought it might clash or you wouldn't get to see anything.
19:53The whole point to these kind of green screens or blue screens
19:56is to be able to easily extract out the foreground content
20:00so that we could use the process of chroma keying
20:03to make it easier for the players to see what's going on.
20:07Chroma keying, where certain colours are processed as transparent
20:11and the player in the foreground against the blue background
20:15immediately trimmed from the background.
20:17I just figured Mark knew what he was doing.
20:20He didn't.
20:23Because we had the same colour palette, it was just a waste.
20:27We used Hi8 videotape.
20:29The colour quality was terrible on those cameras.
20:32And we would run that Hi8 videotape
20:35through a system to digitise the individual frames.
20:39Everything just bled onto the character's skin.
20:41It just bled all over the place.
20:43And so the whole blue screen concept didn't really work out for us.
20:48Instead, Mark and his team
20:50turned to one of Hollywood's oldest special effects tools, rotoscoping,
20:54which involves cutting out the player from each frame of the video.
20:58We used the mouse to draw the perimeter of the player
21:02with many undo moments.
21:04And then tint and clean up all the edges.
21:06We literally, with the mouse and keyboard,
21:08were stripping out the images frame by frame.
21:11Frame by frame.
21:11Pixel by pixel.
21:13Pixel by pixel.
21:14And then put them on floppy disks
21:15that we then took over to Mark for him to put in the game.
21:19Which led to our nicknames, We Were Strippers,
21:21because that was our job, stripping.
21:24It's incredibly time-consuming
21:26and one of the reasons Mortal Kombat beats NBA Jam to the market.
21:30Plus, other new technologies inspire the team to keep striving
21:34to make the game look as good as it possibly can.
21:37Midway had an amazing graphics chip system for their arcade games.
21:42So the color potential of the game was huge.
21:48It made me want to really embrace that colorful palette
21:53and make really cool style graphics.
21:55When they finally finish,
21:57they have a game unlike the one they originally signed on to develop.
22:01We were setting out to make a realistic NBA game.
22:04There wasn't supposed to be any high 20-foot dunks.
22:07No fire.
22:08Those things happened serendipitously during the process.
22:11Thankfully, Sal, all those guys, they were open.
22:14I saw people come into the office to see it.
22:16And people screamed and ran out of the office when they saw it.
22:18They were just so thrilled.
22:20And I'm like, well, maybe there's something here.
22:23We just leaned into that.
22:25We embraced that.
22:25Once we saw that and we felt the reaction from ourselves
22:28and also other people that would come in and play,
22:30we knew that that was a hook that people really liked.
22:33Once someone saw someone laughing with a crazy high dunk,
22:35they said, oh, jumping high is funny.
22:38Jump higher, funnier.
22:39He shall be on fire and jump high.
22:41This will make people very happy.
22:43On fire.
22:44He's on fire.
22:45Goal tending.
22:45Rejected.
22:46Increased shooting.
22:47From the outside.
22:49It was so obvious at that point that it worked well
22:53that nobody ever looked back.
22:54And we just shifted right into this over-the-top nature
22:57of the game.
22:59Mark's team is finally on board with his vision.
23:02They add turbo buttons to light up the player's sneakers,
23:05insert spins, and even more contorted acrobatics
23:08above the rim while dunking.
23:10And smoke trails soon float behind Mark's beloved glowing
23:14balls of fire.
23:15Eventually, the team will share their creation
23:17with the business that makes up half the game's name, the NBA.
23:21Within probably 48 hours, we had their response back.
23:26No good.
23:33At Midway, in that era, it was not
23:37uncommon to work 80, 90-hour weeks of seven days a week.
23:41There was a lot of art to go through, a lot of programming.
23:44And part of every video game is audio and VO.
23:49We had a lot of pinball machines that were being developed.
23:51And one of the voice actors for those pinball games
23:54was Tim Kitsrow.
23:56And Tim had a really distinctive voice.
23:58Tonight's matchup, NBA Jam takes on the world.
24:02Kaboom!
24:05John Hay, who was responsible for the audio and the music,
24:08he was friends with Tim, brought Tim in,
24:11and said, we're going to do a shoot.
24:13We created a category list.
24:16The first day was just looked at the pages
24:19and screamed and yelled.
24:20It was easy, and it was fun.
24:21And I don't really have any recollection of any talk
24:24about how we were going to do it.
24:25It was just, you know, go in there and cut it.
24:28Wide open, two points.
24:30And then Tim went wild with his ad libs in the studio.
24:34Terrible shot.
24:36I was envisioning my favorite Bulls highlights
24:38as I was delivering the materials.
24:40Slam it.
24:41There was a guy from Detroit Pistons, Vinnie Johnson,
24:44and Marv Albert called him the human microwave.
24:47He's heating up.
24:48John is followed up by Vinnie Johnson.
24:50Johnson is on fire.
24:51Vinnie puts up a 14 footer.
24:53He's on fire.
24:54How did Boomshakalaka come about?
24:56How did Boomshakalaka come about?
24:58Man.
24:59I just listened to the song, I Want to Take You Higher.
25:01The sequence where they say, boom, laka, laka, laka.
25:05Boom, laka, laka, boom, laka, laka.
25:09I just misquoted it and said, Boomshakalaka.
25:12I just misquoted it and said, Boomshakalaka.
25:14John just leans in with his cigarette and he goes,
25:16hey Tim, say Boomshakalaka.
25:18I was like, what the is Boomshakalaka?
25:20Boomshakalaka.
25:21I went, Boomshakalaka.
25:23All right, what's next?
25:24Moving on.
25:25It was not recognized at that moment
25:26that this would probably become a never ending echo
25:30that we would hear the rest of our lives.
25:32Boomshakalaka.
25:33Crazy how that came together, man.
25:35Gift from the gaming gods that day.
25:38Tim Kitzerow's contribution to the game was huge.
25:41For two, no good.
25:43It made the game so iconic.
25:45Razzle dazzle, monster jam.
25:48Tim did a great job to balance pitch with content.
25:52From downtown.
25:53I think we paid Tim $650 to do the voiceover for NBA Jam.
25:59And he should have been paid, you know, 100 times that.
26:02Ooh, Boomshakalaka.
26:03He's heating up, can't buy a bucket.
26:05He's heating up, can't buy a bucket.
26:07Rejected, get that stuff out of here.
26:09The amount of charm and character
26:12and vibrancy it brought to the game.
26:14Grabs the rebound, no good.
26:16Wide open, razzle dazzle.
26:18With his audio and his lines was really priceless.
26:22Yeah.
26:25Damn, thank you.
26:26Yeah, man.
26:29Welcome to NBA Jam.
26:33With the sound complete,
26:35the team had a fully operational game.
26:37It was time to test the game out in the wild
26:39to see if their hard work had paid off.
26:43Privately, we knew we were onto something
26:45because we'd go to the arcade
26:46and we would, you know, look at the other games out there.
26:48It's like, you know what?
26:49We have a lot more fun with our game.
26:51The way the arcade business works
26:53is you get the game to a certain point
26:56where it can accept coins and it's basically a full game.
26:59You put it into a test location.
27:02We had a location that was near our studio
27:05called Dennis' Place.
27:07Dennis' Place for games was like the epitome
27:09of what an arcade was.
27:12You go there, it was just hustling and bustling.
27:13So many people in there packed.
27:15They were open till about 4 a.m.
27:17We would put the game in about midnight.
27:19We can sneak it in there,
27:20back up and disappear into a shadow
27:22and just watch people interact with the game.
27:28They would put their coins in and start playing
27:30and then their eyes would just light up.
27:33You know, there's something about the colors,
27:35the control, and then just the feel of the dunks.
27:41The dunks is what got people really excited.
27:43People were so elated and thrilled
27:45to see the dunks exaggerated
27:48that they wanted to see it over and over again.
27:50And there were like 20, 30 kids
27:52surrounded just the NBA Jam.
27:57We just kind of like were in shock.
27:58People were screaming and running around the arcade.
28:02They weren't playing any other game in the arcade
28:04and they were in mass,
28:06screaming like they were watching a real championship game.
28:09It was almost nonstop play.
28:12And one week at Dennis' Place,
28:15the coin boxes were jammed up
28:17because the money had filled up too fast.
28:20And this is in an era where the number one game
28:23was maybe making $700.
28:27NBA Jam made $2,468 in one week.
28:32That astronomical success makes it likely
28:35that NBA Jam will execute a fatality on Mortal Kombat
28:38and finish it for arcade dominance.
28:41But there's an unanticipated final round
28:43that NBA Jam will need to fight.
28:47This one against the NBA.
28:49I didn't think we needed the NBA license in the beginning.
28:53Really, there was no licensing in the video game business.
28:56Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had an arcade game,
28:59but it was very few and far between.
29:02Their boss at Midway Games sees it differently.
29:05This is an NBA game, right?
29:07You guys got the license, right?
29:08You're the boss.
29:10Originally, it was not intended to have the NBA license
29:12because Mark and Sal and the guys on the team
29:15assumed he was never gonna spring for the money
29:16for an NBA license.
29:18You better get it.
29:18The president of the company actually suggested
29:21that we send a video out to the NBA, and we did that.
29:26Williams Electronics is currently developing
29:28an arcade-based four-player video basketball game,
29:32one which employs lifelike digitized graphics.
29:36Our new basketball game is being designed
29:39to give video game players
29:40the ultimate round ball experience.
29:42Within probably 48 hours, we had their response back.
29:47Thank you for viewing this work in progress
29:49and for considering our request.
29:51And that response was no.
29:55The NBA felt that arcades
29:58weren't the most family-friendly place.
30:02We don't want our logo and our product
30:03associated with arcades
30:04because arcades is where people get drugs
30:08and hookers and stuff,
30:09so that's not really a family atmosphere.
30:11They didn't want their name associated with seedy locations.
30:14Why was it important for the NBA license?
30:16I mean, you could've created a game without it.
30:19Well, we saw that the thrill of being able
30:23to be the one who controls Charles Barkley,
30:29that when he goes up there and knocks somebody over
30:32and slams a dunk,
30:33and it's because of the combination of buttons
30:35that you pushed with your joystick,
30:37was such a massive attraction.
30:41And so it caused us to wonder about,
30:44well, then, if we can't have the NBA license,
30:47how successful can this game be?
30:49The NBA Jam
30:54Learning that the NBA will not allow its name
30:56to appear on the game consoles
30:59is potentially a fatal blow to Mark and his team.
31:03If NBA Jam did not have the NBA license,
31:06it would've just been another game in the arcades.
31:08No offense, Mark Tramiel, you made a great game.
31:11The NBA's decision is based on a belief
31:13that video arcades are inconsistent
31:15with the NBA's carefully-protected image.
31:18Their headquarters were near Times Square.
31:21Their perception of arcades
31:23was what they saw in Times Square.
31:25And back in those days,
31:27it was a little bit grimy, gritty.
31:29That then set us off on the path
31:32to show them really what the arcades look like
31:35across the country,
31:36the family entertainment centers,
31:37the bowling alleys,
31:39and we put together a new videotape for them.
31:43Here is the future.
31:45Just as baby boomers grew up on a steady diet
31:47of pinball, pong, and later Pac-Man,
31:50their children, the next generation,
31:52can't get their feel of the next generation
31:54of interactive entertainment.
31:56They sent them in a video
31:57of these wholesome arcade places
31:59like Chuck E. Cheese kind of places.
32:01Just two more tokens.
32:03Thanks.
32:03You know, with NBA Jam and families,
32:05you know, eating Chuck E. Cheese pizza or whatever.
32:08Made it look like it was a fun, happy place
32:09that no one got hurt.
32:10And let them know,
32:11no, this is a good spot for the NBA logo.
32:16And they went,
32:16oh, wow, family place.
32:18Interesting.
32:19Yeah, I could see getting our product in there.
32:22I think the NBA recognized the opportunity
32:25to grow their market
32:27by being in the arcades
32:30and appealing to these younger kids
32:31and these fans, these potential fans.
32:36To our surprise,
32:37they flipped 180 degrees
32:39and they said yes.
32:42It was just a really thrilling moment.
32:43We were all running around
32:44like the Bulls had just won their seventh championship,
32:47except for Mark.
32:48No, he was running around too.
32:49I still couldn't believe
32:50that we were actually going to get this license,
32:53but the NBA was still concerned
32:55about bad locations.
32:58And they wrote into the contract
32:59the game would have to get pulled out
33:01of any location
33:03that they didn't deem as appropriate.
33:06Having the NBA license was huge
33:08because it was an immediate recognition of a brand.
33:13People would look at it
33:13and it legitimized your product over other games.
33:19The license really comes in two parts.
33:21It's the team logos,
33:24but then the players.
33:25There's a players association
33:29and we had to have the approval from them as well.
33:32And that's when then the floodgates opened up.
33:34Okay, how do we get these players into the game?
33:36We're going to be an NBA game.
33:37We have to have the real NBA players.
33:40How are we going to get all the NBA players
33:43in here to do video capture?
33:45It would take us years.
33:46All of a sudden we had to represent every player
33:49with some sort of mugshot
33:51and also eight different angles of view
33:54on the person's head.
33:55We had all these actors,
33:56but we had to chop their heads off.
33:58And then we had to create the heads
34:00of all these NBA players.
34:02There were no clean headshots
34:04of all the players back in those days.
34:06And that was really an artistic effort.
34:08Tony Goski
34:10That's a crazy guy.
34:11Did a great job by hand,
34:13drawing all these players' heads
34:16from these different angles.
34:18If we didn't have the skill
34:20of somebody who can draw so quickly,
34:23we would not have had a successful game.
34:26With NBA players integrated into the game,
34:28NBA Jam is on its way
34:29to becoming the GOAT of basketball video games.
34:33Things were going bonkers on those test locations.
34:37It's been almost 11 months
34:38since the team began working on NBA Jam.
34:41Then on the eve of its nationwide tip-off,
34:44it sells the NBA on one last inspiration.
34:49Consider this.
34:52Salt Lake City, the 1993 NBA All-Star Game.
34:57100,000 visitors from around the globe.
35:00So we were getting close to launching the game
35:03to our distribution network across the country.
35:06We sent about 20 cabinets out to the All-Star Game
35:09in Utah, spring of 1993,
35:12and we saw Bedlam there.
35:16This is bad, man.
35:18This is bad.
35:20A lot of people picking the jazz,
35:22but our marketing campaign really was
35:26to get the word out at the All-Star Game.
35:28We knew we had a hit on our hands.
35:30It was just a matter of how big this thing could grow.
35:34The numbers of sales immediately were huge.
35:40You're talking about the 1993 NBA Jam
35:44where I'm an absolute killer.
35:47Count it!
35:49Distributors kept ordering more and more.
35:52It's all about the cash box.
35:54How much cash is the game making?
35:57There's no way to hide that.
35:59If the game makes money,
36:00they want to buy another version for their other location.
36:04When we saw the cash boxes filling up,
36:06we're like, this is not normal.
36:10It wasn't until we got letters
36:13from one of our distributors
36:15that said, your game team has created a monster.
36:19There were fistfights that were happening.
36:21And so initially they thought, this is a negative.
36:24But it really wasn't until that moment
36:26where I realized we have something really special.
36:30Released in April 1993,
36:32NBA Jam makes a billion in its first year,
36:36besting Mortal Kombat by 153%.
36:40At the arcade, we were the highest earning game of all time.
36:43We out-earned any other game.
36:45It's crazy to think about, but in 1993,
36:48the number one movie was Jurassic Park.
36:51It made about $350 million.
36:53But NBA Jam in that year made $1 billion.
36:58One quarter at a time.
37:02But if you're a Bulls fan dropping one of those quarters,
37:05what you don't know is Mark has rigged the game
37:07to favor his beloved Detroit Pistons.
37:10Bulls versus Pistons.
37:16Welcome to NBA Jam.
37:21After the game was done, Mark shared with us,
37:24like, hey, I got to let you guys know.
37:26In this game, the Bulls will never beat the Pistons.
37:30He just loved the Pistons too much.
37:32He even put cheats into the game.
37:34He's like, because I put a cheat code in there
37:36that will not allow the Bulls to beat the Pistons.
37:39I put in a special rule that in the last five seconds,
37:44and they were taking a shot that would either take the lead
37:47or tie the game, I made it a brick.
37:50They would never win.
37:51Pippen from the three-point line.
37:54No good!
37:55But he didn't tell me that while we were playing for money,
37:57so I felt pretty good about myself
37:59to try to level the playing field just a little bit
38:01for the Pistons.
38:02Then he owes me a couple hundred bucks.
38:04But, I mean, I'm the lead programmer,
38:06so I did it, and we didn't talk about it.
38:11But it did come out many years later.
38:13Pistons win the game!
38:17As word spread that NBA Jam was an arcade game,
38:20the likes of which had never been seen before,
38:23the excitement amongst gamers and Hoop fans
38:25became impossible to contain.
38:27Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Midway Sports Network.
38:30Today, we'll take a look at a game that's
38:31destined to go down in the record books
38:34as an all-time great.
38:35Midway's NBA Jam quickly became one of the best earning ever.
38:40Brazel, brazel!
38:42It was exciting to hear every day about people
38:45that were into the game.
38:47From the outside!
38:48Shaquille O'Neal was a huge fan.
38:50When I met Shaq, he told me that he bought two games.
38:54And one, he kept at home.
38:55And one, he actually put on the team plane.
38:58And they would bring it from city to city to city.
39:01So that was pretty cool to hear.
39:03From downtown!
39:05So one day, I'm in my cubicle working on my computer.
39:07I turn and look, and there's Macaulay Culkin.
39:14And he says, I play you in NBA Jam.
39:18So we started off with putting ourselves into the game
39:20just because, you know, we're narcissists
39:21and we wanted to see ourselves in the game.
39:23When you put in our initials and birthdates.
39:26Initially, it was just a classic Easter egg, too.
39:29All of a sudden, it became almost like cult-like status.
39:32Like, can you play as this character?
39:34So actually, you know, have the best stats in the game.
39:38Couple of my nephews with me walk past this laundromat.
39:42And I see the NBA Jam arcade game.
39:45I'm like, oh, uh!
39:46This is the game.
39:47Everybody loves this.
39:48This is like, really?
39:49Throw some coins in.
39:50I say, OK, here, put this code in.
39:52And my face appears.
39:55They look at each other.
39:56They're looking at me.
39:57And they're looking at the game.
39:58And it's like, oh, is that?
40:00Oh, man, that's you.
40:01And they give me this huge hug, man.
40:03And I just thought, oh, yeah.
40:05This is pretty cool.
40:09When did boomshakalaka become part of the American vernacular?
40:12Not only sports vernacular.
40:13That's the weird thing.
40:14It's used in pop culture everywhere.
40:16Boomshakalaka.
40:17Boomshakalaka.
40:19Boomshakalaka.
40:21I'm going, oh, my god.
40:23This coin has become a part of the popular culture
40:25beyond NBA Jam.
40:27Gary Payton was a rookie.
40:28Gary Payton.
40:29Lead pass to Kip.
40:30He'll land it!
40:31Payton.
40:32Baseline.
40:33Shot, Kip.
40:33A tumble.
40:34But he didn't make the cut.
40:36It was me and Benoit Benjamin.
40:38Ben wasn't catching no lobs.
40:39He wasn't dropping no dives.
40:41And I got a phone call.
40:42And it's Gary Payton.
40:44And he's mad that he's not in the game.
40:46Yeah, he was pissed, man.
40:47But I was pissed, too.
40:49And I said, if you give me your photos,
40:52then I'll put you into the game.
40:53Gary Payton sent Polaroid photos of himself.
40:56And they were, of course, better resolution
40:58than we had gotten from the NBA or anybody else.
41:01Greatest creation ever.
41:03And I still got my machines to this day.
41:06Supersonic!
41:11By the mid-'90s, the arcade games had reached their peak.
41:15And were losing ground to the burgeoning at-home video game
41:18market.
41:19The downturn of arcade games was when
41:22we started charging more and more money for our games.
41:26We were trying to make the most money possible, of course.
41:29We kind of divided up the game sessions
41:31into two-minute segments.
41:33It was becoming less and less of a deal
41:34because home games were coming out.
41:37So people started seeing, it's kind of not worth my money.
41:41That's where I think we started going wrong.
41:43Unable to sustain their relevance
41:45in an ever-evolving video game landscape,
41:48Midway was forced to shutter its doors in the spring of 2009.
41:53After NBA Jam, I've continued to make games
41:56over the year, wrestling games, NBA Showtime, NBA Ballers,
42:03NFL Blitz.
42:07I lean into that same kind of bag of tricks and mechanics,
42:12even in the games I'm working on now.
42:15I agree to keep it consistent, and then people
42:17won't worry about it.
42:21NBA Jam kind of ushered in this new recognition
42:24of sports and video games.
42:27How to attract new fans into a new media.
42:33It gave every kid the moment to be a superstar,
42:36to be something larger than life.
42:40Including the game's creator, who went from working
42:42on a $99 computer to leading the team to design
42:46the first billion-dollar arcade game,
42:49fulfilling his boy wonder prophecy.
42:52Mark, with his crew, developed a generational touchstone.
42:56How about NBA Jam?
42:58Yeah, man.
42:59Let's do it.
43:00Let's do it.
43:00Other pro sports get in on the action,
43:03including NFL's Madden, MLB The Show, and FIFA.
43:10But NBA Jam leads the way.
43:13As for Mark Trammell, what really makes him smile
43:16is that he finally beat the Bulls by giving the Detroit
43:19Pistons the last laugh.
43:23Did I think it would become the cultural phenomenon
43:27that it did?
43:29No, I never would have dreamt that.
43:32But I've had a lot of people recognize me,
43:34usually as recognizing my name, because I
43:36don't have the long hair anymore and all that.
43:39I get probably 1,000 birthday greetings every year just
43:44from fans of NBA Jam, knowing that that's my birthday.
43:49So it continues to touch me every year.
43:54Trammell, he's on fire.