NBA Jam with Amir Blumenfeld

This is a head gun podcast.

Hey, Nick, I'm excited to do this episode.

Me too.

Oh, yeah, you.

Is there something

different about you?

You get a haircut or something?

Look closer, Matt.

A new shirt, maybe?

Maybe new sunglasses?

What's going on?

No, look between my hair, which you mentioned, and my shirt, which you also mentioned.

Nick, you came into the studio today in big head mode?

I enabled big head mode.

Nick,

you gotta be careful.

You can't just be going big head mode willy-nilly.

I feel like a peanuts character.

I feel powerful.

That's what you think that they're feeling at all times?

Or the adult ones.

Oh, okay, yeah.

Sort of not really exploring.

They're towing over everyone.

You can only see their feet in the frame.

Yeah, yeah, I guess I really really haven't really thought about what it is.

Can we get some bigger microphones?

These microphones are way too small.

No,

I was worried about this part of it, actually, was that you'd come in in big head mode and start complaining about how puny everything is relative to your giant melon.

And it's just,

you have to do the show in regular head mode.

You can't do it in big head mode.

I don't know how to turn off big head mode.

You don't know how to turn it on?

I only know the code to turn it on.

You're stuck in big head mode.

I'm kind of stuck in big head mode i'm gonna tell you something right now nick that shirt that you're wearing that nice shirt that i told you about a second ago say goodbye to that shirt that's gonna be stretched out beyond belief it's gonna be ruined i've been wearing it for four days it smells horrible i can't get it stuck like this i'm gonna have to cut myself out of it did you how have you even been eating I haven't been.

You haven't been eating.

I'm so hungry.

Oh my God.

You should be eating normal food.

You're not big stomach mode.

You're not going to be hungrier than you normally would.

Just the food is small.

I fell over.

Oh, Nick, you fell.

I'm so top heavy, I fell over.

I'm telling you, we got to get you to, I guess, a big head mode hospital.

I don't know if a door will even fit your giant cranium in there, my man.

Could you put me in the back of a flatbed truck and take me to the freak show?

You want to go straight to the freak show?

I'll just go to the freak show.

That'll be my life now.

I'll just travel with the freak show.

I'll do you one better.

I'm going to dig a hole next to those other guys over in Easter Island and just plant you in there.

Big-headed piece of shit.

Wait, wait a minute.

Let's get personal.

I thought you were my friend.

You know what?

I was sort of trying to accept it at first, but now I think

I'm anti-big head.

You're done.

Wow.

Wow.

You think you know a person?

This is coming for me.

I live in big head mode, dog.

I can't find a bucket hat that fits.

There's dogs eating dogs out here now.

Now I finally know your pain.

We, he's on fire and boom shakalaka as we discuss NBA Jam and arcade sports games this week on Get Played.

Wow, it's Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm Nick Weiger, along with Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Get Played.

And Matt, we should say, because this episode is coming out on her birthday.

Oh, yes.

Happy birthday to Heather, who's happy with the birthday.

Happy birthday, Heather.

HBD, HAC.

Happy birthday to a real one.

Happy birthday to a real one.

We miss you.

Hope you have you back real soon.

We might have you back.

We're going to see for this month's We Play You Play, which is Super Mario Bros.

3.

You're going to be discussing that for a full episode next Monday, November 27th.

That's right.

And let me just tell you,

I'm loving it.

Holds up.

We're not talking about it.

We're not talking about the Russian.

We're not talking about it.

We can't actually.

This is next week's episode.

But the game's pretty good.

Yeah.

Moving on, please.

Sorry.

Don't give a shit about Mario.

No, that's fair.

That's fair.

You're right.

With us today, we have a wonderful guest for the podcast, Buckets and Segments with Jake and Amir, Amir Blumenfeld.

Amir, thank you for being here.

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Really excited to be talking about NBA Jam, other sports games, and not Mario, and

you did sort of like, you gave us a like a contract.

Yes, a rider.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You have to sort of agree not to contract.

A JR rider.

This guy gets what I'm talking about.

I get what you're saying.

Yeah, that was gibberish to me, but I respect it.

If we said mock rider, you might have gotten it.

I still kind of like, I'm not even really sure.

Okay, as a motorcycle game for the Nintendo.

Yeah, yeah.

Probably too young.

Amir, did you play video games growing up?

Great question.

Yes, I did.

And I only played video games growing up.

Wow.

So I was super into it from age six to about 17.

And then I just didn't play video games ever again.

That happens, you know?

That happens to a lot of people.

Like,

what were your systems?

My systems,

fairly.

Normal, you know, my brother had a Nintendo, so we started with that in the late 80s.

Then we moved on to Genesis, and somebody gave him a Japanese Super Nintendo at a single

Super Famicom.

Yeah, and we had like the Japanese version of Street Fighter, where like some of the characters had different names than other characters.

And then

I maxed out, I peaked out at N64.

Okay.

And then that was kind of the end for you.

Yeah, I played a little Tony Hawk in college, but not really.

Oh, and yeah, GoldenEye.

What were some of your favorites?

Like,

just looking back at your gaming career?

I played a lot of sports games from like NHL, PA, NHL 92, Madden, college football, NBA Live up till about 96, 97, and of course, NBA Jam.

Were you a,

you mentioned NHL.

Did you watch hockey at all, or did you just play the video games?

Only plays a video games.

That's very common, I find.

Yes, exactly.

I learned about hockey from the video game.

Yeah.

And it was, remember that scene in Swingers?

Yes.

Because they're playing NHL 94 or whatever.

They make his head bleed.

Correct.

That was me.

You're so muddy.

Yes.

And I was this big bear with little fangs.

And it was a bunny.

and i was nine going on dates and low's feelings

i went to the dresden

for my seventh birthday yeah and you drove past birds yes yeah was kicked out instantly

but okay so so you don't really play games all that often anymore but i you do play you do have a nintendo switch am i right about that i do so i got back into uh mario kart which is another game i forgot to mention kind of sports adjacent i play i was really into Mario Kart on N64.

And then during the pandemic, I'm like, all right, I'm at home now.

Should I try video games again?

Are these fun still?

Yeah.

So I got like the Switch for Tetris 99, and then I was able to play Mario Kart, the new Mario Kart.

How'd you like that Tetris 99?

It was very fun.

I loved that.

Yeah.

I sunk so much time into Tetris.

It's very addictive because it throws you in a room with 99 other people and you see if you can win.

And you so rarely do that when you do, it feels great.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It's like they, that was the one thing missing from like actual Tetris, which is like superiority.

Like, the feeling you get for being the champion.

Yes, exactly.

So, so good.

Yeah, it was very like

the wizard, where it's like you versus 99 other strangers.

Right, right.

There was a Super Mario Bros.

version of that, too, that we won't talk about.

Oh, yeah, Mario 99.

Yes.

Yeah, but we can't.

We can't.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on.

Moving onward and upward, please.

Thank you.

Say the Mario words.

But am I remembering this right from a text message conversation that

you're playing some of the throwback games on the Switch at a certain point and you beat some game from Tech Mobile again?

You beat Tech Mobile.

Yes, yes.

Wow.

So the Switch lets you play Nintendo games and Super Nintendo games on it.

I don't know if you guys know that, but it's a pretty popular thing in video games.

And one of them was Tech Mobile, so I dusted it off and I tried to

go from

week one all the way through the Super Bowl with the Oakland Raiders, and I did it.

Wow.

Marcus Allen and Bo Jackson.

Exactly.

Except on the Switch, they don't have the names anymore.

They lost the license.

They lost the license.

Wow.

Yep.

But like, I remember.

Oh, I remember.

Does it just have the numbers?

It's like 32 is really fast.

Who could this guy be?

Don't know.

But it might be Marcus Allen.

That licensing stuff is so fascinating.

It happens with music, too.

It's just like, oh, yeah.

And NBA Jam, no Jordan.

Yeah.

Well, that, yeah, we'll get to that.

Okay, so you mentioned mentioned Mario Kart.

So you played that, like,

was Mario Kart 64 your main one?

Which was your favorite?

I started with Super Nintendo Mario Kart.

Yeah.

I recently tried to play that again.

Again, unplayable.

It's so choppy and like weird.

I don't know how to drift.

I don't know how to do anything.

I don't know how I got so into it.

And then Mario Kart 64, I played a lot one summer.

Yeah.

Even to the point where I was trying to like get records and upload like pictures of my score to a website that kept score of like the fastest times.

Yeah, I never really got that high up on the leaderboard, but I think I was like somewhere in the 60s and 70s for some of the tracks.

Nothing to sneeze at.

Pretty good.

Who was your main?

Who'd you race as?

Yoshi.

Yoshi.

Yoshi Maine.

I like that.

I like that.

Call me Yoshi Maine.

Thanks, guys.

We got to go to commercial, but thank you so much for having me.

Okay, actually, we're not done.

We're not done.

You're going to ask me what my man is, and you're going to hate the answer.

I pick Mario.

I do pick Mario sometimes.

I do like being Mario.

Yeah, no, Amir's has his.

Call me Wario because I hate Mario.

I don't know if they so much hate each other, is that

they have different priorities.

They have a different value set.

He was just so mid, to quote Gen Z.

He was an average man.

Getting back to Mario 2, he didn't do anything great, I guess, or poorly, so it was fine.

He's the default.

He's like, it's a

B.

When I'm going crazy, I'll pick Donkey Kong.

What is that?

Yeah, that's fine.

Big, fast,

but slow to accelerate.

Yeah.

I like the Koopa Troopa.

I think he kind of has a similar sort of like, I don't know if he's the exact same character as Yoshi, but he's kind of like...

Yeah, he starts.

He's like good acceleration, but slow, like top speed.

Yeah.

And I also just like being a Koopa Troopa.

I guess being a Yoshi is the same principle.

Yeah.

Like, you're just like one of many.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I can't even get into it.

Please, thank you.

Legally.

The licensing for our podcast here also ran out, so we can't address.

Technically, he's just a Japanese plumber man.

We can't really talk about him.

Yeah.

But no, I.

I mean, I haven't played Mario Kart in a little bit.

I know I just added a bunch of new tracks.

They completed

the DLC tracks now, and I think they released the final update for Mario 8.

So you keep up with this you're still playing Mario Kart 8.

No, I stopped

before the new tracks got released but I got really really into

there was a

group of eight of us that was playing every Saturday and we kept score against each other and then we would even go so far as every five weeks have a trophy and that person would get driven over the trophy and like have to like do a little video presentation of receiving the trophy.

And I did win it once.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

How long were you doing this?

I think we did like four of these seasons, like five weeks each.

So it was like about like six months from like April-ish of 2020 to like September.

So that was my only one.

So you only won one time.

Only one one time.

Matt?

Be nice to our guests.

It was pretty good.

You don't know who I was playing.

Exactly.

You could have been playing with Mario himself.

Oh, I know.

Also, that seems like that sort of, you know, kind of formalization of it seems like a healthier way to game than when I would ever play multiplayer games.

I don't do it anymore.

I would just like play them way too much, play against strangers, get mad, get anxious, you know, like I would just have all these negative emotions associated with it versus making it like a fun like thing with friends.

Yes.

And honestly, a lot of it was Ben Schwartz.

Shout out to Ben Schwartz who got different people from various parts of his life and I met new people through it and we would all join Discord and like play while we were playing, talk to each other.

That's fine.

We had a real gaming moment.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then, again, gave it up completely.

Something that just occurred to me is that when you're playing online with other people, an underrated part of that experience is you get to see your little guy walking around the whole earth.

Yes, right before you start.

Right before you start.

And I can't think about that.

I'm just like, this is so crazy.

I love it.

He must be really tall.

Yeah.

That's how tall he is in the earth.

The one thing I do like, and I didn't play a ton of Mario Kart 8, but I did, you know, like, I think it's like maybe the biggest selling game of this generation.

Like, it's insane how many units it moves, but I did, of course, have it and play it some.

But one thing I did, I do really like about it is the roster has gotten so bloated.

There are just so many characters that you can pick now.

Like, you can be like, you know, you know, baby Daisy or whatever.

But I still love that the Koopa kids, they have not like retconned out like Morton Koopa Jr., which is a reference to an 80s talk show host named Morton Downey Jr.

It's like he's still in there.

He's still Morton County.

They're just committing to that.

Certainly more known than Morton Downey Jr.

at this point.

Oh, yeah.

He's, I mean, he's my favorite Morton for sure.

I think so.

I like that.

I mean, I like the salts lady.

The salts lady is good.

There's a steakhouse.

Yeah, Morton's steakhouse one.

Yeah, big one.

Okay, he's actually getting further and further down the list, it turns out.

Yeah, not so good after all.

I guess that's a name that's just kind of fallen out of favor.

Morton?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Morty.

There's Morty's.

There's a Mortys.

Yeah.

Not a lot of Morton's.

No.

Huh.

Interesting.

There's Norton.

Edward.

Yeah, comma.

Yeah.

It's not quite Morton, is it?

No.

It's actually,

if I had to hazard a guess, yeah, it's one letter off.

It's also like I'm thinking of Edward Norton, Graham Norton.

Those are last names.

Yeah.

That's kind of a different thing.

Yeah.

There's Samantha Morton.

That's true.

You think there's ever been a Morton Norton?

Probably has.

Maybe a Norton Morton, too.

Interesting.

And Horton hears a who?

Let's go to commercial breakfast.

Somebody listening to this is thinking that something's happening to them.

What are you fucking listening to?

My carbon monoxide alarms working.

What's going on?

I hope.

Guy in his fucking garage.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Okay, that brings us to a question that we ask every week on the podcast, and I'll put it to you, Amir.

The question is: what are you playing?

Yes.

So I, again, I've given up video games

not out of any like necessity, just like, oh, wait, that's not entirely true.

Okay.

So the game that I play the most

is a game that I strongly recommend.

Also a pandemic video game that I picked up, which is Walk About Mini Golf on the Oculus.

Okay.

So it's Mini Golf VR.

Yes.

And I got into it when everybody was, you know, they had to stay at home.

So I bought an Oculus headset

and I started playing this.

various games, but mini golf stuck with me and with my one other friend, Jesse, and we still to this day play mini golf against each other.

Wow.

Wow.

Yes.

And it's a fantastic game.

They, it's an awesome team over there that like make new levels and the levels are so cool and the way the game works is so great.

It doesn't like other VR games feel a little overwhelming.

I get like kind of nauseous with the smooth motion and like fighting and shooting.

This is just a very gentle, easy mini golf and it looks like you're in the same room or planet as your friend.

So you're talking to each other and it's like cool VR audio.

So it's like if he's to your right, the audio comes from your right.

And the way like the motion works, like every time you strike the ball, you like feel it a little bit.

And it does really feel like you're playing mini golf with a friend of yours.

That's fun.

Yeah.

I really, really recommend it.

And every time somebody tries it out, they have a lot of good times.

With the, some of the VR games we covered on the podcast, like, I feel like they've been too intense for me.

So a nice, like, gentle experience like that seems like the right approach.

Because we do have the, we both have a, you know, a MetaQuest.

Yeah.

And the, um,

uh, the, what was the game we were playing?

We were talking about it was like a shooting game.

You got really into it, super hot, super hot.

You played super hot.

Super hot for me, like the sensation of being shot in the head.

Yeah, I was like, I cannot deal with this.

Yeah, and like you're like crawling on the floor, like potentially hitting a wall.

Exactly.

That doesn't happen in mini golf.

Wow.

And when we started playing, there was like five courses, but like I guess enough people are buying and playing this game.

They've like built like 25, 30 courses since then.

And like some of them are like on the moon or like under the sea or like

in an old farm or labyrinth or like, you know, they do a lot of like cross promo now.

Right.

And they're all so unique and the graphics are so awesome.

And then like at the end of the day, you're still playing mini golf like in the middle of nowhere.

Hmm.

Let me try this thing.

Walk about mini.

Walk about mini golf.

Walk about mini golf.

Yeah.

I haven't dusted off my quest in some time.

It's the only game I play on the quest.

And it like makes the entire

thing worth it.

Yeah.

That sounds like because I was super into, there's this well I was very into super hot in a way that I was like worried.

Like I was like I'm like an action guy.

Like I could like go into get into some trouble.

Yeah.

As long as no bullets move.

Yeah, as long as I actually, as long as nobody's actually shooting at me, I think I got that.

But then there was this other one that I loved called I Expect You to Die.

And it was like a sort of throwback like 60s like spy experience kind of where you have like all these like little gadgets and stuff.

And I loved that because that wasn't you didn't have to go too far into like you could sit down and play it and that's what I liked about that was that you weren't like tripping over stuff or feeling like you were walking through because like they haven't really figured out the walking like part of it yet if you have the part the locomotion is like because we we did uh the Blair Witch VR game which I was like I don't want to you know we did that we made you do that because we knew you'd be scared I was also very scared yes but this the scariness was so was secondary to the motion sickness because moving in that game made me want to feel like I was going to throw up.

So moving in any game with smooth motion gets you disoriented.

Not unlike seasickness because you're not moving, but you are visually.

What Walk About does is they have like jump motion.

So like you're not smoothly moving.

You're like clicking over there and it just jump cuts you over.

Okay.

That's what you're doing.

You're never nauseous.

That's the only way I've been able to play any of those games.

Yeah.

But I guess that's just like a common thing.

Yeah, yeah.

You can also play through it and get like your VR legs, they say, but I just would rather just play mini golf anyway.

Yeah, I don't know if I need my VR legs.

You will in the future.

Rochelle, you ever mess with VR?

I did some sort of zombie game on VR one time, and it was the scariest thing I've ever experienced in my life.

And they're only getting better.

Like, I guess the new meta

headset does like augmented reality.

So it's like you're in this room and you put it on and you can like see the room still and like zombies are entering through the door and stuff like that.

That's been the thing, like watching the, and we talked about the Zapote a little little bit, but like watching the demo videos of that, like as little as I use my Quest 2, that one, the Quest 3 has like full color pass-through.

So it just, it's, and the pass-through in the Quest 2 is like black and white and very grainy.

So it does not really look like the space you're in.

The idea of like, yeah, just being in the headgum studio and like throwing, you know, an axe at something.

Yeah.

Sometimes I want to do that to Marty.

We'll be right back.

Okay, this episode has the most breaks of any podcast.

Having to book additional manscape spots just to fill out the hour.

Dry rubbing my pubes.

It's like enough already.

I'm already down to the fucking skin.

You don't use them with every spot.

Well, they really need an authentic read.

Yeah.

That's why I'm here to talk to you guys.

Okay, well, we're coming to read.

Matt, I rolled credits on Super Mario Brothers Wonder.

Holy shit.

What are you even doing, first of all?

Yeah, Super Mario Brothers.

We can't talk about that.

I know, I know.

I'm just, I'm just, it's what I've been playing lately, so that's the thing I want to touch on.

I will say the credits are interactive, which is a hoot.

I love interactive credits.

Give me all that that you got.

And so you can kind of go through and try to hit the names and whatever.

It's a lot of fun.

Also, I will say that of the new power-ups, we've talked about them, I have settled that Drill Mario is the best power-up.

Drill Mario is number one.

I just got to Drill Mario, the first instance of using Drill Mario, Mario, and I'm going to have to agree.

It's such a good mechanic.

It lets you burrow both into the ground and into ceilings.

And so it just like completely changes how you can get traverse levels and what you can get it.

A lot of fun.

I just want to hit on a couple, a few notable Wonder Flower sequences, because the big thing in this game is that you find the Wonder Flowers that completely change the landscape of the level you're in.

And they were all like kind of had a little bit of like a musical or rhythm element, at least the ones that really stood out with me.

One is A Knight at Boo's Opera, where King Boo comes out and just is like, like, he's like a big opera is taking place as you're kind of going through this level and is kind of ushering you through it.

Yeah.

It completely changes the, you know, the scoring of

the level.

That's an absolute hoot.

There's a point where a bunch of bullet bills transform into a flying dragon that you ride around on.

It's just like come like so surreal and

trippy, if you will.

And then there's one that's just like it turns into a full-on like heavy metal rock concert.

And there's just like giant lava fists coming out from the ground in tune with

the rhythm of the metal track.

And it's just like, it's so like, it's so imaginative and joyous and just like, you know, full of energy.

Like,

the game has so many moments like this.

I overall loved it.

I had a great time with it.

I have not gone through all the special levels because there's all these, you know, super hard bonus stages.

But the bass game, I just did an absolute blast with.

I'm going to have to roll credits on this soon.

I am playing that still as well, and

I'm jealous jealous that you got to the end of it there.

I have been doing the bonus levels, and they are

very, they're very hard on here.

They're very, very hard.

Is this like the bonus levels from Super Mario World, where like

they're all like they're attached to

an 80s slang of the times, so there was a regular radical

bogus, these are still kind of like that.

Really?

Jesus, they haven't evolved at all.

I actually don't remember what they're called.

Oh, actually, it's called the Choogie Chasm, is one of them.

Is that true?

Unbelievable.

One is called mid, the other one's called lit.

The other one is just it's giving.

Yeah, one of them is just okay, slave.

Okay, boomer.

Dot level.

But Nick,

I got a new little toy.

Wow.

Oh, is this your flushlight you were telling us about over?

Yeah, yeah.

I already ruined it.

Yeah, yeah.

Not really a video game, but okay, go on.

Princess Fiona in Shrek form.

okay so you did get my email

uh no i there's a new there's a new accessory for the playstation 5 yeah called the playstation portal and basically what it is it's a controller with a screen on it and that's kind of it it's used to remote play your playstation 5 from anywhere that you can get a wi-fi connection a reliable wi-fi connection so like sometimes i want to be playing a bet in in bet i'll be going to sleep you know my my fiancé will be reading a book next to me i'll be like okay books are, you know, kind of lame.

Kind of lame.

I want to be playing a video game.

Cool.

So now I have this.

There are other methods of remote playing, but like this, this thing is great because it has all the features of the PlayStation 5 controller, the haptic feedback, the adaptive triggers, all that great stuff.

And so I was messing with it a little bit today, and I'm happy to report.

Not as dumb as we thought

so far.

It seems a little crazy that, like, obviously in an ideal world, it would have some sort of storage where you could download at least a game to it so you could take that and not have to be online at all times to use it.

But

I think for the particular use case of maybe not wanting to hog the TV during a game time, maybe somebody wants to watch the TV and you want to play a game, you can sort of split the difference there, or wanting to go play in a different room if you want to be, you know, laying down comfortably in bed and playing a game or something.

That's going to work great for this.

But if it's not, if that's not for you, then that's just not for you.

I sort of was not completely sold on it until I started watching some more videos about it.

And thinking about it as an accessory rather than a platform, I think is the thing that really like took it over the edge for me, I think.

So I'm pretty excited to have this and to continue to use it.

I still kind of can't believe you bought this.

It's really crazy that I did it.

Yeah.

It's like, it's basically like you could attach a backbone to a phone and have the same functionality.

Well, that's the thing, but then you can't use your phone.

Like,

it's such an it's a it's a minor inconvenience to like take the case off, put the spot the backbone on, and then if a call comes through, your game's interrupted.

You gotta get back in there.

It only takes about a second.

It's like that's the thing.

But like now, I could be looking at this thing.

I can answer the phone if I want.

I can even be looking at my phone more and actually just like really just be looking at my phone.

So you're not even playing at all.

I might not even play it.

I might just kind of look at my phone for a little while.

Y'all have these phones?

Yeah, we love phones.

I love my phone.

But I started playing Alan Wake on it.

It was the first thing that I viewed up on it.

The Alan Wake Remaster.

And I don't think I actually knew what Alan Wake was.

It's pretty interesting so far.

I got to say,

I'm really enjoying it.

And I guess...

That's all I'll say about it because I finished Spider-Man 2.

I'm kind of done with that, it feels like.

And so right now,

there's a gap in my PlayStation,

you know, or in my PlayStation time.

Obviously, I'm still playing Switch

with Wonder, but I don't have anything to play on Switch or on PlayStation, so I went straight to Alan Wake, and I think I'm going to try to roll credits on Alan Wake.

I'm pretty interested in it.

Are you going to play this whole bad boy on the PlayStation?

What's that called?

The portal.

I might play it all on the portal.

It might be my, before I'm going to, because it's not that crazy.

It's a little scary, actually, so I might not want to play it before bed.

Okay.

I'm not trying to have nightmares.

No.

But

I'm enjoying it.

Your weapons are a flashlight and a gun.

The big two.

The only two you need.

That's it.

Do you,

I've, I've heard this, and I don't know if it's bullshit or not, but I've heard that like people don't see phones in their dreams.

I've heard this too.

But doesn't that just sound like bullshit?

Doesn't that sound like a thing that someone would say and then you're like, wait, no, that's actually, there's no, it's not true.

I've also heard like you can't make up a person in your dream.

Like it had to be someone that you met in real life.

Or at least like seen, huh?

Yeah.

Like, because you can't, you can't make a face.

Right.

Yeah.

Like, you can't close your eyes and imagine someone you've never seen before.

Yeah.

i did have a dream with nba uh player damar de rozen we were at a food truck so maybe that is a point of evidence in your favor interesting that's like a guy i've seen exactly

what you but the food was like made up in the dream it's kind of like a different kind of food yeah it's like a sandwich with like nails in it oh that sucks yeah that's like fingernails uh yeah either way you slice it bad yeah

I mean, I'd rather eat that, honestly, than the alternative.

Yeah, metal screws.

Yeah, it'd be a little difficult.

Let's talk about NBA Jam.

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NBA Jam was developed by Midway and it was released for arcades in 1993.

It was followed up by the NBA Jam Tournament Edition in 1994.

There's a bunch of different stuff that went on with the licensing of this game, but basically the home versions were published by acclaim.

So NBA Jam comes out for arcades.

There's an NBA Jam arcade cabinet here at Headgum, which we should talk about in a second.

Tournament Edition.

It is Tournament Edition.

Okay.

Right there.

We can talk about it.

Now,

how did the company come to acquire that?

When I was living with Marty and Jake and the company was in its early stages, I was looking to see, just out of curiosity, how much these NBA Jam arcades used to cost or cost now a day because we needed some art that was also cool.

aside from like just a ping-pong table or a pinball machine that I wasn't really into yeah and so I looked on Craig's list and some guy was getting rid of his for like a thousand bucks wow but you had to drive to his house to pick it up got it so Jake had a truck and he's like it's a four to six man job to move it because they are incredibly heavy

uh that one's about 600 700 pounds Think of like a washer or dryer filled with concrete.

Like you can't move it.

So it took four of us to like slowly put it onto a dolly and then like five of us to like lift it into a car and then we drove it all the way to Los Felos from Long Beach.

Took an hour and then we had to like bring it up 70 stairs to like where we were staying.

Wow.

And it stuck with us for the last eight years.

Did you know it's usually powered down here?

Is that because of noise?

Is that because of energy consumption?

No, we used to like plug it in and anytime someone wants, they can turn it on.

But yeah, now I don't even know if it's plugged in because nobody's played it in like months and months.

Right.

Well, did you find that when you had it?

Like, were you playing it regularly?

When we were

and, like, yeah, the novelty wore off a little bit because we were playing it so much and then a little bit less so.

And then the pandemic came and it was just in a closet for like a year and a half because nobody was at the office.

But an awesome thing to have.

It's cool to just see.

Yeah, it is.

It is an amazing cabinet.

And also like one of the iconic all-time arcade cabinets because this is one of the biggest coin-op games ever made.

I have a view of it right now from where I'm sitting and it's not on or doing anything.

And I do do kind of just like looking at the article.

Yeah, it is when it's off.

Yeah.

And Borderline Broken.

Yeah.

So did you play the home versions when you were a kid?

Yes.

So I started playing the arcade like everybody else.

And it was like right in my sweet spot, like 10 years old, going to the arcade.

It was like the Simpsons one and NBA Jam.

Yeah.

And then I remember when it came out on Genesis or Super Nintendo, or maybe both,

it was like this drop date where it was coming out this like October 1st, let's say.

But then I remember seeing on QVC that they were like doing pre-orders on like September 27th.

And so I like begged my mom, can I call and like get this NBA Jam game like before it even comes out?

I'd be like the coolest kid at school.

So we were able to order it beforehand, but it didn't arrive until like the mid-October anyway.

So I was like so excited to get it that I was able to pre-order it early, but it didn't arrive until after all the other kids got it anyway.

But then, yeah, playing it at home on Genesis was so fun as well.

I really like, I definitely played this in arcades at the time,

but ultimately, ultimately, yeah, home version is where I got more reps.

And there are, there was a Super Nintendo version.

It was like, there had to have been because they both came out at the same time.

Yeah, yeah.

And the home version, so this, this ties into what happened with the license or with the property.

The home versions were published by Acclaim.

So Midway actually makes the game.

Acclaim

does the ports for home consoles.

And then Acclaim acquired the rights to the NBA Jam brand and then started making their own NBA Jam games.

And that's where things went off the rails.

So that's why there are only a couple of good NBA Jams and then a bunch of things called NBA Jam that really aren't the same thing.

Meanwhile, Midway kept going because they still have the NBA license.

So they made the games NBA Hang Time, NBA Showtime, NBA Hoops with a Z.

I don't know.

They also do NFL Blitz.

They did do NFL Blitz, yes, yeah.

NFL Blitz was a related property, but they were making all these other NBA games that were try, like these were the actual successors to Jam, but because they didn't have the Jam name, no one was actually playing these cabinets.

Never played them?

Yeah,

I played one of these, and I don't remember which one it was, but you know, I just

certainly did not have the same draw as the original.

Matt, did you play the NBA Jam games?

I played, I remember playing NBA Jam in arcades when I was a kid, but I was not like a, you know, maybe not a surprise, I not really a hoop head, not really a sports guy, right?

But

I liked the arcade-y sort of feeling of

an NBA Jam versus like maybe nowadays an NBA 2K that feels a little more of a simulation.

I like the silliness of a jam more than I like the actual thing.

Oh, 100%.

No, I'm a big-time Sporto.

I love watching sports.

I only follow the NBA these days, but you know, I did follow the NFL back in the day, and I always preferred the NBA Jam NFL Blitz treatment over the Madden NBA 2K, you know, Sim side.

I'm not sure where you stood on those.

Yeah, remember Arch Rivals even before NBA Jam?

It's like banana peels and oil slicks on the court.

That's a hoop.

It was also two-on-two, and you can shove people.

Arch Rivals was one of the inspirations for NBA Jam.

So yeah, they basically had that and it was like this hyper-violent, unlicensed

basketball game.

And they were like, what if we did this with actual NBA players?

Perfect idea.

And ideal execution.

And there was also like

there was like a mutant league football and monster league.

Yeah.

So I played them all.

We covered one of the worst games we played on the show

here in our old format, which was um bill lambier's combat basketball do you remember that game at all matt yeah i remember that and that was um

i didn't really

i i had like sort of an uphill battle like with a sports game kind of anyway yeah and that was that was really that was really tough the the

One of the worst like just creative decisions, which is it's a basketball game with an overhead camera, which really just does not work for something that's so vertical.

Yeah, I played that a lot.

I also played like double dribble.

Oh, yeah, double dribble.

Yeah.

There was like a street ball game.

Like you played one-on-one outside.

It was like Barkley and Bird.

They had a few different ones that were different iterations.

I think I had one for like the Commodore 64 that was like Dr.

J versus Bird, I want to say.

But yeah, they were all like, those were just like,

yeah, they had some one-on-one games right now.

They haven't made one of those in a while.

Yeah, I wonder if the new games have one-on-one, but we just don't play them anymore.

Could be, yeah.

That's the other thing is like, because

you don't really keep up with games anyway, but have you ever been like tempted to be like, I'll get the new NBA 2K and mess around with it?

I'm just so like

far before that that like and when I see like people playing, it's like, all right, I'm at a party and it's like, I'm, I have to like get a manager now.

I'm like, what is this game?

It's all this weird

messing.

Yeah.

It's like, did anyone else create a player?

Because I can't figure out where his socks are.

I'm like,

do you ever play basketball anymore?

Like, what is like Leisure Suit Larry?

You're just walking around trying to sleep with people at this point.

There is a lot of like social sim elements that are in like the my career modes that I have zero interest in.

Like, and it'll be like there's like a cut scene, like Eric Gordon is yelling at you because you didn't get enough touches in the locker room.

It's like, I don't want to deal with this.

Like, I want to just play the game.

And then they have those things too where you can, like, when you're creating a player, you can upload a photo of your face and then it maps it on to like the model of like the guy or whatever.

And then you have to sort of reckon with that you look monstrous.

Listen, I'd rather just play with Kirk Heinrich.

I don't have to upload a die face onto a basketball player's body.

I already know how that goes.

So there's this long sports illustrated oral history of NBA Jam,

which is a

really great piece and has some

amazing details, but it actually does talk about at a certain point they had proposed and

they didn't do it for a couple of reasons, but they were going to have a camera integrated in the NBA Jam camera, in the NBA Jam cabinet, so you could take a picture of yourself and put that onto your character model.

But they were like, it's too expensive to do.

And the other thing, they were just, they had a thing they called, I think it's called, I think the acronym was TTP, Time to Penis, because they were just like, someone's going to take their hog out and take a picture of this immediately.

Oh my God.

And, you know, we just have to account for that.

And we can't have this happening

for a game that children are going to be playing.

This world is so sick.

Yeah, it really is.

Anyway, let's play with Air Dog, which is a guy without his pants on in the game or something.

So, so yeah, this game comes out and is just like a huge sensation, breaking all sorts of records for, you know, a number of quarters are being pumped into individual machines.

Uh, some of the things that the one thing that I found notable that I was kind of surprised by, this is the first licensed arcade sports game.

Like, this is the first time that a pro sports league was like, yeah, we, this coin op machine can have, can have our branding.

And NBA, the NBA, as it tends to be, is like kind of like, you know, was a little bit on the front, the front end of things, was a little bit on the cutting edge in terms of licensing them.

But even there, there was a lot of tentativeness.

What about like, does that not include at-home games?

No, this is, this is specifically arcade games, specifically, because there was like a seedy element that was perceived as existing with arcades, and that was the reason they were so hesitant.

Got it.

And another thing, and we were just talking about the, you know, using photos

for the cabinet potentially and them killing that idea.

But just in a more general sense, like

the article talks about how difficult it was to model the players' heads without internet image sourcing, which I was like, oh yeah, that's a thing

I wouldn't have thought about.

But just like, so they were having to find like issues of Sports Illustrated that, you know, like, oh, well,

this one has a good photo of Rod Strickland.

We can use this as a reference for his character models.

Like, oh, man, that must have been such a more laborious process.

Yeah, without mocap.

Right, right.

Well, there was like the player select screens, which were like borderline, like CD-ROM and Carta-level like images that were somewhat photorealistic.

And then the in-play game versions did kind of still look like them, even though it was very 8-bit.

Yeah, 100%.

So this was like an era where they were, I feel like digitized photographs were being,

were a big thing, like Mortal Kombat, obviously.

Like, you know, all the character animations are like, you know,

digitized actors.

And

there was a game, I guess, that directly inspired this.

It was published by Atari called Primal Rage, which I vaguely remember.

It was a dinosaur fighting game.

And I don't know what the photographs they were that they used for dinosaurs, but they are like digitized images that are the character models there.

Do you think they had to take pictures of real dinosaurs?

There's no way.

Probably not.

There's no way.

I can't imagine that.

They probably still use Isaiah Thomas and Brad Lojas.

We already have it from NBA Jam.

Do you guys need Blue Edwards and 16-bit?

So

who did you like to play as?

Because like me, you're a Laker fan.

You're from Southern California.

Did you play as the Lakers?

The Lakers were in gray just because it was, I think, Worthy and Vladi at the time.

That's what it was.

It was a real downtime for the Lakers because it missed showtime and it was too early for the Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Cedric Sebalis Lakers.

Right, right.

I didn't necessarily want to be playing as the 92, 93 Lakers.

For sure.

So I usually aired on the side of Penny and Horace Grant.

I needed a shooter and a dunker, basically.

And I also liked Isaiah Thomas and Joe Dumars.

Yeah, I was a big,

and it was looking through the roster and jogging my memory.

I realized that I ended up playing, and not that I,

you know, did this team as a rival of the Lakers, but I ended up playing as the Blazers with Drexler and Terry Porter.

Yeah, that's another good small, tall

collection lineup.

But yeah,

it's kind of fascinating to go through the roster and see that there are ones where it's like, oh, there's Shaq there.

Oh, Scotty Pippen.

You know, like there are some.

Shaq was not in the game.

Shaq

was in the arcade version

only, i think of the original yeah remember seeing like nick anderson and penny hardaway yeah there was all sorts of weird shit that was going on because like gary payton wasn't in one version it was benoit benjamin instead yeah yeah so they did they have to ask these players for like individual permission well so a big part of it apparently was

First off, they were just kind of making decisions arbitrarily because they were like, I don't know who's on the Kings.

I don't know.

I guess Spud Webb.

I guess we'll throw him in there.

So there was part of that was just the developers having the roster of all the NBA teams.

And, you know, before league pass, before being able to watch everything, you were like looking through box scores and trying to figure out if like, you know, Hersey Hawkins was the best representative of the Philadelphia 76ers.

The thing specifically that led to Michael Jordan being excluded from this game and all these other games is that he opted out of the NBA Players Association agreement so he could do his own things.

Gary Payton, I think, was just

too new to the league at the time of the original game.

So I think he got added in later.

But like a lot of these things were just like just felt like fairly arbitrary decisions that came from the developer side yeah um and that's how it was like 90 maybe the shaq thing was like he was a rookie but then there was also like they had like sean elliott accidentally on the rockets and one like the systems that i forget it was like yeah him and robert rory got switched or their pictures got switched or something like that and there were also all these characters that you could uh unlock that were like you know because there are all these cheat codes that you could put in and they were all like

yeah the actual developers too were in there oh like like more fun.

They put their friends in there and stuff like that.

Yeah, this guy, Mike, Mark Turmel, who was one of the developers, was like one of the most powerful characters.

Which I don't know.

I love all that shit.

I think that was also like in a pre-internet age where it was just like you would go to an arcade and someone would do something.

Yeah, big head mode.

Yeah, exactly.

Holy shit.

Like, that was a big part of it, you know?

Yeah.

Can they do that?

Is this legal?

I get arrested.

I swear.

I saw somebody else do it.

I'll put the heads back.

I'll put them back.

So, yeah, there was some motion capture, but a very crude version of it by Stephen Howard, and he ended up later playing five seasons in the NBA, but this was before he was in the league.

They just found him like

at a Chicago court and were like, hey, you want a job?

He's like, all right.

Can you do a front-flip boom shakalaka

for us?

You mean like this?

And he just does it?

We need someone to jump 25 feet in the air and do a finger roll at the top.

Do you think he wasn't doing, like, he wasn't playing basketball before, but like, his experience doing the motion capture for that was like, actually, I think I'm going to give this basketball stuff a try.

Pretty good at sprinting to the corner and shooting the three.

I um, you talk about leaping 20 feet in the air and all that sort of shit.

It's just like, that's the, the, the anarchy of this game is like what's fun about it.

It's like not, not about being like balanced or anything.

It's, it's not about, it's just, it's just about being like over the top.

And it it is like kind of like the, the,

uh,

given the technology of the time, it's like you were not going to be able to

perfectly accurately simulate this thing.

So why not create this over the top, you know, cartoonish version of it?

Yeah, especially compared to like NBA Live 94, let's say came

where it's like five on five, like

so tedious feeling.

Yeah.

Shoot.

I'm like, it almost ruined those games for me.

Because yeah, I didn't need to play five on five when you could play like four three minute quarters and reach 111 points and score 58 points and have 14 blocks.

Yeah.

You want it to stat pad.

I had the, what was this, the college basketball game I had for the Super Nintendo.

It was NCAA basketball.

It was so boring.

They played in like this blue void that game

in a blue void.

Right.

It had like the mode 7 graphics where it would go behind the player who had possession of the ball.

And so like, yeah,

they didn't have the horsepower to have like a crowd that was render.

And it was just like, yeah, and it was so slow pace and it was so boring.

There was also players on there that were like hacked to never miss.

I don't know if you remember that, but like, there were some bench players on like NC State.

You would put him in and he would make like 98% of his threes.

I don't know why they did that, but I remember hacking the game in that way.

Wow.

But yeah, NBA Jam just blew everything else out of the water.

And NFL Blitz kind of did the same thing.

as well.

Like I used to play Madden until NFL Blitz came out and it's like, oh, this is so much more fun.

Yeah, NFL Blitz was a hoot.

The announcing we should talk about, because I think that's one one of the things that people remember the most about it.

And Boom Shaka Laka has already been invoked.

But Tim Kitzrow is the announcer of this game.

So did he invent Boom Shaka Laka for the game?

No, this was

a scripted line that came from one of the developers who was misremembering a lyric from a Sly in the Family Stone song.

Shaka Laka, Shaka Laka.

Yeah,

Boom.

And so, but he said, you know, he made Boom Shaka Laka famous with his delivery.

He was a second city Chicago guy, and he said he was paid $50 an hour for his voiceover session, so he made $800 total for a game that made $2 billion.

And this is why we're striking people because they're just going to be able to do this over and over again.

I think if you invent Boom Chakalaka, you should never have to work another day in your life.

Yes.

They should have made Boom Chocolaka.

So it's like these candy bars that are, I don't know, integrated somehow into the game.

You can just get them.

We'll figure it out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The machine dispenses them.

That's cool.

They're just inside.

Instead of quarters.

Yeah, that'd be fun.

A little yellow.

She's like a mess in there, yeah.

Chocolate everywhere.

I didn't realize that Boom Shaka Laka comes from NBA Jam.

Yeah.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

And also, like, he's on fire is another one.

And I think that phrase obviously has existed, but I think people using it in that context comes from this game.

Yeah.

Well, making three shots in a row becoming on fire is like another thing that made the game so much fun.

100%.

So satisfying.

Chasing that dragon.

Yeah, the funny best.

Yes.

But yeah, you did mention the strike.

I mean, like, I will say, just

with some earnestness, that it is a thing of like, you know, there's a reason that the WGA and SAG After were trying to get some sort of streaming residual as part of these recent labor actions.

And they're hoping to do the same thing in video games.

And what I will say to, I don't know how many developers we have listen to this.

We have some who listen to this.

But if people are in the video game industry, I feel like developers.

Tramel, if you're out there.

Tramel, if you're out there, if you're listening,

the reason you want actors to be able to get residuals

from a performance like this in a game like this, if it's a success-based residual, the reason you want to establish that is because you as a developer

also should be getting that.

If you're doing the coding and the design and the art or the QA for like a game that ends up being this gigantic billion dollar property, literally billion dollar property, then yeah, you should probably get some added revenue from that.

Because also the other thing, you look at all the developers who who worked on this game, none of those guys got rich.

They all killed themselves.

Yeah.

Roll credits.

Dead, dead, sort of alive.

Air dog passed away.

I will say, as much as I loved this game, I don't think I ever got good at it.

Did you think you got good at NBA Jam?

Yeah, I was pretty good, especially playing at home, getting the reps in.

I was at the very least better than my friends.

I would not like join a local tournament and see how I stacked up against other kids in the city.

But yeah, I was pretty good at it.

I feel like I would end up getting sh like think I was pretty good and ended up getting shithouse in a cabinet in an arcade.

Yeah, maybe so.

But

I do always thought this game was just like so much, like so just pure fun and just like what a video game should be.

That's right.

And

I wish they could have recaptured the magic with, you know, some of the...

I guess I haven't played the most modern versions of it, but.

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised that they're not like a bigger, like a bigger thing still.

Because that type of game, then

there was, there was NBA Street, which I was a big fan of.

That was in the early 2000s.

And that sort of took

this type of thing into

a different plane.

It was like a 3D actual court.

And I just remember just being like, this is so fun and funny.

That's the thing that I think is the best part about it is that these games are kind of funny.

They are super funny.

And NBA Street was like, I think the closest to a semi-modern version of NBA Jam.

I did get super into NBA Street for a time.

I was particularly into Volume 2.

Yeah.

And there was like a thing you could do, their version of Boom Shakalaka, I can't remember what it was called, but there was these trick moves that you could do.

And it sort of, I felt like, it shared a similar language with Tony Hawk because there were like combos kind of.

It felt like street mode or something.

Because you would press all the shoulder buttons at once and then you go into super mode.

I think it was something like that.

Yeah.

and then but they had like like almost attacks that you could do there was one called like off the heasy where you would like you're dribbling the ball and if you activate off the heasy you throw the ball at the opponent's head and then do like and then and shoot from there and it was so funny like and one mixtape style yes street ball so good what i loved about that game is that you could uh just you could uh just for the reality of it is you had your create a character and then as you upgraded their character you could improve their stats but that included adding inches to their height so just the idea of like my character eventually growing to seven foot seven over the course of his career but then also you could like uh if you want you could use some of the like the basketball players that are in the game so you could make like a a team that's three shacks versus three shacks and like that's kind of funny too my understanding is that part of the reason these arcade games and it's certainly the case with nfl blitz because the nfl is a you know more stodgy conservative league is they eventually lost the nfl license because the nfl didn't like you know the way that this kind of like cartoonified and also made the game a little bit more violent than the actual yeah we can't let people think about this too long

so the like I and I don't know if the same thing they they've still been making some NBA jams but I don't know if that's the same sort of thing of just like the league is more comfortable having a sim version like if that's just like a little bit of an easier to sell or maybe it just like sells so much better that you know it's not worth investing in the arcade versions.

Maybe they

had like there was like a class action lawsuit, people going to NBA games and being like, nobody lit on fire.

Yeah.

False advertising.

Yeah.

Nobody was heating up all game.

Can I have a refund?

I do think it's ripe for like if they wanted to go the route of they within the last couple of years remastered Tony Hawk's Proscator 1 and 2.

Which I did play on Switch.

Which I loved.

Like it was such a good package too.

But one of my favorite things about it is

it's not like they remade the game and they're young still.

They're sort of like, oh, there's Tony Hawk.

He's clearly 50 years old in this game.

They could do that with the players in the NBA Jam and just make them old.

I think that's kind of fun.

I remember looking up, like, are they going to do this with NBA Jam?

And there was some like business reason why it would never come to the Switch.

Like, between the ownership rules and the NBA getting involved, they can't just remake this game like they do with the other games.

Maybe they lost the code.

That happens more often than you think.

So did they just lose the code?

This is the last cabinet.

It's in there somewhere.

Trammel himself etched the code code into the side of the camera.

We can't make it.

We lost the code.

I've heard at least one instance of this.

The code.

Like, why hasn't this being remastered?

The person that made the game is like, we lost it.

Well, yeah, because there's even a thing of like, I think

back in a day when storage was at such a premium and like hard drive space was so much so expensive, they just like they'd ship a game.

It's like, well, we don't need the source code anymore.

Let's just delete this to free up our hard drive space, you know, and there wouldn't be like a tape backup or something.

I, I, yeah, I don't know if that's,

I've heard this say.

I don't know how, what's the word when something is like

apocryphal this is.

Thank you.

That's exactly what I was looking for.

I learned it from you.

It's a great word.

You ever fuck with apocryphal?

No.

We'll be right back.

Yes.

Let's go.

I think this game, I think this game ripped.

And yeah, I think the licensing must be the reason that there hasn't been like a modern version of it.

I think EA owns a license now.

There have been some like maybe arcade one-up versions of like the cabinet, like some small-scale versions of the cabinet, but the actual, I don't think they've released a new one for like 10 plus years.

That would have been nice.

Yeah.

Instead of taking the real one up 70 stairs, the smaller, the smaller one would have been much nicer.

Yeah, because then people would be like, is that a real one?

And I'd have to be like, oh, you're like, no, I got this real quick.

This is the real deal.

I got an NBA jam and a fucking hot dog.

Yeah, yeah.

It must have taken like four or five guys to put, no, I did it myself.

It's a flat screen.

The whole thing is made out of balsa wood.

It weighs 14 pounds.

Don't lean on it.

It will shatter.

That thing is built like a fucking brick house.

It's like, remember those old TVs that were so unwieldy and like off balance regardless of how you held it?

Oh, yeah.

There's one of those in there.

That's wild.

Yeah, those old, those super heavy, bulky CRTs that are so front, front loaded.

That's what's in there.

A friend of mine a couple last year on my birthday pulls up to my birthday.

He's like, I have something for you.

And I've had a couple drinks at this point.

And he opens his trunk.

It's our pal Jacob Waisaki.

And he opens his trunk.

And there's just a CRTV in the trunk.

And I'm trying to get it out of the car.

I'm like, almost about to drop it.

And my fiancé comes over and is like, what are you doing?

And I was like,

and I just put it back in the trunk.

And I was like, you have to do something with this man.

I can't take this.

He brought that as a gift?

He brought it to a bar to give to me.

I was like, what did you think?

Actually, then the next day we talked about it.

He was like, I don't know what I was thinking, bringing that out at a social event.

Yeah.

It was really funny, though.

I thought that was apocryphal.

Okay, so now he's fucking with it.

He's integrating it.

I'll give it a test run.

Any other thoughts on NBA Jam?

It's the perfect game.

And it's kind of nice that they're not remaking it because it exists for that time and place.

Like, we don't need a 2023 version of it because it wouldn't be as good.

And I'm glad that I was born to be 12 when it came out or whatever.

God, that is perfect time and place.

Shall we do a segment?

Let's do it.

All right, this is a new thing that we're doing, and this is inspired, I bear it, partly by the hoop grids, which I know.

Do you do the hoop grids?

Every day.

I thought it was going to be my game that I play, but then I remembered I play VR mini golf instead.

But yeah, I was going to bring up hoop grids.

I had to stop doing the hoop grids because they are, I found them they were too time-consuming and too addictive.

But there's also movie grids that people are into.

Anyway, I devised my own grid.

That's amazing.

This is the gamer grid.

Fantastic.

And the way this one is going to work, there are three columns and three rows, and we're trying to line these up.

We got these up on the screen here.

So the three rows are Madden NFL,

NBA 2K, and Mario Tennis.

Got it.

And then the columns are...

First release year.

So first year that one of these games came out.

Cover athlete.

Okay.

And voice commentator.

Oh, cool.

The way these generally work is it's like name, like it there there's a bunch of different possibilities obviously first one's only one

yeah, but but cover athlete and voice commentator There are a lot of options.

Oh interesting.

Okay, cool.

So you'll give me extra points for rarity now is this the immaculate grid where I only get nine guesses total or is this more of a hoop grid style where I can keep refining my answer until I'm at the most rare version?

Um I wish I had a way to track rarity.

Unfortunately, I don't really have a way to do that because we're only doing it with you two.

Interesting.

I guess we can compare your answers against each other.

Whose answer is more rare 50?

But I do have some stats that we can go to.

But yeah, anyone want to take a crack at any of these, feel free to chime in.

I only know the first one.

The first one's the only one I played growing up.

Madden NFL.

Yeah.

I believe the first one was 91 or 92.

The first Madden came out in 1988 for PC.

Wow.

A little pre-Genesis Nintendo.

Okay, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

We've got NBA 2K, we've got Mario Tennis, we've also got cover athlete and voice commentator.

You can weigh in with any category.

Okay, I'm going to take a wild guess that the first Madden cover would have been John Madden.

Madden?

It's a great guess, and it is a correct guess.

In fact, he is the most frequent cover athlete.

Boom!

If you have somebody like John Madden and don't put him on the cover, what are you even doing?

Yeah, exactly.

John Madden's career was so long that there were people who only knew him as a coach, and then there were people who only knew him as a commentator, and and then there were people who only knew him as a uh you know uh as the madden guy didn't even realize he was a commentator yeah but yeah he was on the cover for the first five editions of john madden football and then he ultimately um uh would share it with athletes and then came back at the uh the for the 23rd anniversary or i'm sorry the the madden nfl 23 um whichever anniversary edition that was or was that the year he passed away that's what it was do you have uh a list of every cover athlete i do yeah okay can i guess some names Please.

Okay.

I know Michael Vick did it at least once.

Vick absolutely was a cover athlete in Madden NFL 2004.

Yeah.

Was

Ladanian Tomlinson?

Let me look for this.

Okay.

I don't think Tomlinson.

No, Tomlinson turned down the cover of

NFL 2008.

Yeah, because there is a Madden Chris.

Do you know about this, Matt?

I don't know about this.

So famously, the person.

They're all dead.

Okay, well, John Madden first, right?

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

The athlete featured on the cover of a John Madden game oftentimes is injured or has a bad season.

Yeah.

Was Peyton Hillis ever a Madden cover?

I feel like I remember him having one good year and they put him on the cover.

Madden NFL 2012, you're correct.

Peyton Hillis.

Okay, that would be the most rare one, I think.

That's pretty good.

Okay, I'll lock in Peyton Hillis, yeah.

My John Madden answer turned out to be not rare at all, actually.

He did it the most.

Yeah.

That would have been.

You would have nailed it in one, but the most people would have guessed Matt.

Yeah.

All right.

We've got

first release year, cover athletes.

That was for sure.

Does that include NBA Live, or is that a different franchise?

NBA 2K is a different franchise from NBA Live.

NBA Live is the one by EA.

NBA 2K is by 2K Games.

I thought NBA 2K was like NBA Live 2000, but I guess I stopped playing, so I didn't really.

They were released in kind of a similar timeframe.

I assume 2K started in 2K, 2000.

Matt, you want to take a guess

yeah

i'm gonna guess 2003.

here's the thing

you got to remember that sports games come out a year early 1999 the first nba 2k came out for the year 2000 yeah 1999 2000 season interesting

Didn't realize we'd get scolded for answering wrong.

Sorry I got it right.

Like, what are you trying to say?

Could have clearly given me credit because the season did end in 2000.

Yeah, I guess I didn't add three months to get to the end of the day.

This is the thing you got to remember.

Okay, you made up the rules.

Is that what I got to remember?

Or do you have the answer in front of you?

Piece of shit.

Cover athlete.

I don't fucking know.

Iverson or some shit.

I'm going to put Peyton Ellis here.

Yeah.

Wait, did you say Iverson?

I did.

Not only is Alan Iverson correct, he was the first cover athlete for NBA 2K, and he's the most frequent NBA 2K cover athlete.

Wow.

I think the first five NBA 2Ks were all Alan Iverson.

Yeah, and then then there was one of him kissing John Madden, the Madden 2K crossover.

Like on the lips.

Yes.

On the Berlin Wall.

Do we think that

the song White Iverson is on any of the

NBA 2K playlists?

I got both soundtracks.

You gotta think so.

All right, we've got a voice commentator, and we've got any details on Mario Tennis?

First release year, cover after?

I don't know anything about Mario Tennis.

I mean, it would be pretty crazy.

It would be pretty crazy if John Madden wasn't also the voice commentator for the game, even if it was a rudimentary.

Yeah, no, Madden was in a lot of these.

I think the voiceover commentary started around 2000 or so.

That was when they had a point where Joe Montana Sports Talk Football.

Oh, yeah.

Because Joe Montana was like the voice of it.

Welcome to Joe Montana Sports Talk Football.

Really?

Call me when it's Joe Montana.

Thank you.

Sports Talk candid camera.

Pencil Madden in there.

NBA 2K voice commentator, any guess?

Marv Albert.

Marv Albert, I believe, was for some of the later editions.

Now, here's the thing.

Yeah, Marv Albert was.

Wait a minute.

Where the fuck is it?

Mike Breen.

Yeah, Breen was in some.

Maybe Marv Albert didn't commentate for any of these.

I thought he did.

It was too expensive.

Yeah, it might have been.

We can edit out some of this dead era show.

Keep it in.

Keep it all in.

Use it.

I had this in front of me.

I can't find it now.

But

yeah, I don't know if Breen was either.

I don't even really know who does that

at all.

Like for the NBA, who does commentating?

Yeah, I have no idea.

I know that those guys are all funny.

Right.

Shaq and...

Oh, like the halftime shows?

Yeah, but that's like not commentating.

No, yeah.

It's like Mike Breen and Doris Burke and Doc Rivers and Van Gundy and Mark Jackson now.

A lot of ex-players.

I do have pulled up that the first four games of the NBA 2K series bafflingly feature commentary from fictional announcers Bob Steele and Rod West.

Why do they do that?

Weird.

From makeup Bob Steele and Rod West.

Have them be fake guys.

I guess they're free?

Yeah.

And this is why we're striking people.

A new guy just dropped, not spending any money.

Upload your photo and make the guy commentating look like

your dick.

He's a horrific monster.

Yeah.

All right, in the interest of time, I'm just going to plug in Bob Steele here.

Bob Steele.

All right.

Anyone want to try to guess in the Mario Tennis's here?

Mario Tennis, I'm going to imagine that this didn't happen

until maybe the Nintendo 64.

You're correct.

That's the right generation.

Okay, so I'm going to guess maybe somewhere in 97.

Not 97.

But you got to remember, this came out a year before.

Okay, yeah,

96.

Yeah, yeah.

Could it have been late in the cycle then?

Could it have been like 99, 98?

2000.

2000.

Really late.

Yeah, yeah.

NBA Mario Tennis comes out first then.

The cover model.

Kavoran Ivanisovich, right?

Or Mark Filipusis, Patrick Rafter, Yvonne Lendel.

Who do they have?

I already forget.

So this is for sure

this category was put so I could answer something.

And I do appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yoshi in a tennis skirt.

Also, my Halloween costume.

I would imagine there's more than one answer because they put like the kind of the whole roster of the Mario canon on the box.

I mean, none of these really, except for the release year, none of these just have one answer.

Okay.

Mario.

Matt, you get it.

It's Mario.

Mario's on every one of these covers.

Unbelievable.

Yeah, yeah.

And then voice commentator, that's tough because typically they don't have like...

What about the guy in the cloud?

I was going to say, it could have been like Likitu, yeah.

I don't think Likidu typically has a voice.

This one's tricky.

I was just going to give, if you could name literally any Mario voice actor, I was going to give it to you.

Well, yeah, Charles Martin A.

Yeah, we'll throw Martin A in there.

Chris Pratt is Pratt.

Weirdly before the movie.

That's how you got it.

Though the announcer, there is a credit announcer in Mario Tennis who is voiced by Scott Burns, who was the voice of Bowser.

Bowser doing double duty as the Mario Tennis announcer.

Jesus.

You don't want him doing more than what he has to do.

It's pretty tough stuff.

Remember the Nintendo game Tennis?

Yeah, of course.

Just tennis.

I didn't fuck around back then.

No.

Tennis.

Let's not get too fancy with it, okay?

This one's called tennis.

You know, the sport you already know about?

That's the game.

That's the name of the game.

They had, so they had baseball was another one.

Yeah, they had, and they also had golf before Mario Golf, they just, but the one I remember is that their football game was not called football.

It was called 10-yard fight.

Yeah.

That's always the number one alphabetical on the list.

Right, yeah.

Because it's the number 10.

Gaming in the algorithm.

That's right.

What was that one baseball game that had all like the funny, weird names in it?

Yeah, yeah.

Ken Griffey, I think.

Is that what it was?

Where they're like.

Bobs and Doug Nuts.

Right, right, right.

The foreign Japanese names that are artificially created.

Yeah.

It was a, someone was trying to come up with fake American names, and English was their second language.

And yeah, they're all complete Jewish games.

It's just funny because they spent all, then if that's what it was, they like spent all the money on the one guy.

And they're like, we have to come up with different guys now.

It was fighting baseball is the name of it.

And we've brought this up in the podcast before.

Some of these

players, these fictional players include Sleeve McDicle,

Hunson Sweeney,

Anatoly Smorin,

Glenn Allen Mixon.

Now that sounds like a guy.

That sounds like a guy.

Glenn Allen Hill was a baseball player.

Oh, got it.

Okay.

And Joe Mixon's a football player.

Raul Chamberlain.

I mean, these people are so dumb.

That's not what names are.

Names are like Bill Gant,

Obson Dugna,

Woron.

Hey, that was Gamer Grid.

That was this week's Get Played.

Our producers are Shell Chen.

That was fun.

That was fun.

Yeah, that was a, yeah,

I think there's something there with that segment.

And you know what?

Matt, every week we release our Patreon show, Get Animate.

Do you remember what we're talking about this week?

This week we're starting Captain Laserhawk, a Blood Dragon Remix.

Is that what it's called?

I guess I teed you up without telling you I was going to do that.

I think that it's called.

I think that is what it is.

It's a Blood Dragon remix.

It's on Netflix.

It's on Netflix.

It's like the Ubisoft anime.

You get to see Rayman doing some weird stuff.

Yeah.

It's really fun.

Check it out.

And that's over on patreon.com slash get played.

Our guest today, Amir Blumenfeld.

Amir, thank you so much for being here.

What a treat.

What a wonderful trip down memory.

I'll always talk about NBA Jam slash sports slash basketball.

So whenever you guys want to talk about that stuff, I'm happy to come back.

Hell yeah.

I love it.

Love to have you.

And now we just did a segment.

You have a podcast called Segments.

Yes, that's correct.

Our new podcast.

Jake and I went from, if I were you, our advice show, to something a little more customizable, I should say.

Segments, which is a podcast that's just constantly reinventing itself every 10 or so minutes is a completely new unrelated segment.

So sometimes I'll write a poem and try to have Jake guess whether it's a poem that I wrote or an award-winning poem.

Wow.

And then sometimes it's just Jake and Mir trivia.

And then sometimes it's we're playing a game against each other.

Wow.

So it could be anything.

Always on your toes.

Always on my toes.

And it's a lot of, it's more work than we thought, actually.

Didn't realize how hard it was to come up with five original segments every week.

So so far we're on week four or five.

Things are going strong.

Talk to me in a year and a half and see how you're doing.

No, I did this, this gamer grid segment I did today took me way too much time, and I also clearly was not well prepared.

It's a pain in the ass.

I mean, I think the segment is good, and I think we should do it again for sure.

I think it's good.

If you could see what it looks like,

the fact that it took any time at all is insane.

And we didn't even finish.

That's true.

Anyway, voice commentator for Mario Tennis.

Anyone?

Steve Mario.

Thanks, Amir.

Thanks for doing the show, and you got played.

Yeah, sorry.

Did we not tell you that that's how we end it?

I thought it was ending.

That's why I cut to black with my voice, but are we still recording?

That was a hit gum podcast.