MARK TURMELL

Midway developer

We saw at a trade show that Atari was working on a fighting game called Primal Rage, which used photographs to create stop-motion little dinosaurs that fought. We decided to make a basketball game using that technology because I’m a big basketball fan. Williams, our parent company, had bought Bally, and Bally had made a game called Arch Rivals that used hand-drawn animations to depict two-on-two basketball.

JOHN CARLTON

Midway developer

You could punch people in Arch Rivals—I think that’s where we got the idea of knocking a player over in NBA Jam.

SHAWN LIPTAK

Midway developer

We looked at Arch Rivals, which was very tongue in cheek, kind of funny, and were like: We can do something much more modern, with better graphics.

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NEIL NICASTRO

Midway President

For an arcade game, you’ve got to cram enough fun and adrenaline into a minute and a half so that someone will put in another quarter. You’ve got to make it sensational.

MARK TURMELL

Midway developer

I started cruising around Chicago, going to playgrounds and to DePaul’s basketball arena to find a couple of players to model for us.

STEPHEN HOWARD

NBA Jam model; NBA forward

Turmell came into the gym at Alumni Hall and said, “Hey, do any of you guys wanna help make a video game?” I was like, “Sure.”

MARK TURMELL

Midway developer

We went into a TV production studio, painted a wall and set up a camera 20 feet away. We had these players run back and forth and mimic basketball moves.

STEPHEN HOWARD

NBA Jam model; NBA forward

When I was negotiating with Mark I said, “I have the potential of playing in the NBA, so I need to get more money.” He ended up paying me double what he paid the other guys.

JOHN CARLTON

Midway developer

At that point they were just doing very simple, realistic dunks. I put that footage on a floppy disk and gave it to Mark to digitize.

MARK TURMELL

Midway developer

I would show these dunks—at pretty normal heights—to Eugene Jarvis, who made Defender and Stargate and Robotron, and he was like, “Maybe make that a little faster, a little higher.”

JOHN CARLTON

Midway developer

The next day Mark gave me a call: “Come on over; I just got one of the dunks in the game.” He had exaggerated it to the point where the player was taking off at the top of the key, jumping 20 feet in the air—a classic NBA Jam-style dunk. I was just dumbfounded, like, “Come on, we need to make this realistic!”

SAL DIVITA

Midway developer

More and more, people reacted positively to [the exaggerated dunks], like, “You have to do this!”

JONATHAN HEY

Midway developer

Then we started taking that a little further—triple somersaults 30 feet in the air, windmills, insane alley-oops. . . .

STEPHEN HOWARD

NBA Jam model; NBA forward

You know how when you’re on fire and you tumble over and spin when you dunk? To film that they set me on a picnic bench; there was a mat on the floor and I would just tumble over, like stunt work. We did that for about five days. It was pretty monotonous work.

JOHN CARLTON

Midway developer

I was down on the monster dunks, I have to admit. I loved the NBA for what it was; I didn’t want to turn this into a clown show. . . . But within 24 hours I was converted. “O.K., let’s go crazy here!”

MARK TURMELL

Midway developer

I recognized right away: Everyone loved jumping to the height of the top of the backboard.

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