IT’S the reason catchphrases like “He’s On Fire” and “Boomshakalaka” became part of the common vernacular. And why dozens of schoolkids failed classes — or went broke.

NBA Jam, the iconic two-on-two basketball arcade game is truly an institution. Whether you played as Karl Malone and John Stockton or Charles Barkley and Dan Majerle, if you grew up in the 1990s there’s a fair chance some of your loose change went into one of these machines.

Here’s a few things you might not know about the game loved by a generation.

1. THE NBA INITIALLY REFUSED TO LICENCE THE GAME

NBA Jam was developed by a programmer/designer named Mark Turmell at a company called Midway. It was initially supposed to feature generic players, but Midway president Neil Nicastro wanted NBA stars and so the company approached the league about getting a licence.

According to Turmell, the NBA said no because they didn’t want their logo in “seedy” arcade halls. So Midway made a videotape (yes VHS) of well-presented family entertainment centres and sent it back to the league showing the type of G-rated environment the games would be housed in. The brains trust at the NBA — which pocketed $100 from every arcade game sold — quickly changed their mind.

2. THERE WAS ONE MAJOR STAR MISSING

ANYONE whose played NBA Jam will remember the frustration of having to play with the duo of Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant — or BJ Armstrong in other versions — when they lined up as the Chicago Bulls.

The reason Bulls superstar Michael Jordan wasn’t included in the game is because he owns the rights to his own name and likeness — and Midway wasn’t able to secure an individual licence.

But Turmell told ESPN.com there were a handful of machines the company made which featured Jordan and Seattle Supersonics guard Gary Payton, who also wasn’t included in the original game. “One day, I got a phone call from a distributor out on the west coast who told me that Gary Payton was willing to pay whatever it cost to get into the game,” Turmell said.

“So we told him what to do in terms of taking photographs, so he sent in photographs of himself and Jordan, saying, ‘We want to be in the game, hook us up’. So we actually did a special version of the game and gave both players all-star, superstar stats.”

3. THE BULLS WERE PROGRAMMED TO FAIL

ANOTHER frustrating aspect of playing as the Bulls was Pippen and Grant’s propensity to miss shots late in games.

Turmell — a Pistons fan — revealed they were programmed to miss, but only against the rival Detroit Pistons.

“If there was a close game and anyone on the Bulls took a last-second shot, we wrote special code in the game so that they would average out to be bricks,” he told ESPN.com.

“There was the big competition back in the day between the Pistons and the Bulls, and since I was always a big Pistons fan, that was my opportunity to level the playing field.”

4. SHAQ USED TO TAKE NBA JAM ON ROAD TRIPS

SHAQUILLE O’Neal was a big fan of the game in the early days of his NBA career, so much so he’d have team assistants lug around the arcade game when the Orlando Magic travelled for road games.

“Yeah, I’d bring the machine on the road every now and then just because I loved playing so much,” Shaq told ESPN.com. “I remember back in the day I used to play as Chris Mullin against my boys, and I’d hit like 12 threes in a row and start yelling: ‘He’s on fire!’”

5. THE BEST NBA JAM CHARACTER WILL SURPRISE YOU

FORGET Reggie Miller’s three-point accuracy or Shaq’s ability to dunk, if you’re looking to win in NBA Jam it’s best to play as Turmell himself.

In a recent interview with Great Big Story, Turmell showed how deadly the individual player he created of himself was.

“If it’s just looking at pure attributes, I happen to be the best player in the game,” he said. “When you actually put in my secret character it just shows question marks for the stats, but they’re all 10s or nines. I’m pretty good at NBA Jam.”

6. THE GAME HAS A DARK SIDE

TURMELL swears the game is haunted. Midway had already finished making the game when one of its players — New Jersey Nets shooting guard Drazen Petrovic — was killed in a car crash in Germany.

“One night we were playing Mortal Kombat and there was a Jam machine next to it, and all of a sudden the game started calling out ‘Petrovic!’ ‘Petrovic!’ And this only happened after Petrovic had died,” Turmell told ESPN.com.

“Everyone started freaking out. Something weird was going on with the software, and to this day, if you have an original NBA Jam machine every once in a while it will just yell out ‘Petrovic!’ It’s wild.”

7. BUT IT COULD HAVE BEEN DARKER

MIDWAY also developed the equally popular Mortal Kombat fighting game. Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon revealed in 2009 there was supposed to be an unlockable court designed to look like a Mortal Kombat level.

But the “Kourt”, which featured a bloody skull as a ball and had a hoop made of bones, was ruled out by the NBA.

8. IT MADE HUGE REVENUE

ESTIMATES of how much pocket money NBA Jam pulled in vary between $1 and $2 billion. Some machines were pulling in as much as $2000 a week in quarters in the US during the peak of the game’s popularity.

“Jam was making so much money when it first came out,” Turmell told ESPN.com. “There was so much four-player action at this one arcade in Chicago that the first week they had to shut the arcade down, because there was a huge fight over whose turn it was to play.”

9. YOU COULD PLAY AS A US PRESIDENT

EXPERT players will have discovered this years ago, but for casual users there were a number of hidden characters you could unlock, including US president Bill Clinton.

Follow-up versions of the game allowed you to compete as Clinton’s wife, Hillary, vice president Al Gore, baseball player Frank Thomas and various team mascots.