NBA Jam was first released as a Midway arcade game way back in 1993, and later graced consoles such as the PS2 and original Xbox in 2003. Now it's back again, pounding the court with its relentlessly paced hoop-shooting style - not to mention its blatant disregard for sportsmanship and the rules of basketball.

Basketball basics
The core of NBA Jam is two-on-two arcade basketball with few rules. No goal tending is allowed, and there's a shot clock, but other than that everything is fair game. You can pass to back-court, elbow your opponent, even shove them over in the quest to bring home another basket. The game's style is over-the-top in every sense, with dunks consisting of huge, impossibly acrobatic leaps that break several laws of physics - and quite often the backboard too.

Although the official Jam rulebook stops short of allowing forwards to douse each other in petrol and flick matches at one another, it is possible for a player to get on fire. This happens if you hit three baskets in a row without reply, the ball literally catching ablaze, with shooting accuracy and jumping ability massively increased.

Flashy moves
NBA Jam is - and has always been - very focused on offensive play. It's all about flashy moves and high-scoring games. Executing tricky-looking dribbles and alley-oops is made quite easy by the game's intuitive control system. A crossover dribble, for example, can be performed with a simple nudge on the right stick. It's a definite thrill to pull off a complex threaded dribble followed by an astounding reverse dunk with relative ease - but defending against these moves is a trickier matter altogether.

Because of the speed at which the game moves, getting in position to block, or manoeuvring to make a steal, can be quite testing initially. While defending is certainly demanding to begin with, practice makes something closer to perfect, and repeatedly taking on a one-on-one boss battle helped us polish our skills.

Eventually, after plenty of the computer-controlled boss, Lebron James, slam dunking us into oblivion, we got the hang of blocking - and perhaps one of the most important weapons in the defender's armoury, the shove. A well-placed barge left James on the floor with the ball sometimes spilling loose, allowing us to go on the attack and work some of our own dribbling and dunking magic.

New features
Boss battles are new to this incarnation of NBA Jam, which introduces the remix tour. This is more interesting than the standard campaign, which simply involves a linear progression through a number of teams. The remix tour features different types of match. These include elimination, in which three players face off against each other, the lowest scorer getting dumped out when the clock runs down. Anther alternative is domination, which draws circles on the court - score from one and it becomes owned by your team, racking up points during every second of ownership. All these options add a welcome dollop of variety.

Also new to the Jam is the addition of high-definition graphics, which look decent enough. At least, the courts and players do - HD rather exposes the crowd and folk clustered along the sideline as cardboard cut-outs. Not that you'll notice this in the heat of the action.

Online options
NBA Jam is replete with a massive stack of unlockables, and an online mode that offers a full ranking system. It's possible to play all the match variants online, so you can plump for co-op teams or some one-on-one action. Online games are hugely enjoyable and lag-free, plus they allow for more psychology than playing against the CPU. Fakes and quick turns work so much more effectively against a human opponent - not to mention trash talk.

The one downside to the online multiplayer is the lack of any kind of lobby system, or a method that allows you to search for any available online match. As it is, you have to search for a specific match type, which somewhat narrows your chances of successfully finding a game.

Verdict
NBA Jam brings Xbox owners some classic arcade basketball action that's still dunkingly delightful today. The remix tour mode adds a good deal of spice for single players, and the fresh HD visuals don't hurt. Online jamming is much fun, too - although we'd like to see the addition of some sort of lobby for an overview of all the Xbox Live games available.

Company: EA

Tags: lebron james nba jam xbox arcade game boss (video gaming) games video games recreation