More Making up for Lost Time

Much like all the 12-year olds I was jealous of back in the day (note my retro phraseology), I have upgraded from Nintendo to Super Nintendo. No longer content with just Super Tecmo Bowl and Double Dribble, I have now added NBA Jam to my collection. This has been an enormous pickup.

For those unfamiliar with the game, this is basically two-on-two basketball with NBA teams. The Pistons have Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer, and so far I've used them to beat seven other teams. It's funny to look back on the NBA circa 1993. Teams like Atlanta are actually decent while Sacramento (this year not withstanding) is the second team you play on your way through the then-27-team NBA. So that's fun. There were two great things about the game, that I have yet to master and discover.

1. Being on fire, which happened you hit three shots in a row. The announcer, who might have been Marv Albert announced, "He's on fire!," and then you could goaltend with impunity and hit basically any shot you took from the proper side of halfcourt.
2. The codes. Everyone my age can recite the 30-life code from Contra, but few had as many as NBA Jam. You could type in the all-time fire code, the big head code, the Clinton/Gore code, where the players would switch heads with the President and VP. I learned recently from Joel, who briefly did this for a living, that designers put codes into games expressly for video game testers. That way they could try more things and discover more bugs. I still don't know what keypad button corresponds to what key, so I've yet to experiment with those codes.

I'll keep you posted.