Retro Gaming Australia

The first South Park video game is a rather horrible first person shooter. For what was a very lucrative project for Acclaim, it seems like they allocated an extremely low budget to it – everything looks cheap, there is next to no variety in the weapons and enemies, enemies are bullet sponges, and the game runs like utter crap. Yet it’s not the worst South Park game Acclaim released!

WWF War Zone is Acclaim’s first wrestling game to use 3D graphics. Initially well-received, WWF War Zone developed quite the following for its create-a-wrestler feature. Many criticised WWF War Zone‘s use of fighting game like movements for basic wrestling moves – one would have to spend quite some time learning a wrestler’s moves before they could play the game effectively. Also interesting is that the game featured Bret Hart, despite coming out in July 1998, nearly 8 months after his unceremonious exit from the WWF.

Prototype collecting website Nintendo Player has unearthed a rather amusing little piece of software which they’ve dubbed NBA Jam XXX.

It’s pretty much the same as the released version of NBA Jam, except that the commentator swears like a sailor.

The game was provided to Nintendo Player anonymously, but a note was included that described how the version of the game came about. “Due to the memory constraints of the 16-bit system, the long strands of voice samples from the classic arcade game had to be modified to fit a Super Nintendo cartridge. Tim Kitzrow, NBA Jam‘s memorable voice-over announcer, was called back into the studio to shorten his calls. During one of these recording sessions, a number of outtakes were saved as a joke, which served as the basis for a special, profanity-filled, in-house-only game–one that, if word ever got out about its existence, could have severely jeopardized Acclaim’s relationship with the NBA league and completely shut down NBA Jam‘s development for good.”

Source: Nintendo Player

Basketball was at the height of its popularity in the mid 1990s – and NBA Jam struck at just the right time to ride the wave of the sport’s success. The home versions were some of Acclaim’s most successful releases in the company’s history.

NFL Quarterback Club is part of something lost to the passage of time – non-Madden NFL games. Although this first iteration wasn’t particularly good, NFL Quarterback Club found its feet on the Nintendo 64, where it was a legitimate, and in the case of the 1998 version, maybe even better, competitor to the Madden NFL series. Unfortunately after that, Acclaim’s quality control went out the window and the series pissed away any goodwill.

College Slam was basically NBA Jam with NCAA teams, built on top of the existing NBA Jam architecture by Iguana Entertainment, who did the NBA Jam ports for home consoles. The game features most Division 1 college teams from the time.

Cerebral bore was a pretty apt description of the game.

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil was probably Acclaim’s biggest hit in the fifth generation era. The game looked pretty damn good, but suffered in the gameplay stakes. I think we can all agree that the game’s Japanese title Violence Killer: Turok New Generation is a far better name.

Throwing snowballs at turkeys: the video game.

South Park for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and PC was the first game based on the now long running animated comedy. Acclaim picked up the license and had Iguana Entertainment churn out a quickie first person shooter. The result was not pretty – and it’s actually the best one Acclaim published. After Acclaim’s third abysmal South Park game (South Park Rally), series creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone refused to license the video game rights to the series for almost 10 years.

A mainstay during a misspent youth.

NBA Jam was a case of the right game at the right time. The popularity of basketball was at its peak and NBA Jam let you play as your favourite players (except the then temporarily retired Michael Jordan) and do all kinds of reality breaking dunks and lay ups. This ad is for the home release, which was wildly successful.

The legendary Bock, founder of SMS Power has posted a bunch of images from an unreleased port of NBA Jam for the Master System.

Little is known about the port, other than it appears to have been cancelled in 1994, and offers 2 player capabilities that were left out of the similar-but-actually-released Game Gear port. Bock is led to believe that the port was being created internally at Iguana Entertainment.

The prototype ROM will be circulated in the coming weeks through SMS Power.