In the 1990s, the Chicago Bulls were an all but unstoppable force -- except on the pixelated hardwood of "NBA Jam."
In a recent interview with ESPN The Magazine, the seminal video game's lead designer, Mark Turmell, revealed "Jam" was rigged against the Bulls. Turmell, a Bay City, Mich. native (and avowed Pistons fan) told the magazine:
"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. 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."
Boom-shakalaka!
Turmell revealed there was also a special code written in to lower Scottie Pippen's ratings whenever he played the Detroit squad.
"NBA Jam" became an overnight sensation when it was released in 1993 by the now-defunct Chicago-based Midway Games.
Turmell told the magazine fights would erupt in Chicago arcades over whose turn it was to play when the game was first released. Midway eventually sold more than 20,000 arcade units with the highest-grossing consoles raking in $2,000 per week at their peak, according to video game review site 1Up.com.
The game was among the first to have secret "Easter Egg" characters (notables like Bill Clinton and Turmell and other Midway designers) that gamers could unlock.
Notably missing from the "Jam" roster is Bulls star Michael Jordan who was famously skittish about licensing his image for video games.
"NBA Jam" was also rumored to be haunted by the ghost of New Jersey Nets shooting guard Dražen Petrović. Petrović, who is featured in the game, died in a car accident before "Jam" was officially released.
According to “NBA Jam” creator Mark Turmell, there are a few special machines still out there with Jordan actually in the game. I had always heard rumors about these machines, but never knew if it was just some arcade urban legend until I sat down and asked Turmell about his favorite two-man team.
“The most interesting one was the team of Gary Payton and Michael Jordan,” he said. “Payton didn't make the cut to be in the game, and of course, Jordan pulled himself out of the licensing of the NBA, so we had to pull him out of the game. But 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. 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 superstar stats. There are only a handful of these machines, but Jordan and Payton did end up being in one version of the game.”
