ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: And I’m Ben Brock Johnson from the WBUR podcast, Endless Thread.
ROMAN MARS: And today we’re bringing you the first episode for our new collaborative series called Hidden Levels.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: It’s about how the world of video games has changed the world beyond video games.
ROMAN MARS: In the next six episodes, we’ll get deep into how games are made and designed–everything from the history of the joystick to how nature is faithfully recreated in the digital world to a dispatch from the front lines of the console wars.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: So, Roman, when did video games first change your world?
ROMAN MARS: I mean, probably when I was in elementary school in the ’80s. The arcade that I went to the most was a small section in a skating rink in Newark, Ohio. And so I first learned playing video games on roller skates, actually.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: That sounds impressive.
ROMAN MARS: [CHUCKLES] How about you?
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: I think, you know, I didn’t have an arcade spot. But one memory that is really strong for me is I had the luck– My brother actually brought me to Japan when I was 12 years old, and I was really lucky to do that. It blew my mind in so many ways. But I went into a real deal Japanese arcade while I was there, and it was so incredible. I mean, the different kinds of games you could play, the sights, and really the sounds, too. We are audio people, Roman. I love sound first and foremost. And that’s what I think of sometimes when I think of video games.
ROMAN MARS: Absolutely. I’m exactly the same way. And there’s something really special about designing game sounds so that it can cut through the din of all the other arcade games and kind of draw you to the machine.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Do you have a favorite sound that you think of when you think of video game sounds?
ROMAN MARS: I mean, my favorite is there used to be this really big arcade game called Gauntlet that had, like, four joysticks on it, so you can play four different characters. And one of the sounds that the sort of game announcer said was, “Elf needs food badly.”
GAUNTLET: Elf needs food badly…
ROMAN MARS: Or: “Elf is about to die.” And I think about “Elf needs food badly” every time I’m hungry. Literally, every day of my life since I played Gauntlet, I think about this game sound. How about you? What’s yours?
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Well, you know, I think of a couple of classics for me, like the Mortal Kombat, you know, Scorpion– “Get over here!”
MORTAL KOMBAT: Get over here!
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: There was a game I played a lot called Cruising USA that had this kind of ridiculous female passenger voice that was like, “Yeah! All right! Hollywood, let’s go!
CRUISING USA: Oh, wow, redwoods! Ooh, Hollywood! Radical!
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: But one that I think of a lot is the “Rayuken” or “Shoryuken” Street Fighter II sounds of Ryu or Ken doing the, like, “Rayuken!” “Shoryuken!”
STREET FIGHTER II: Shoryuken! Shoryuken!
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: That one–I just say that sometimes to myself just to make myself happy. So clearly, Roman, as audio podcasters, we love sound and we could go on forever.
ROMAN MARS: Yeah. And the story we have for you today is all about an iconic video game sound. It’s about a high energy vocal performance that helped spawn an entire franchise. The first episode of Hidden Levels is brought to us by 99PI contributor James Parkinson. Here it is.
NBA JAM: Let’s go!
JAMES PARKINSON: Growing up in Michigan in the 1970s and ’80s, Mark Turmell was a wonder boy of video game design. He released a successful game as a teenager and was earning thousands of dollars a month while still living at his parents’ house. By the time he was in his 20s, Mark was working full time as a developer in Chicago, designing coin operated arcade games.
MARK TURMELL: Coin-op back in those days was always the cutting edge. It was better than any Super Nintendo–better than a Sega Genesis. It was really high-powered. I could put more sprites on the screen, more bullets, more explosions… And so it was, for me, like being a kid in a candy store.
JAMES PARKINSON: The company Mark worked for was called Midway, and they were famous for bringing a number of big Japanese games to the U.S., like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. And in 1992, they released the iconic fighting game Mortal Kombat.
MORTAL KOMBAT: Mortal Kombat!
JAMES PARKINSON: But Mark was about to take Midway in a very different direction.
Mark was a big basketball fan. And in the early ’90s, he could tell that the NBA was really having a moment, particularly in Chicago. This was the height of Michael Jordan mania.
NBA COMMENTATOR: Like they did tonight, then you’re in trouble. Jordan, coming around Scott– And then a slam dunk! Much like the slam dunk he made…
JAMES PARKINSON: The Chicago Bulls were about to clinch their first championship three-peat. And the popularity of the league was at an all-time high.
NBA COMMENTATOR: The Chicago Bulls have won three straight NBA championships…
JAMES PARKINSON: And Mark Turmell decided he wanted to capture the high flying, razzle dazzle energy of professional basketball and put it in an arcade game. He called his new creation NBA Jam.
By the fall of 1992, NBA Jam was almost complete. And Mark Turmell and his team decided to test out their new game at an arcade in Chicago called Dennis’ Place for Games. They rolled in a 400-pound cabinet, put in the chip with the NBA Jam code, and turned the machine on. Then Mark sat back to watch how the customers in Dennis’ Place would react. He says that, back then, there was a pretty simple way to gauge whether a coin-op game was going to be successful. You could usually tell in the first couple of hours.
MARK TURMELL: In the coin-op business, if you can get somebody to put quarters in, reach into their pocket, go to the cash machine–the change machine–and put money in, that’s, like, really telling. It’s very democratic, whether you like it or not.
JAMES PARKINSON: And as Mark watched, the customers at Dennis’ Place voted with their quarters. They crowded around the NBA Jam cabinet, shouting, cursing, fighting for the joystick. It was bedlam.
MARK TURMELL: There were fistfights–you know–people gambling. The coin doors were jammed up with money. You know, when somebody would do a big dunk and the backboard would smash into pieces, they’ll literally scream and run around the arcade. You know, it was awesome.
JAMES PARKINSON: I remember exactly how wild this game was. Growing up in Australia, I didn’t have access to live NBA games on TV. But NBA Jam was the next best thing. It quite literally brought the excitement of the NBA to my fingertips. And I think there were a few different elements that drew kids like me in. For one thing, NBA Jam just looked good. It might be hard to believe now, but for kids like me who grew up on games like Pac-Man, NBA Jam was a whole new world. This was the dawn of digitized graphics, which meant that, for the first time, designers like Mark could make avatars that looked and moved like actual people.
MARK TURMELL: You know, we would take videotape and run it through a digitizer that would create frames. And we’d put it on the screen. And it was like, “Wow! Look at that! That’s, you know, a photograph right there on my computer screen.”
JAMES PARKINSON: At first, Mark recorded video of amateur players he found on local courts throughout Chicago to run through the digitizer. But when he finalized the official licensing deal with the NBA, he did some minor digital surgery.
MARK TURMELL: Then we basically chopped the heads off of all of our local athletes and then generated the heads of all of these NBA superstars to, you know, paste on top.
JAMES PARKINSON: Which meant I could play the game as a real life basketball star–or at least the head of one. I could be Scottie Pippen, Hakeem Olajuwon, or Shaquille O’Neal. But the realism ended there because the gameplay was pure fantasy.
At times, NBA Jam felt more like Mortal Kombat than basketball. There were no fouls, no out of bounds, and the players were like super humans. They leapt into the rafters for sky high dunks and shot impossibly long-range three-pointers. When a player made three baskets in a row, the ball burst into flames and he became unstoppable for the next several possessions. But I think there was one element in particular that made NBA Jam stand out from all the other games in the arcade. It was an iconic sound that cut through all the bleeps and bloops and drew people to the NBA Jam cabinet like moths to a flame. Even if you didn’t play the game growing up, you might have heard this sound.
NBA JAM: From down town! / Launches a shot! / He’s on fire!
JAMES PARKINSON: I’m talking about the voice of the game’s announcer.
NBA COMMENTATOR: Boomshakalaka!
JAMES PARKINSON: Today, voice acting is a key component of most video game productions. But back in the 1970s, there were no voices in video games at all. High quality audio recordings were just too large to fit on the sound chips of arcade machines. The earliest voices heard in video games were digitized using a technique called speech synthesis.
SPEAK & SPELL: Speech synthesis…
JAMES PARKINSON: Basically combining short sounds or syllables to form complete words. These synthesized voices were a clever solution to the problem, but they didn’t exactly sound realistic. The space-themed shooter Stratovox was the first game to attempt this. As you fired at alien ships, a very unnatural sounding narrator would shout a handful of distorted phrases.
[STRATOVOX SOUNDS]
JAMES PARKINSON: Believe it or not, the narrator there was saying “lucky” and “very good.” One of the first games to use true recorded voiceover was Dragon’s Lair in 1983. They managed to do this using LaserDisc technology. The team didn’t have the budget to hire actors, so much of the voice acting was done by the animators and the production staff.
DRAGON’S LAIR: Please save me. The cage is locked with the key. The dragon keeps it around his neck…
JAMES PARKINSON: Improvements in computer chip technology allowed for increased memory. And by the early ’90s, it was common for arcade games to use real voice recordings–at least very short ones. These companies still weren’t hiring professional actors, though. As a result, the voice performances were often bad–like really, really bad.
LIGHT: You must recover all the energy immediately, Mega Man.
MEGA MAN: But where is Dr. Wily?
LIGHT: That’s a good question…
THE TOWN WITH NO NAME: Just one more page and I would have finished this book…
SIMON BELMONT: Die, monster. You don’t belong in this world…
JILL VALENTINE: Captain Wesker, where’s Chris?
ALBERT WESKER: Stop it. Don’t open that door!
JAMES PARKINSON: Yeah, that wasn’t going to cut it for NBA Jam. This new basketball game was going to need a voice that could match the high-octane style of the gameplay and cut through the noisy commotion of an arcade to draw people in–someone with a distinctive delivery that would keep people dipping into their pockets for more quarters. They needed this guy…
JAMES PARKINSON: So firstly, can I just get you to introduce yourself, please?
TIM KITZROW: Hi, everyone! Tim Kitzrow from NBA Jam–boomshakalaka!
JAMES PARKINSON: That was very loud.
JAMES PARKINSON: Tim Kitzrow was not a famous actor back in the early ’90s, and he certainly didn’t grow up with dreams of becoming a voice actor for an iconic video game. But he’d always been a showman. He was one of seven children, and he was the entertainer in the family. He says his goal at dinner was to get milk to come out of someone’s nose.
TIM KITZROW: One of my heroes is Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices–Looney Tunes. So, you know, when I was younger, I often did cartoon voices like Underdog. “Simon Bar Sinister says Underdog must die!” Or Droopy Dog: “There’s a telephone, Butch. It’s a dame. What’d she say, Butch? She’s so unselfish.”
JAMES PARKINSON: Tim got into theater in high school and went on to study acting at Purchase College, where he crossed paths with some heavy hitters.
TIM KITZROW: My roommate was Stan Tucci. Ving Rhames was in there. So, a lot of big names came out of that place.
JAMES PARKINSON: But Tim’s career didn’t take off quite like those two. He spent the ’80s as a genuine actor, bouncing between cities like New York and LA, looking for work. And eventually he wound up in Chicago. He trained with the comedians at Second City while auditioning for commercials and playing the drums in a local band. His career felt like it was stuttering until it took a very unlikely turn.
TIM KITZROW: Of course, the way the world works, sometimes, you have one plan and then it goes another way.
JAMES PARKINSON: It all started because a couple of Tim’s bandmates worked in Midway’s pinball division. They often needed people to record little bits of voiceover, and they knew that their drummer Tim was pretty good at impressions. One day, they asked him to help out with a Gilligan’s Island pinball game.
TIM KITZROW: So, I was hired to do Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island.
HOWELL: Maybe I can buy a new dinghy for my yacht…
JAMES PARKINSON: Over time, Tim became a regular voice on Midway’s pinball games.
TIM KITZROW: I did the Twilight Zone, Attack from Mars…
ATTACK FROM MARS: This is an emergency broadcast! The Earth is being invaded by flying saucers from Mars!
TIM KITZROW: The Shadow, World Cup Soccer, NBA pinball, you know, or Fast Break–whatever. It was just going in and having fun. And actually, this time, I was getting paid for it.
JAMES PARKINSON: Being a voice actor for pinball was a fun side gig, but not much more than that. Tim never felt like it had the potential to be an actual career.
TIM KITZROW: I really had no idea what I was doing getting into that business. I knew that I loved playing pinball. But pinball, as I said, 15 games later, I still didn’t know much about the industry–still couldn’t play worth a lick. It was just a fun extra gig for extra money–extra beer money.
JAMES PARKINSON: Meanwhile, Mark Turmell and the NBA Jam crew were putting the finishing touches on their brand new basketball game. They’d signed the licensing deal with the NBA and figured out the gameplay and the graphics. And at a certain point, they started to think about the sound. A guy named Jon Hey handled just about every aspect of the audio for NBA Jam. He wrote the game’s deeply ’90s soundtrack…
[NBA JAM THEME]
JAMES PARKINSON: And in order to make the game sound more lifelike, he went out and recorded all these basketball sounds in the wild, like balls being dribbled or sneaker squeaks on hardwood floors. But Mark Turmell and John Hey knew that one of the most important sonic elements was the voice of the game’s announcer. They wanted a commentator who would make the game come alive and sound like the way the NBA sounded on TV. Mark even thought about hiring an actual NBA commentator, but they didn’t have the budget. Luckily for them, an affordable alternative was kicking around the office, drinking beer with the pinball guys.
TIM KITZROW: I used to just get regular calls because, every couple of months, there was a new pinball game. And it’s like, “Let’s go to Tim.” And so this felt no different to me.
JAMES PARKINSON: The recording studio was located in Midway’s Pinball Factory. It was a giant, noisy space with lots of workers and hundreds of pinball machines. But all the way in the back, there was a little five-foot by five-foot vocal booth. They called it “the meat locker.”
TIM KITZROW: It was kind of a depressing little place, but it was cozy. It was like our little world. It was just the sound guys–you know–not much bigger than a household giant refrigerator. And a little window for me to see Jon… So, yeah, although it was kind of dingy and dark and small and everything else, it was home. And, you know, it’s where some of the best work was ever done.
JAMES PARKINSON: Mark and Jon worked to brainstorm a library of words and phrases they needed Tim to record. First, they needed the names of every player in the game and a few different takes for each so that it wouldn’t sound repetitive. Then they started compiling a list of all the different things that happened in a basketball game that Tim was going to need to react to. Just like a TV announcer, he needed to say something every time there was a big dunk or a three-pointer or a blocked shot. Jon Hey wrote lines for each category–some of them taken directly from NBA broadcasts. When Tim Kitzrow finally got into the booth, he decided he wanted to model his delivery off of veteran NBA announcer Marv Albert. Albert was the most famous basketball commentator in the world at the time, and he had a flamboyant, energetic style.
MARV ALBERT: Oh! A spectacular move by Michael Jordan! That’s 13…
TIM KITZROW: A jump-off point was realizing that, to me, Marv Albert–compared to other sports broadcasters–he brought that extra energy. And I knew that I wanted to emulate that.
JAMES PARKINSON: Tim was going to be Marv Albert turned up to 11–Marv with a splash of Mortal Kombat. To get in the right headspace, Tim would visualize high-flying dunks and channel that energy into his performance.
TIM KITZROW: So, that’s where I kind of got that timbre–that tone–that NBA Jam had, based off of what I heard and then just making it my own. “Rejected! He’s heating up! He’s on fire!”
MARK TURMELL: Well, I mean, Tim’s amazing; he’s a genius.
JAMES PARKINSON: This is Mark Turmell again. He says that Tim didn’t stick to the script. Right away, he started getting creative.
MARK TURMELL: He’s so quick-witted. He’s always willing to iterate and improve and take feedback. And when Tim went into the studio, he would just ad lib. And it was magic immediately.
JAMES PARKINSON: But Tim had to improvise within constraints. The arcade machines at the time still didn’t have a lot of memory. So, his catchphrases needed to be short, like half a sentence.
NBA JAM: From long-range, oh my! / Jams it in!
JAMES PARKINSON: Or even just a single word.
NBA JAM: Kaboom!
JAMES PARKINSON: As for the game’s most famous catchphrase, Tim doesn’t take credit. The exact origin story is a little murky, but Tim believes it was a suggestion by John Carlton, one of the game artists. He’d been listening to the funk group Sly and the Family Stone. And on the song, I Want To Take You Higher, there’s a chorus where they sing.
TIM KITZROW: “Boo-shaka-laka-locka, boo-shake-a-lock! I want to take you higher!” They weren’t saying “boomshakalaka,” they were saying “boo-shake-a-locka-lacka, boo-shock-a,” whatever…
JAMES PARKINSON: Actually, the song goes, “Boom-laka-laka.”
[HIGHER BY SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE]
JAMES PARKINSON: But you get the point.
TIM KITZROW: So, he just said, “Hey, Jon, tell Tim to say “boomshakalaka!” Once again, this is the story that I heard. I’m there, but I don’t remember it. But I do remember vaguely Jon just saying to me, “Say ‘boomshakalaka.'” And I just went, “What does that mean?” He goes, “I don’t know, just say it.” And I went, “Boomshakalaka!” And I said, “Is that it?” And he goes, “Yeah, do a couple more.” “Boomshakalaka! Boomshakalaka!” He went, “Yeah, that’s probably good. Alright, moving on.” [CHUCKLE]
JAMES PARKINSON: The recording sessions for NBA Jam were done in around 20 hours. And when Tim was finished, he didn’t think it was a big deal at all. As far as he was concerned, this was just another gig, like Gilligan’s Island Pinball. Little did he know that those 20 hours would change the course of his life. And from that point forward, he’d be known to the world as Mr. Boomshakalaka.
After the success of their test night at Dennis’ Place for Games, the NBA Jam team was confident that their game was not a dud. But still, Mark Turmell had this lingering worry that the game wouldn’t translate outside of Chicago. After all, he could see the backend data showing which NBA teams people were choosing to play with.
MARK TURMELL: So I knew, looking at the stats, that the Bulls were just dominant. Everybody was picking the Bulls. And so, in the back of my head, I thought, “Maybe this is a Chicago thing.”
JAMES PARKINSON: When the game went live across the country, Mark flew to LA to see how it played there. He went to an arcade in Westwood, where NBA Jam had just been installed.
MARK TURMELL: And I walked in, and I just watched. And it was the same bedlam that I had seen in Chicago, except that the players were picking the Lakers. And so it really was that moment where I said to myself, “Wow. This is going to happen in every NBA city at the very least. And this is gonna happen around the country.” And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.
JAMES PARKINSON: NBA Jam was picked up by arcades all around the country. And city after city, people happily forked out their hard-earned quarters in order to rain down three-pointers with Detlef Schrempf or dunk from half court with Clyde Drexler.
If there was one group of people who seemed to love the game most of all, it was NBA players. On his days off, Miami Heat star Glenn Rice would wait in line at the local arcade just to play NBA Jam as himself. Gary Payton, a point guard with the Seattle Supersonics, demanded to know why he hadn’t been included in the game. He even sent personal photos to Mark Turmell that he could use to make Payton’s avatar. And then there was Shaquille O’Neal.
MARK TURMELL: We got contacted from the distributor in Orlando that said that Shaq wanted to buy two games.
JAMES PARKINSON: Shaq wanted one NBA Jam machine for his own house and another for the Orlando Magic’s team jet.
MARK TURMELL: They brought one of the NBA Jam cabinets onto the jet, and it traveled with them on the road. And they would wheel it up into Shaq’s hotel suite. And the players–instead of going out and partying or clubbing–they would go in and just play and play as each other. Even the opposing team would come in the night before the game or after the game and play.
JAMES PARKINSON: In 1993, NBA Jam was the talk of both the arcade world and the world of professional basketball. But back in Chicago, Tim Kitzrow still hadn’t played the game.
TIM KITZROW: I asked Jon, “Hey, where can I go see NBA Jam?”
JAMES PARKINSON: Tim went to a nearby arcade and walked up to a cabinet that he assumed was NBA Jam. But it turns out it was a different basketball game–one of their competitors. And Tim was not all that impressed by the announcer.
TIM KITZROW: It would be like, “Nice shot. For two. He makes it.” I was like, “What the hell is wrong with that guy?” And I walk over to watch the NBA Jam. “He’s on fire! From downtown! Not tonight!” You know, whatever– And I was like, “Wow, that guy’s pretty good.”
JAMES PARKINSON: And it was clear that the kids in the arcade agreed with him. They were absolutely loving NBA Jam.
TIM KITZROW: And that was, like, this moment where I went, “Wow. This is something.” It’s the equivalent of being, you know, someone from, like, a group that hears their song on the radio for the first time. This was a hit. And I got kind of charged, but I couldn’t resist sometimes just by accident–didn’t think about it. But I’m watching. And I would start to say, like, “Rejected! Ugly shot! Get that stuff out of here! Boomshakalaka!” And someone turned around. “Hey, man, you sound like the dude in the game!” I go, “Dude, I am the dude.” “It is you!” [LAUGHS]
JAMES PARKINSON: NBA Jam went on to become a bigger hit than anyone ever expected. To use an arcade term, it was a “quarter muncher,” devouring coins like a Hungry Hippo. In its first year, NBA Jam made one billion dollars in revenue, one quarter at a time.
TIM KITZROW: I was out at Midway in their lunchroom, and there was an article on the board–just, like, a Xeroxed article–that said, “NBA Jam surpasses, breaks all records, makes a billion dollars in quarters first year.” And I just said, “Who wrote this? This is funny.” I was just absolutely convinced it was someone just having some fun to kind of prop up the team and give them some confidence, like–yeah–NBA Jam’s a great game. But I had no idea, in reality, the game made a billion dollars. And that was the moment my brain went, “Wait a minute. I made 900. What?”
JAMES PARKINSON: It’s impossible to say whether or not the game would have been successful without Tim Kitzrow, but his contribution is undeniable. In 1994, a version of NBA Jam was released for the Super Nintendo. At that time, home consoles had a lot less memory than arcade cabinets. And so certain elements had to be stripped from the game to make it small enough to fit on a cartridge. In the end, they cut the music but retained the sound effects and Tim Kitzrow’s iconic voice.
NBA JAM: Can’t buy a bucket! / Grabs the rebound!
JAMES PARKINSON: As new versions of the game got released, Tim was able to renegotiate for better compensation. And while NBA Jam didn’t make him rich, the game changed the course of his career and his whole approach to video game voice work. It went from this side gig he did for beer money to a viable career.
TIM KITZROW: I wasn’t going into a room of 20 people that looked like me to do a Bud Light beer commercial or a cheesy sitcom audition or an extra part in a movie. This was people saying, “We want Tim because Tim delivers the goods.”
JAMES PARKINSON: Off the back of NBA Jam, Tim became the voice of other Midway sports titles, like NFL Blitz…
NFL BLITZ: Midway presents NFL Blitz!
JAMES PARKINSON: NHL Hitz…
NHL HITZ: Welcome to Boston! / Take out your two front teeth and let’s do this!
JAMES PARKINSON: And MLB Slugfest.
MLB SLUGFEST: And now sit back, it’s time to play ball!
JAMES PARKINSON: By this stage, the technology had improved to the point where there were really no limits on how much voiceover you could include in video games. And with the freedom to get as wild as he wanted, Tim delivered some truly outrageous baseball banter.
MLB SLUGFEST: Hey, here’s one, Jimmy. Famous people, dead or alive, all-star team, on the mound, I got Abe Lincoln. Why? Abe Lincoln, he’s got these beady eyes and a little drifter beard. He’s intimidating…
TIM KITZROW: With Slugfest, I wrote all the creative color commentary. So that was actually the most exciting part of my career. I was not only making really good money, I was writing and basically in charge of the content. So, I was given the opportunity to basically create the whole world.
JAMES PARKINSON: Tim Kitzrow is not the most important voice actor in video game history, but his performance at NBA Jam is certainly one of the most beloved. And his role in the game’s success set an important precedent for how voice acting can elevate a video game and bring it to life. In the decades that followed, game developers began to invest more and more in vocal performances. And sports game companies started spending money to hire real-life announcers to do commentary. In fact, one of the most famous video game franchises of all time is named after an announcer.
MADDEN NFL 2000: Welcome to Madden NFL 2000, the new millennium of football…
JAMES PARKINSON: And Tim’s influence wasn’t limited to video games. It fed back into the sport of basketball itself. Over time, NBA Jam catchphrases, like “he’s heating up,” have become part of the general basketball vernacular. And if you turn on a game today, it’s pretty obvious that many basketball commentators grew up playing NBA Jam.
CARLO JIMENEZ: Crosses over, finds Zubac, gives it up to Harden at the free throw line– Boomshakalaka! As he dumps it with two hands. And the Clippers lead 17-7. Oh my goodness, feeling like NBA Jam here early. Clippers all dunks. Boston–he’ll dunk it! Over the top of Lawson! Brandon Boston! Boomshakalaka!
NBA JAM: Boomshakalaka! / Yes! Boomshakalaka! / Yes, boomshakalaka! Whoa, boomshakalaka! / Come home! / The rebound! / At the buzzer! / The rebound! / At the buzzer! / It’s good!
[AD BREAK]
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: We are back with Hidden Levels, in our first episode. Roman Mars?
ROMAN MARS: Ben Brock Johnson?
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: We have been talking NBA Jam. And the vocal performance is really just one of the most distinct things about the game because NBA Jam has all these other quirks. And these quirks really make this game legendary. It has so many hidden design details–exactly the kind of stuff we’re talking about in this series. Let’s talk about a few of these hidden design details. You game?
ROMAN MARS: Absolutely.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: All right, so, James Parkinson–in the story–he talked about how the game wasn’t the most realistic depiction of basketball. Even though they were using this new technology to capture people–maybe not super realistic.
ROMAN MARS: Sure. I mean, the ball caught fire. So, that rarely happens in a basketball game. But yeah, I get you.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Right. So, if you knew where to look in this game, you could also unlock secret players who were not athletes–at least that I know of. So, Bill Clinton is one example. Al Gore is another.
ROMAN MARS: I had no idea! What other examples are there?
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: George Clinton could also be unlocked as a character.
ROMAN MARS: All the Clintons are represented.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: All the Clintons man.
ROMAN MARS: Clinton versus Clinton!
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: That’s right. And he was a character named P Funk that was in the Tournament Edition of the game. You could also access one of the people who we heard from in the episode who made NBA Jam. We don’t think of programmers as ballers necessarily, but all the programmers were playable in the game. And that includes Mark Turmell, who we heard from earlier.
ROMAN MARS: Was he particularly good at the game as a player?
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: It may shock you to learn that he was practically unstoppable.
ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHS] I mean, you know, that’s what I would do. That’s awesome.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Same. Same. So, here’s another interesting sort of secret Easter egg in the game, Roman. It’s called “super clean floors.” If a player activated this, the basketball court would become very slippery. And the players on the other team would fall over all the time. I actually remember being the target of this in playing the game, and it basically renders the game impossible for you. It’s crazy.
ROMAN MARS: I mean, they put so many fun and clever things into this game. It’s awesome.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Yeah, it is awesome. And here’s one that is awesome, but only if you’re a Detroit Pistons fan. Going back to our buddy, Mark Turmell–the unstoppable player in the game and also programmer of NBA Jam–he was a Piston’s fan and he hated the Chicago Bulls. So, a few years back, Turmell confirmed something to Sports Illustrated. If you were playing the Pistons against the Bulls in NBA Jam and it was a close game, the game was programmed so that the Bulls literally could not score a last second shot to tie or win the game.
ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHS] That is diabolical, especially in the time period of the ’80s and ’90s, when the Bulls were this, like, huge dynasty. Like, Michael Jordan was the GOAT. And I’m sure everyone wanted to play as the Bulls. And to think that they couldn’t win if they played against the Pistons is hilarious.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: It’s really funny. But also you couldn’t play as the GOAT. So, for years, Jordan would not license his name to NBA video games. He wanted to retain his likeness rights, of course. So, you could play as Scottie Pippen or Horace Grant–decidedly less exciting. No offense, Scottie and Horace. But some basketball games actually had a generic “player 99” instead of Jordan later on.
ROMAN MARS: So, you could play kind of as a generic Bulls player, which you could imagine as being Jordan.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Yeah, you could pretend 99 was 23. Okay, so, Roman, here’s a final example of the amazing strangeness of NBA Jam. There is actually a game inside of NBA Jam, the game, that has zero amount to do with basketball.
ROMAN MARS: So, you could just break out and play another game?
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Totally different game. But it’s one you might recognize. So, in the arcade version of NBA Jam, you could access this second game where you play as a tank and have to drive around these different kind of three-dimensional geometric obstacles. And I think you might recognize it. So, here’s what it looks like. Here’s a playthrough on YouTube. Take a look.
ROMAN MARS: Totally because this is a game that was inside the aforementioned skating rink in Newark, Ohio. And this looks almost exactly like Battlezone. I mean, like, Battlezone had these vector graphics that I thought were absolutely gorgeous. In fact, if I were to create a game today, it would all be vector graphics, to tell you the truth. But it looks so much like Battlezone.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Battlezone is a favorite of mine as well. I don’t know how you would play this game on roller skates, Roman, because Battlezone had those, like, two joysticks that you had to move. But like you said, it looks like a game that is designed now, if that makes sense, even though it’s so old there. Was this legendary cheat code in NBA Jam that allowed for this. And to access this second game that was kind of a Battlezone reference, both players would have to hit X, Y, Z–and pull down their joysticks at the same time. And then you could actually get into this tank game, which was really just an homage to Battlezone.
ROMAN MARS: That is so cool. And everyone using their joystick and buttons in this way brings us nicely to our next episode. We’re actually talking about video game controllers.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: That’s right! Next time on Hidden Levels, one of the most elemental parts of video gaming–whether or not you’re on roller skates–we are diving into the history of the joystick.
DAVID O’GRADY: There’s a kind of direct manipulation quality to it. Do you want to move forward on a screen? Press the stick forward. Do you want to move backwards within the environment of the screen? Pull the stick backwards.
ROMAN MARS: That’s next time on Hidden Levels from 99 invisible and Endless Thread.
This episode was produced by James Parkinson. Edited by Emmett Fitzgerald. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Original music by Swan Real, Jamilah Sandoto and Paul Vaitkus. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Fact-checking by Graham Hacia. This story was adapted from James Parkinson’s podcast Gameplay. You can find a link to that show on our website.
The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube.
Hidden Levels was created by Ben Brock Johnson from a Loderunner fever dream–with power-ups and cheat codes thanks to team 99PI and team Endless Thread.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston’s NPR. The rest of our team tackling unsolved mysteries, untold histories and other wild stories from the internet includes my illustrious cohost Amory Sivertson, Managing Producer Samata Joshi, editor Meg Cramer, producers Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, and Frannie Monahan, and Sound Designer Emily Jankowski.
ROMAN MARS: And for 99% Invisible–Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Jayson DeLeon, Emmett FitzGerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Lasha Madan, Jeyca Medina-Gleason, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. Art for this series was created by Aaron Nestor.
We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast Family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in beautiful… uptown… Oakland, California.
Oh, yeah, right. Okay. Here it goes… Boomshakalaka!
Leave a Comment
Share