News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:
• SBNation put together that delightful compilation of chiptunes and pixelated highlights to give us Blake Griffin’s theoretical NBA Jam highlight reel from the 1993 classic. Enjoy.
EA Sports has confirmed to Kotaku that NBA Jam: On Fire Edition will be getting a roster update. The publisher’s preceding silence on the subject had led some to believe it had abandoned post-release support for the 2-on-2 arcade basketball game.
We rarely get to see the process by which a video game is pitched to a publisher, even today in an age of developer diaries and all-access marketing. It’s even rarer we get to see how a game was pitched all the way back in the early 90s.
With the NBA lockout looking like it will wipe out a lot of games this year, some basketball video game makers are looking outside the league’s real-life rosters to create enthusiasm and interest. NBA 2K12 for example, is bringing 15 of the sport’s greatest players to life. NBA Jam‘s going with goddamn honey badgers.
Eighteen screenshots, depicting the NBA Finals matchup of Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd versus LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, herald the coming of NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, due later this year as a downloadable title on Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Store.