"Hardly different to the Genesis version...still not a bad game though."

Well, since Acclaim's policy back in the day was to put every game they had on every console, NBA Jam made it's way onto the SEGA CD in 1994, despite the machine being practically dead.

Now, I really like NBA Jam and wanted more SEGA CD games and so got it expecting it to not be arcade perfect but at least be better than the Genesis version in terms of graphics, sound and the like. What I did not expect was a Genesis port!

And this is exactly what the SEGA CD version is like. The graphics are the exact same as the Genesis. I know the SEGA CD couldn't do the scaling effects of the arcade but to just have the same sprites as the Genesis is just lazy. If you have the Genesis and SEGA CD versions running next to each other you wouldn't be able to tell the difference at all.

Thankfully a lot more effort was put into the sound with it easily beating any other version with arcade quality music and sound effects, but this is a general thing with all Mega CD games- have an old game and just add a new sound track to it. The commentator never sounded so good and it's nice to have a more authentic arcade sound track.

The only other "new" feature, as it ways on the front of the box, is that the player stats and rosters have been updated. Very nice but really, when it comes down to it, does anybody care? No. That's it in terms of new features for the SEGA CD version.

Well there is one other little thing. At the Half Time report screens there are more videos than the Genesis version and they play better but have quite grainy and dull colours but it's nice to see they put some extra effort into this version.

The actual game still plays quite well and still supports the team adapter so you can have up to 4 players at once which is nice and since the game play is so good you can have match after match after match going on all night and still not get bored. The dunks still look great (especially the monster jam) but again it's nothing you haven't already seen on the Genesis version.

Some people seem to complain about the loading times about this game but I really don't think they are as bad as people make them out to be. It takes a while to load when you first turn on your SEGA CD but apart from that the loading times are not that bad at all, it takes a few second to load between each quarter and thats it, nothing terrible.

Overall though this game should have been a lot better and really is a big let down. If you have the standard Genesis version then this really isn't worth getting. You can still get a lot of fun out of it and it is a fairly good game but the SEGA CD system is capable of much more.

6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/23/05