Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City

"His airness saves kidnapped NBA players. Where's the police?"

Michael Jordan in Chaos in the Windy City is one of three games made by EA based on basketball players becoming superheroes. This one is the best of them. That's still not saying much.

Michael Jordan's task in this game is to travel all around Chicago armed only with a basketball to rescue other NBA players. Along the way he can gain power-ups to kill giant spiders and bats. Each stage has a bonus stage that has things like how many dunks you can do in 30 seconds. It's a horrible concept, but at least you get to be Michael.

Chaos in the windy city is also stuffed with Michael ''cliches''. Wheaties and Gatorade boost up your health, and you can only imagine that Michael's probably wearing Nike shoes and has a Ball Park in his pocket.

THESE SCORES ARE BASED ON 1994 STANDARDS

Graphics: 8 out of 10. Everything looks sharp, but Michael and his enemies are a little too small. All textures are nice, and the over levels are dark and murky (which is what they should be). Michael's health bar is a digitalized pic of his face, and as he gets hit the more hurt his face gets.

Sound: 5 out of 10. The music in this game is really weak, too low tempo for my tastes. I would have loved it if EA could've gotten the licenses to some basketball music, perhaps Technotronic's ''Pump up the Jam''. There are quite a few voice clips of Michael, but his grunt sounds odd.

Play Control: 2 out of 10. This is where the game really suffers. Michael moves a little too quickly for my tastes, but the real problem is in jumping. It's way too floaty! Doing high precision things like leaping platforms and dunking are almost impossible to do on the first try, which is too bad because you're gonna need to do a lot of it.

Presentation: 7 out of 10. Before each world Michael goes through a comic book like introduction, complete with word bubbles. It looks really nice. After each level your score is shown on a scoreboard. Also instead of normal checkpoints your progress is updated by breaking a backboard.

Buy? I got it a Funcoland for $1.99. Decide for yourself if you think that it's worth that much. I think the novelty of owning this game is better than actually playing it. Also it should be noted that this made Nintendo's ''Ten worst Nintendo games of all time'' list in Nintendo Power for the 100th issue in 1997.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/28/02, Updated 02/28/02