#1993 CHARLOTTE HORNETS ROSTER FULL#

Milwaukee Bucks – Blue Edwards and Brad Lohaus – No, you’re reading this correctly – Brad Lohaus was one of the 54 players in NBA Jam. Without further ado, the definitive NBA Jam rankings:Ģ7. Also, if I just hated any particular team or player for whatever reason, that also affects their ratings. You’re not going to see Bill Clinton, Al Gore or the Beastie Boys here (RIP MCA, today and always). These rankings will not include any players obtained by using special codes. Only in the home console editions were additional players added, giving you a choice of which two players to use. But before I do that, remember a couple of things: This is based on the original arcade rosters with only 54 players. With the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak shutting down virtually every avenue of sport, I feel like now is as good a time as any to share my findings. Some – like Shaquille O’Neal – didn’t even have to jump to be able to dunk. Some players hit from deep better than others. This was arcade basketball, but the players roughly kept the same skill sets as their real-life counterparts – just exaggerated. While I had my favourite players and teams to play as them, I played it enough that I was able to experiment with multiple teams to find the best combination. In that machine, I lost more quarters than a Gus Bradley-coached football team. And it had an NBA license! Midway’s prior title Arch Rivals, also a two-on-two basketball game released a couple of years earlier, was fun, but this was perfection. Wait, did he just say “Boomshakalaka”? Holy hell, you could even shatter the backboard. If you hit three shots in a row, your ball would literally catch fire. These men were spitting in the face of the laws of physics. Anyway, I wandered off to the arcade while my parents were dining on something and there it was – this two-on-two basketball game where people were capable of hitting ridiculous somersaulting dunks or insane threes from half-court. Kwinter hot dog or Druxy’s sandwich in peace. I guess the logic was that you could dump your kids off to play Revolution X for 20 minutes while you ate your J. In the back corner, there was an arcade for some reason. I remember being 11 years old and at the food court in Sherway Gardens. WWF WrestleFest featured a pretty robust roster for the time and who didn’t want to play as Earthquake or the Big Boss Man? Neo Geo released a number of Baseball Stars games in the early ‘90s and those were actually a lot of fun, but none of those games were NBA Jam. You could get your fill of racing games from Daytona USA to Ridge Racer. There were a ton of other sports games in arcades before NBA Jam. Maybe just put a couple of oven mitts on his shoulders to be safe.īut what got me into the arcade in 1993 was NBA Jam, Midway’s masterpiece. Obviously, that was due to the limitations of hardware at the time, but the 32- and 64-bit era of games just don’t evoke the whimsy or nostalgia of their earlier 8- and 16-bit generation counterparts and instead make you conclude that if 64-bit Link ever showed up at your house party, you’d warn anybody around him not to get too close or risk losing an eye on one of his many sharp corners. Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time are all-time classics, but have you played them recently? Everything is just a mass of blocky polygons devoid of any aesthetic grace. Those early blocky 3D games have not aged well.

In retrospect, the game looked like trash.

It was the first-ever fighting game in 3D and it looked like nothing you’d ever seen before.

#1993 CHARLOTTE HORNETS ROSTER FULL#

While Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat offered 2D fighting, Virtua Fighter went full 3D. If Mortal Kombat II didn’t float your boat, there was Virtua Fighter, Sega’s first entry into the fighting game genre. He was young and he had a jaunty little hat for some reason. You could even play as Shang Tsung in this one. The sequel improved on the original in almost every way with smoother controls, better graphics and a larger roster of fighters with the debuts of Baraka, Jax and Kung Lao. After the earthshattering popularity of the original, Mortal Kombat II was released. Yes, it is.įor arcades, 1993 was a halcyon year. Is NBA Jam the greatest sports video game of all-time?

1993 charlotte hornets roster