Can't believe they pulled the plug on Vancouver after just 6 seasons. Their best win total was 23, how were they supposed to build a fanbase with such utter garbage teams?

You're tripping on nostalgia. Each revision (arcade) was better and had game play balance tweaks along with improved AI, new features, animations, and graphics.

NBA Hangtime was the crown jewel of the series. It's not just a palette swap of NBA Jam: the sprites are different (bigger), better color, more detail, and far superior animations. Spin moves, oops, double dunks, team fire, fadeaways and lean-ins, up to five players per roster, trivia screens, and the create-a-player feature. More subtle game play changes included nerfing the shove and timing / positioning for shot blocking, option-cancel out of dunk animation to finger rolls, and "lockdown" defense based on guarding proximity. The thing most people complain about is that they dropped Tim Kitzrow for Bulls announcer Neil Funk.

NBA Maximum Hangtime was the arcade revision (sort of like NBA Jam TE). It updated rosters to 1996/97 and added a few things like the "hot spot." Roster update had Iverson and it's the final game in the 2D NBA Jam series. None of the home ports are arcade perfect, but the N64 / PS / PC versions are good, while the 16-bit console versions still sucked as bad as the NBA Jam ports. The console ports sit somewhere between the arcade versions with the updated rosters but missing some Maximum features like hot spot.

Yep. I know what you're talking about. I'd play with the Hornets and set it up where Dell Curry would get the ball in that spot cuz he was money. I do think that glitch play is defensible but it's very hard. Gotta take control of a guy on defense and put him right on top of the guy in the corner and steal the ball or knock it out of bounce right away. It's also possible to block the shot if timed precisely right. It doesn't have to work every time. You only need to stop it a few times to make a difference. When playing against a human it only takes a few misses/turnovers to lose the game (we played with 2 min quarters) Obviously that play ruins it vs the computer but the computer already sucked anyway. But yea like 80% of the game comes down to who can make/stop that corner 3 at the top of the screen the best.

ROM-hacked NBA Jam SE Edition? It would be painstaking work but Cesspoole alone might be worth it. If somebody's looking for a heavier lift beyond ROM hacking, source code for NBA Jam TE and Hangtime are available on github. We just need a volunteer willing to comb 100,000+ lines of assembly.

https://github.com/historicalsource/nba-jam

https://github.com/historicalsource/nba-hangtime

The biggest turn on of Mark's post was seeing Linked to the Past at the bottom middle.

Corner 3 in Double dribble was way worse. Was completely indefensible. Always loved that clip. Double Dribble was still ahead of its time back in the day.

Three-pointers notwithstanding, Cleveland needs to take care of the rock

Yep. With two strong players the 3 pt glitch cancels out. Game comes down to who gets the most steals, a pure skill metric.

Here’s the thing, you’re wrong. Original NBA JAM arcade version GOAT

Hangtime had the best soundtrack tho.

oh man u guys are getting me drunk with nostalgia with all of these video game throwbacks. love it.

I'm old enough to have played Double Dribble in the arcade in the 80s. me and a friend of mine played it non-stop for an extended period of time.

ofc the OG basketball video game is Dr. J vs. Larry Bird for the Commodore 64. Played this a ton back in the day...

jordan vs bird was a step up

and then ea's nba live era, starting with those bulls vs games. good times