NBA Jam

NBA Jam arrived on the Mega-CD as a port of the arcade hit that had taken over arcades around the world a year earlier. The basketball arcade machine from Midway became famous mainly for its "is on fire" gag and exaggerated, gravity-ignoring action, and Sega decided that this phenomenon deserved a version with CD sound too. At first glance, it's the same game players knew from the arcade halls and regular cartridge ports, but the CD data carrier allowed for a significantly higher-quality digitized voice track and music to be crammed in, which was quite an advantage in 1994.

The core of the game remains unchanged: two-on-two, no referees, no fouls in the usual sense, and players who literally catch fire after a series of made baskets and start shooting from half-court. The iconic "Boomshakalaka" line, shouted by the commentator after every flashy dunk, comes across with noticeably cleaner sound on the Mega-CD version than on classic console cartridges, and the same goes for the background music, which sounds less compressed and more "live." The controls remain simple, accessible even to players who never sat down for a real basketball game, and it was exactly this accessibility that was key to the game becoming a party favorite for long evenings.

The Mega-CD version therefore brings no revolution in gameplay, but does exactly what was expected of a bonus CD port: it takes a proven, extremely addictive concept and wraps it in better sound. For owners of the CD add-on for the Mega Drive, this was one of the few genuinely popular arcade games worth picking up again just for the improved audio.

Why play: Over-the-top, flashy 2-on-2 basketball with lines and music that sound noticeably better on CD than on a regular cartridge.