It’s a rare game that is able to bridge the gap between sports game fans and those that identify as hardcore gamers. Midway was able to bring those two groups onto common ground when they released NBA Jam to arcades in 1993. The game was an instant hit and was ported to 16-bit home consoles that same year. Compromises were made during those ports, so an attempt to make them more inline with the arcade release came in the form of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition a year later. However, in the heart of [eskayelle] NBA Jam: TE on the Super Nintendo didn’t go far enough. Now they have released a ROM hack that completely reworks NBA Jam: TE, and it’s called the “Double Z Mod”.
![The Original NBA Jam Ball from the Title Screen](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/the-original-nba-jam-ball.jpg?w=300)
The concept behind the ROM hack was to bring about the NBA Jam game that fans deserved. All facets of pop culture from the early 90s were mixed in (not just former Presidents). According to the ROM hack’s notes, some of the things that were packed into the mod include:
• Assets from the original game have been restored, such as the Mortal Kombat banners.
• Modified certain players to give them a more “arcadey” feel.
• Soar to new heights with Air Jordan!
• Play as “The Worm”, Dennis Rodman, on at least four teams.
• Forget the Rookies, now play as the 1992 Dream Team.
• Tons of new secret characters including: Hulk Hogan, David Hasselhoff, Arnie as the T-800, and more.
• Expanded rosters are now as easy as inputting the “Konami code”
(Hint: B, A, B, A, Up, Down, B, A, Left, Right, B, A at the title screen menu)
In a gesture to give back to the ROM hacking community, [eskayelle] went as far to provide a collection of helpful tools to help potential SNES ROM hackers build their own NBA Jam: TE remixes. The document details ways to alter player photos, team colors, stats, and cosmetic tweaks. Since the Double Z mod focuses on being as 90s as possible, maybe this collection of tutorials will lead to a current NBA roster update.
To play the NBA Jam TE Double Z mod, you can use devices like the Retrode that allow easy dumping of an original cartridge onto a PC. From there the dumped ROM can be patched using an IPS patcher, like LunarIPS, which is as simple as locating two files in a browser window and hitting “Apply Patch”. In case you needed to see the Double Z mod in action, there is the clip below.
They use a Konami code derivative from TMNT II. The “classic” Konami Code is Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A.
this patch doesn’t work. I’ve tried on several NBA Jam – Tournament Edition (U) roms and all that happens is when I load it into the emulator, the screen is filled with Qix-like purple lines and squares. This happens every time.
Try to donwload the rom from another website, some rom sites have “fake” rom versions that are actually another version of the rom renamed.
No-intro.org lists these hashes as the correct ones:for NBA Jam: Tournament Edition (USA).sfc:
CRC32: 1FBC1DDB
MD5: 503965FC09952186F79DD89D730D8D7F
SHA-1: 93075F16701C734EBC369EABF61EC5216F86D9C5
Loved that game back in the day.
But can you get your Doom team in on the game?
This is pretty sweet mod. Reminds me of the people keeping Tecmo Super Bowl alive by patching the ROM with updated rosters for each year.
https://tecmobowl.org
The picture alone brought back memories! Good stuff bro.