Ahhh NBA Jam, one of the classic licenses from the 90's that was long overdue for a remake. Aside from the awful NBA Jam 2000 that came out for the N64, the franchise has always held a special place in my heart. The first version that I played on the grand old SNES back in the mid nineties was an excellent game and loads of fun. I totally played it to death and it happened to be just as good, if not more fun in multiplayer which prolonged its life considerably. Plus who could resist the Bill Clinton cheat code? Not me!

Scoot forward to the present day of the 'next generation' consoles where other games such as NBA Street 2 and Street Hoops have had the 'extreme basketball' genre all tied up. And in the wake of the truly excellent NBA Street 2, it was going to take something extra special for NBA Jam to come out on top.

Being a brand new game, there are the expected graphical improvements and the controls of NBA Jam handle well and are very responsive - a must in an arcade style sports game. Due to the extreme nature of the blocking (you can use turbo plus block to actually push another player over) and the collision detection, the players bounce off each other and move around the court extremely well. The players themselves do not really resemble their real life counterparts but realism is never the intent of the developers when crafting player models in NBA Jam. The characters here are more like caricatures that lend a lot more fun and humor to the game.

The single player mode unfortunately does get repetitive. A few hours of playing through the Tournament, Legend or Jam modes and without some friends on hand you'll be ready to put the controller down and move onto something else. On the other hand, there are plenty of cheat codes, new characters, extra courts, and items to be unlocked in the Jam Store and I recommend unlocking the 'disable goal tending' cheat as soon as you can. Unfortunately it costs 150,000 Jam points so it might take you a while. A great touch during Legends mode is that the game plays in black and white (except for the special effects) and when you score you get to hear snippets of music from the era that you are in, for example plenty of James Brown and Chuck Berry. Even the court is different but sometimes the black and white mode makes keeping track of the ball even harder than normal.

During the game, your 'Dunk Meter' fills up which lets you activate the 'Hot Spot' by clicking the Right analog stick. Take a shot from this hot spot and you are treated to what are probably the most insane looking dunks ever put into a basketball game. There's plenty of variation and from mega somersault to kung fu dunks, they're pretty funny and with a group of mates playing they really give everyone a chuckle. You also score the amount of points that are displayed inside the 'hot spot' and you can pick up bonus points this way which can lead to some pretty big comebacks. The hot spot bonus starts off at 3 and increases by one each time you successfully use it, the only complaint against it is that the A.I seems to be able to fill up its dunk meter much faster than you are able to. You will both be on 10 points at the start of the game, your dunk meter might be half full but the opponents one will be already full and ready to fire!

The 4 player multiplayer action was where we had the most fun and caused the most amount of ruckus at our last Xbox party. Controllers were thrown on the floor and much abuse was hurled around the room, all the perfect ingredients of multiplayer gaming! This is also helped much by the simplistic nature of the game and its short learning curve ' ensuring a welcomed pick-up-and-play experience during multiplayer sessions. Having said that, multiplayer games are also where the single biggest flaw of NBA Jam shows its colors. Simply by cautiously moving up to shooting range and hitting 'Y' to call for an alley-oop one of your other players will break clear, leap into the air, take your pass and then slam home a mega dunk. It's incredibly easy to pull off and seems impossible to stuff up. After both teams start exploiting this shortcut, a match soon devolves into an 'Alley-oop' fest, where all my mates had fewer and fewer kind words for each other. Also, Xbox Live support would have gone a long way to making this game a definite 'must get' for the NBA Jam fans out there.

The other area that was a slight letdown was the stiff animations during some of the bigger dunks. On court the players move around smoothly, but in the big 'hot spot' dunks some of the animations are hit and miss. Sure they attack the ring and slam home the points, but the big dunk animations could have definitely been smoothed out a bit more. It's not all of them though and the majority look great, there is just a handful that does not move smoothly and the players look like they were being pulled by wires through the air. This is not a major issue though and does not detract from the overall animation which really does look great as well as being hilarious to watch.

The sound of NBA Jam does a commendable job here as well with a very well done commentary track. A nice touch here is that during the Legends mode, Bootsy Collins lends his voice for the commentary, and his contribution is definitely the highlight of this section of the game. Tim Kitzrow, the original voice of NBA Jam does a great job too. One quibble in the sound department is the sorely missed feature to have custom soundtrack support during games.