If you’ve ever played the classic arcade game “NBA Jam,” you might’ve noticed the game is missing a particularly good basketball player: Michael Jordan. Fans since the 1990s have wondered what it might be like to play a version of the game featuring “His Airness,” and now they might finally get their wish.
Mark Turmell, who helped create “NBA Jam” in 1993, chatted with Reddit users Friday, during which he sparked hopes of a Jordan version of the game finally being released to the public. When asked if he still had a copy featuring Jordan and if he’d consider sharing it, Turmoil replied, “I could! Will try to dig up.”
Although a version of “NBA Jam” featuring Jordan never reached the public, it was made available to a very limited audience.
A version of the game was created in 1993 featuring Jordan, but only was shared with him and, randomly, Gary Payton and Ken Griffy Jr., according to Polygon. Weeks before the game was scheduled to ship, Jordan opted out of the NBA Players Association’s group license because of his marketing deal with Nike. As a result, his character was pulled from the game.
If Turmell does wind up releasing the game, it likely won’t be available on typical home-gaming consoles.
“I was referring to EPROMs,” Turmell told Polygon, referring to erasable programmable read-only memory. “I have a cabinet stored away with sets of them.”
In other words, the Jordan version of “NBA Jam” probably only exists in the form of computer memory, and as such would only be playable after downloading it from the internet.
Like most people, we love “NBA Jam,” but it didn’t quite rank among our favorite sports video games.
