The producer of EA Sports’ upcoming Wii revamp of NBA Jam, Trey Smith, broke the news earlier that Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are set to return to the new title. Apparently, that was only the beginning of the conversation for Smith. The producer sat down with ESPN’s Jon Robinson for a little Q&A session.
Here are a few of the highlights from Trey’s answers from that interview:
On who’s game face makes him laugh:
The one that stands out for me is this one face they put in for Shaq. He’s crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out. I don’t know if Shaq even realizes this, but from the photo reference we saw, Shaq likes to go all cross-eyed and stick his tongue out when he dunks. That face in particular always makes me laugh, and where the faces really shine are in big-head mode. We’re going to have big-head mode, and in it, you can see the expressions that much better. Once you put the big heads on there, that’s when the faces really become funny.
On the control scheme:
Yeah, you can do both. If you want to play with the gestures, we didn’t go crazy, and we feel we have the gestures in there that have the responsiveness, but at the same time enhance the experience. But that being said, we took some really big lessons from “Punch Out.” I played “Punch Out” with the gestures at first, but it just didn’t feel right. So I just grabbed the Wii-mote and flipped it sideways, and to play with the old school controls, that’s what brought me back to my happy place. We want to do the same thing with “Jam.” You can play with gestures if you want to, but you can also flip the controller sideways and play the game just like you did on the Super Nintendo.
On any secret characters (like Obama?):
You know, I can’t talk about anything in particular right now, but what I can tell you is that we are as absolutely dedicated to being as true to the original “NBA Jam” as we possibly can. Chances are, if you have an idea of somebody who needs to be in “Jam,” we’ve had the same idea and we’re going to do our best to make it happen.
On the game’s frame rate:
One thing [EA head Mark Turmell] was really adamant about was getting us to 60 frames per second on the Wii. We knew it was going to be tough, but our team took the challenge and went and did it. The build you were playing was 30 frames, but we’re going to be at 60 when we ship, and it’s so silky-smooth. That’s one point where Turmell just said, “I cannot tell you how important it is for this game to ship at 60 frames per second.” We thought he was insane for bringing it up because of how good the game already looked, but now it looks even better. That’s just a clear example of Turmell. He’s more than just a consultant. He’s an advocate and he’s been here to guide us and influence us through development. The game is absolutely so much better because of his involvement.
