Thinking Out Loud: NBA JAM Snubbed Again

I love the concept of the the Strong National Museum of Play’s Video Game Hall of Fame. Recognizing video games for their historical significance to the medium had been a long time coming until this launched back in 2015. There are obvious enshrined titles here, from PONG to Pac-Man and Space Invaders to Super Mario Bros. I appreciate that it’s a difficult task in narrowing down the thousands of notable games and distilling that list into yearly nominees and inductees.

That said, I’m going to say this clearly and plainly: NBA JAM‘s continued exclusion from the Hall of Fame is nonsense.

Of the 53 games chosen for induction between 2015 and 2026, only 3 are sports games. That’s less than 6% of the total. While the inductions of John Madden Football and FIFA International Soccer make sense, and while Wii Sports expanded the number of people who play video games, that’s been it. No baseball games, like RBI Baseball or MVP Baseball, no golf games (PGA Tour series?), no hockey games (NHL ’94), and no basketball games.

While I can (and may in the future) make cases for other titles, I’m compelled to do so for NBA JAM. Seeing it continually either nominated and passed over or not nominated at all year after year is very difficult to reconcile.

Let’s list some notable facts about NBA JAM, and how it fulfills the Hall of Fame’s mission to recognize “individual electronic games of all types—arcade, console, computer, handheld, and mobile—that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general”:

• The coin-op, as of 2012, had generated over $2 billion dollars USD in revenue.
• More than 4 million copies of the home ports sold in the first year in release.
• The game spawned multiple internal sequels from Midway, such as NBA HangTime, NBA on NBC ShowTime, and NBA Ballers.
• The game’s success led to the creation of other Midway Sports games, like NHL Open Ice and NFL Blitz.
• The game inspired games from other publishers, including the highly successful NBA Street series from Electronic Arts. Shut Up & Jam and NBA Playgrounds are notable examples.
• Both Acclaim and EA released their own NBA JAM games.

I’m not really sure how, based on that information alone, NBA JAM is continually denied. It sits on the same level as Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat when it comes to the resurgence of arcades in the first half of the 1990s, and both of those games are enshrined. The success of the home ports cannot be argued. The arcade game’s ability to attract more casual fans to the sport was a big plus. The game’s influence is still felt today with the upcoming release of NBA: THE RUN.

Madden, FIFA, and Wii Sports are important markers for sports video games on consoles. NBA JAM is arguably the most important and most successful arcade sports video game coin-op of all time. That, in and of itself, is grounds for enshrinement. No other sports game in arcade history comes close to achieving what NBA JAM achieved. Arcade games like V’Ball and Tecmo Bowl were reworked for the NES before they saw their popularities increase– Tecmo Super Bowl, in particular. Cyberball and Quarterback didn’t see much in the way of a bump when they came home. NBA JAM was big both in the arcade and at home.

I get that it is a very difficult job to pick nominees and enshrinees for any Hall of Fame. We see the scrutiny given to athletes for their various Halls, especially in baseball and football. Sometimes it takes players a few years to get in. I wasn’t expecting NBA JAM to be a first-ballot enshrinee. The pool of deserving games is very deep, and not even the best or most successful sports game can compete with Tetris and DOOM. But it’s been 11 years now. The snubs have built up, and it’s become fair to question why this continues, given NBA JAM‘s significance, importance, and metrics.

I’m hopeful that, sometime down the line, NBA JAM takes its rightful place in the Video Game Hall of Fame. At the end of the day, a website argument from an internet rando like me isn’t going to change minds… but maybe the powers that be will consider all of the factors and see its value.