The final hour of E3 is a crazy time when people are rushing to get their final plays in on their favorite games, but while everyone else was desperately preparing for their red-eye flights home, we were catching up with an awesome, but equally tired, Trey Smith, EA’s creative director for NBA Jam. Though he too was wrapping things up in the final hour, he was nice enough to speak with us about NBA Jam and pitch us a few exclusive details that haven’t been heard anywhere else. Check out the interview below.

30 Ninjas: So about NBA Jam, what sorta stuff has survived from the older classic games? I guess what I am trying to say is, can you still play as Bill Clinton?

Trey Smith: OK, well the answer that I am allowed to say when it comes to those kinds of questions is we are going to be as true to the original NBA Jam as we possibly can.

30 Ninjas: Soooooo Bill Clinton?

Trey Smith: Hahah, well our mantra from day one has been “be true to Jam.” The original programmer and designer Mark Turmell, he did NBA Jam, Smash TV, NHL Hits, NFL Blitz, MLB Slugfest, he is like the godfather of these games, the true pioneer of arcade sports. He’s now an employee of EA, he works down in the Tiburon studio. He flew up and hung out with the team up in Vancouver where we spent 3 or 4 days with him and he gave us the Turmell hit-list, it’s legendary.

Every little thing we were doing wrong, no matter how much we dissected it, there was stuff we would never figure out unless we were talking to the man himself. I mean he was spitting out stat tables from like 17 years ago. It was like, “If he wants to steal it’s this, and his rating is this, and the arc is here blah blah blah” all off the top of his head. So yeah, having him on board kind of set us straight. I mean we were going pretty strong before he came on, but he came on at a perfect time for us to sand off the edges.

So we are dedicated to being true to Jam. You can catch on fire, you can smash the backboard, all the stuff you remember we are going for it. I think you guys are gonna be super psyched. To all the old original fans, we are right there. The dev team is right there, but that is actually only half the game.

We have split the game in half, and half the game is the classic campaign mode, it’s everything you remember from when you were popping quarters into the machine. It’s a worst to first ladder tournament, and we are gonna spice it up by adding some legendary battles, we have some legendary NBA players you are going to face. At E3 we announced Dennis Rodman, James Worthy, Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and there are a couple more. We have your legendary players and your current stars like Lebron and Kobe, those guys have never been in Jam before.

The other half of the game is something we are calling Remix Tour. Now it’s really the same controls, same Jam, same everything, but we are gonna flip the camera around a bit, change some rules, throw some power-ups into there, and the big thing we are excited about are the all new Boss Battles. Boss Battles in NBA Jam are old-school Boss Battles where you go up against an opponent and you are asking yourself, “How am I gonna beat this?” and then all of the sudden there is that AHA moment where you are like “OOOH OOOOH THAT’S HOW I DO IT!”

So yeah, there is lots of new stuff, but lots of old stuff too. We are all super psyched.

30 Ninjas: So in this Remix Tour you mentioned power-ups. What sorts of power-ups are going to be available? Super Mushrooms? Blue shells?

Trey Smith: Haha. No, you know it’s funny because we were trying to think of some things to throw on the court like that and Turmell was like “Nope! No NBA Jam fans won’t like that.” So now they are all basketballs. For those fans of the original Contra, that’s kind of what the power-ups will look like.

So, this is the first time I’m talking about power-ups by the way. Let’s see, we have “quickness” which makes you super fast, and what’s funny is that the animation goes so super fast it’s really hard to block. It’s like, “Oops he’s in the air.” Done! We have a “power” power-up…

30 Ninjas: That’s very meta.

Trey Smith: It is. It turns your regular shove into like a triple shove. We have this crazy animation, you flip through the air and hit the guy. It’s lots of fun. The power-ups will definitely change the strategy of the game. Like, it’s still Jam, but all of the sudden you throw those power-ups out there and things start switching around a lot. It’s going to be fun.

30 Ninjas: As far as power-up frequency goes, are we looking at something Mario Kart level, or something a little more subdued.

Trey Smith: Subdued. I think power-ups show up about two to three times a quarter. It’s still something we are trying to work out. It’s not going to be a barrage of them. They can shift a game, like if a team is down six to eight points and a power-up hits they can catch up real fast. It’s more like that.

30 Ninjas: Are we still going to see secret teams and secret characters?

Trey Smith: Absolutely. There are over 100 unlockables. That includes players, teams, courts, privileges like big head mode, one-shot fire, sure shot percentage, those kinda things. That’s where we are looking to go with unlockables.

30 Ninjas: Are we going to see online play?

Trey Smith: Online is … well OK, we started at thirty frames per second. Everyone’s playing, everyone’s loving it, and that was about six months ago. Then Turmell came up and said, “It’s great! Everything is just like Jam… except for one thing” and we were all like, “What?” and he said, “Jam runs at sixty frames per second.” We were all like, “oh…” So it’s a complicated thing you know, it’s all about pushing it all down that tube just as fast except now we have to do it twice. We did it and that was a monumental success for the team because it now runs at a silky smooth sixty frames per second and it absolutely did make a big difference on the gameplay front.

Once we made that jump, online all of the sudden became that much more difficult. We haven’t given up yet. We still have a few months to tie some things together. I’m not closing that door yet, but I’m gonna tell ya right now we are not there. We are not there, and we are not going to do it half-assed. We aren’t going to put it up, and it’s chunky, and it’s not Jam.

The thing about the Wii is it’s really about four people hanging out in a living room. Especially with the gestures and the taunting that goes on, it’s just like the old arcades with four players standing at a cabinet. There’s that social multiplayer goodness that the Wii and NBA Jam do so well. That was one of the questions we asked ourselves, “Sixty frames or online? Which one will we really bet on?” and sixty frames absolutely improved the gameplay so that’s what we chose and that’s where we are at. I’m not giving up yet, but we are not there yet.

30 Ninjas: You mentioned gesture controls. What sort of control schemes can you use for NBA Jam?

Trey Smith: All of the above! We have kind of been shoving gestures down people’s throats on purpose because we put a lot of time and effort into them. We started off with eight different gestures, and really it just zeroed down to one. For me, if it had to be a gesture it had to be intuitive, responsive, and satisfying, and if it didn’t do those three things then move it to a button. We have Wii games that are waggle fests, but that’s not Jam, because in Jam it’s fast paced and you really need your guy to be doing what you are telling him to do when you want him to do it. So the gestures are lots of fun, I encourage everybody to check them out. HOWEVER, if you want to flip the wiimote sideways and play with buttons you can do it and we support both the classic controller and the classic controller pro, so we have all your control schemes covered.

30 Ninjas: What about the Gamecube controller?

Trey Smith: Not the Gamecube controller, I’ll come straight out and say that. It was a real tricky thing for us to just get the classic controller working and the classic controller pro is still relatively new, so that was some new tech we had to play around with that wasn’t in our schedule normally. But the more and more we talked to people the more we heard people wanting to play with those old-school controls, so we crammed that in there and it works.

30 Ninjas: One last thing that you might find a little goofy. Are you familiar with the meme “Boom Goes the Dynamite?”

Trey Smith: Haha, would you like to know if “Boom Goes the Dynamite” is in the game?

30 Ninjas: We would, in fact, like to know if “Boom Goes the Dynamite” is in the game!

Trey Smith: Here we have it. 30 Ninjas. Exclusive. Boom Goes the Dynamite is in the game!

30 Ninjas: Awesome!

Trey Smith: I think it was like line number three on our list. Tim Kitzrow the original voice of NBA Jam is back. He’s awesome. He’s sounding better than ever. We have all the old lines coming back: “Boom-shaka-laka, he’s on fire!, nail in the coffin”, you know there are so many of them, but we recorded some new ones too and “boom goes the dynamite” was right at the top of the list.

30 Ninjas: That is awesome! Thank you so much man we are really excited.

Trey Smith: No, thank you.

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