PLEASE CHECK THE DESCRIPTION FOR AN IMPORTANT FOLLOW UP FROM THE DEVELOPERS I INTERVIEWED after you are done watching the video. :) Corrections: - Sega Magizin is actually German, not Danish. My apologies. - EA got NBA endorsement for Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs in 1989, predating NBA Jam. So Jam is actually not the first video game with the NBA license, making my sentence at 10:01 straight up false. It might have actually been the first *arcade* game to get the license, and the first to have all NBA teams. - Injury stats have no effect on the arcade machine, though it appears they do impact players on console.
@@DemiGodX That would make sense, since those seedy joints were such a major concern of the league. Probably not an issue for those smaller console games.
Extremely good video! Thoroughly enjoyed it! I love NBA jam, I have the cabinet here in the uk with nba te, hangtime, showtime pcbs. Fun fact: I’m 10 min away from where iguana was, and my aunt was the cleaner there, she says she left the place clean , and couldn’t believe within hours it looked like a bomb had gone off, she is sure they didn’t eat, but only drank fizzy pop, coke I think she said, and empty cans would be piled up everywhere, with cds laid about with hand written scribbles on them. She recalls a life size statue in the corner which she believes was Spider-Man. I was about 13 at the time and was always promised that she’d take me down if possible, unfortunately it never happened.
A very late correction for an otherwise excellent video: Around 50:40, Kirby claims that the SH-2s do not have a cache and that if one touches the bus, the other one will stall. This is not correct. Each CPU has an internal 4KB cache used for instructions and data. It can also be split as a 2KB cache and 2KB scratchpad. One CPU will stall the other only if both CPUs attempt to access the external memory bus at the same time (either due to cache miss, write-through store, or explicitly reading a cache-through address).
[Coury] I'm reeling from how good this is... absolutely incredible work. I can't imagine the research that went into this. I was so into the NBA in the early 90s, and that opening montage had completely hooked. Your editing is so on point, but your writing and especially narration delivery kept me invested for the duration.
Fully co-sign this. Most video game reviews suck. And don’t cover the time and place around the game’s heyday. This is masterfully insightful, THOROUGH, and spot on. Genuinely supreme props, my dude. 🤙🏽
Oh and i did convert rob northern, i converted the code from the 68K version on genesis to R3000.. At the time Rob did not have a PS1, the devkits were very very rare!
What’s up Chris! Yeah, Snake did concede in a follow up email, I have it posted in the description. Thanks again for agreeing to chat with me, your story really adds a lot to the history of this game.
Hey, not sure if you will see this but I wanted to try to clarify some of the details of the dev team. I was the lead developer at Iguana Entertainment in the UK on the Sega Genesis version and the Sega Saturn versions. I worked with Chris Kirby and Daz Tunnicliffe. Here are the full credits for the various versions we developed. NBA JAM and NBA JAM TE Sega Genesis: Lead game programmer: Neil Hill Frontend/UI: Steve Snake SNES: Lead game programmer: Jason Falcus Frontend/UI: Steve Snake Sega Saturn: Lead Game Programmer: Neil Hill Additional Programming Darren Tunnicliffe Sony PS1: Lead Game Programmer: Chris Kirby Additional Programming Darren Tunnicliffe Sega 32X: The 32x used the main game logic from the Genesis version. I (Neil Hill) updated the background scroller for this version but Steve Snake did all the heavy lifting for the port. Sega Gamegear: Chris Kirby If you are interested in any further information on the development of the game DM me.
Hi Neil, thank you so much for clarifying those details, and for taking the time to post this. I hope you enjoyed the video, despite some of the slight misunderstandings. I will be messaging you here in a little bit. If you don't hear from me by this weekend, feel free to email the address in the about page of my TH-cam channel. Thank you so much for your historic work on these fantastic ports of NBA Jam!
Hey Neil, just leaving another reply in this thread to let you know that I can't seem to DM you on TH-cam. Feel free to email me at nick@segasaturnshiro.com Thanks again!
Absolutely amazing feature Sir, I've never been able to sit through a 2 hour retrospective on TH-cam before, but the time breezed past watching this!!! Kudos!!!
dude been on youtube since 2008 and i swear i always see ya in the comment section even on non gaming videos lol, hello again old friend who you've never met! still watchin and lovin your videos as well!
I can’t believe the sheer amount of detail, craftsmanship and work that went into this review of NBA Jam for the Saturn. It’s not a review. It’s a documentary of the history of the game and it’s ports. It was a pleasure to watch. Can’t wait for the 3 hour review of College Slam.
Thank you! College Slam should be a fun one. Will it be this long? Longer? Shorter? I don’t even know really, but three hours seems like a safe guess at this point. 🤪
My dude this is next level. It's almost as if you took the existence of a Saturn port to create a high effort, fully produced documentary about this. I can't wait to see how this spirals into a Peter Jackson-esque epic trilogy for your Sonic Jam video
You've really outdone yourself, you made a freaking full length movie. Did I miss where this landed on the quality chart? Thank you sir, and thank you Craig Stadler
I'm so grateful for this video. I didn't care about sports at all when I was a kid, so I never played Jam when it was contemporary. But now that I'm older and have a bit more appreciation for sports (and an undying passion for the SEGA Saturn), I decided to pick this one up and have had so much fun with it, since.
Listening to the bit about how the original NBA code was all written in one single enormous file made me laugh a bit. I'm currently making a Castlevania SotN game on the Megadrive/Genesis, and my code for that is currently all in one single file too. As a beginner, it's reassuring to hear that even some of the professionals back in the day were just as sloppy when it came to neatly organising their code! Hats off to the guy in charge of the Saturn port. Not only did he have to deal with this massive, disorganised monster of a file, he also had to contend with the usual lack of Saturn development documentation. Even reading the few thousand lines of my own code gets confusing, I have no idea how he managed to decipher someone elses. Great video, as usual.
What an incredible documentary this was. I can’t get over just how good this channel is, absolutely stellar work and entertaining throughout. Thank you so much.
Like any good interviewing journalist, if you let people interested in talking tell their story, you'll hear things you never would have even thought about before you started! This series makes me very glad I jumped into the Saturn rabbit hole - lots of great games to hear about coming up!
Didn't have time to watch it all in one sitting, but finally made it through today. My god dude, you've really outdone yourself. The amount of work that you put into your videos is absolutely mind blowing. Your videos have gone beyond reviews, and become more like historical documentaries.
Absolutely made my day, fantastic work! A proper epic length video. To quote the mighty Walrus: "Just remember, you're never gonna make it leaving it short."
How the hell is this channel under 5k subscribers? You made a nearly 2 hour documentary about NBA Jam to feature a review of the Saturn port for your overarching project of everything every North American Saturn game. And the documentary was fantastic on top of it despite the insanity of building a 2 hour documentary around what would have been a comparatively simple ask of simply reviewing Jam on Saturn. DF Retro brought me here talking about the awesome NBA Jam episode. After watching this I binged all of the other episodes of Reviewing Every U.S. Saturn Game. This is an awesome series
I've been following this series since the Hi Octane episode. It's great to see the human element behind the making of the games on the Sega Saturn. It was interesting to learn how NBA Jam came into being and how the Sega Saturn version compared to the other ports. A great way to spend Halloween!
Holy f*ck, this was AMAZING. I was really sad when it ended. Almost 2 hours of complete retro bliss. I said it before, and I'll say it again: you make me feel like I'm in 1995 in a way no other channel does. You deserve all the praise and much more. Lots of big, high profile YT channels tried to compare the 32-bit versions of NBA Jam TE, and no one mentioned most of the differences you did. Amazing interviews and research as well. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
I'm only 23 minutes in at the moment, but I have to say that this is already amazing. I was expecting one of your shorter reviews, but I was stunned when I looked at how much time was remaining after about 15 minutes. Great job on this video. I feel as though Mortal Kombat got so much more attention with respect to its creation, and a lot of this stuff is new to me, so I'm glad you featured it here. Easily one of your best videos yet, if not THE best.
Your reviews don't stop getting even better. They're fun and full of character with high quality research. You're bringing fascinating stories from the actual developers that could've been lost to time. Great, great job!
I finally took the time to watch this and was absolutely blown away by the quality and attention to detail. If there’s a Oscar for TH-cam video game documentaries, this deserves to be nominated!
This is amazing man. Seriously, these are among the very best video game related videos I’ve ever watched. Documentary level and then some. The production value and content is off the charts. Never stop making these!
Also just to want to throw out there, I believe this is the very first time ever on the internet where it was said or demonstrated that the Japanese NBA Jam has fixed AI. I’m surprised nobody has ever discussed this before, and with how few people discuss PSX NBA Jam’s super aggressive AI. Quite a useful piece of original research. Enough for me to whip out my xstation and replace my copy. It actually makes the PSX version better than SAT. Very glad Steve Snake reached out to you. He is a genius and a childhood hero of mine. For real, I wouldn’t be where I am today without him. His games and especially emulators are a key thing that set me down the computer science path I went down. I’ll never forget the first time I launched KGEN. I had to know how it worked. My first emulator experience ever. You’re getting some real heavy hitters here.
Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, you bring in a 2-hour documentary that is extremely entertaining and informative. This is seriously the best retro content on TH-cam. And with all these interviews, one of the most important gaming preservation efforts. Truly amazing.
Another tour de force! PandaMonium triumphs again! Well done. So much great information and little known details. Great to hear a lot of this right from the people putting their fingers to keyboard! Bravo!!! Now I need to revisit the excellent Craig Stadler remix previous released on this channel. :)
Absolutely fantastic documentary review video, as usual. You deserve to have millions of subs with the insane high quality work you do. Love you. Keep it up!
Watched this channel pretty much morph from Sega Saturn reviews to just full blown documentaries. By the time you get to the end of the Saturn's life I have the feeling you will be giving Ken Burns a run for his money and run time ;) Finally getting to watch this one while I fight a bout of pain induced insomnia but you never fail to impress me with how much research you have been putting into this series, cant wait to see what your next video will be. Keep it up!
Dude I cannot tell you in words how great this is. I'm just concerned for your health and wellbeing if you put in this amount of work into every US Saturn game
Panda, I just wanted to say. I’ve been a Saturn-head for a long time. I got my Saturn when I was 13 years old. I just turned 25 and I celebrated it with a ten player game of NBA Action ‘98. Yes, I had ten people, ten controllers, and two multi taps. My point is that there are many people out there like us keeping Saturn’s legacy alive. In my option you are doing divine work. So please, keep it up! Also my first Saturn game was Sonic 3D blast because I thought the special stages looked cool.
Oh man what a great video. Loved chatting to you about Jam and if i ever get hold of DazT i will push him your way.. Oddly i noticed the highscore screen has my initials "CHR" and my then girlfriend now wife of 25+ years "CSR" Amazing!!
Oh and the differences was probably because code was shared by throwing a disk across the office. Source control DID NOT EXISIT! And dazT was 4 or 5 cubicles away from me! A tricky throw!
@@chriskirby312 That’s quite an arm you got there! 🤣 Thanks again for sharing your valuable stories with me for this video. In the off chance we ever cross paths, I owe you a beer.
PHENOMENAL! The amount of effort put in this video (along with how long it is) is insane. I didn't know anything about this game before watching this, and now I REALLY wanna play it. You took us on a journey, man. Get some rest if you haven't yet, you've earned it!
This video is absolutely amazing!! I mean the in depth coverage of this game's history is incredible!! What an outstanding job, loved every minute!!👍👍👍👍
An almost two hour video of PandaMonium on NBA Jam? Is it my birthday? No it isn't. But damn close. Cheers dude. Gonna watch this on my Sunday morning and have a great start of my day.
The level of your investment is amazing. The interviews, the background research, it all adds to it and tells the entire story. I just finished watching The Last Dance series, so this came at the right time for me too. I mainly played the SNES version, and was able to play the arcade version on a retro expo. There I was able to get the tank mini game!
@PandaMoniumReviews … just finished, and I realized your voice and delivery sound an awful lot like whoever did the voiceovers on “Michael Jordan Come Fly With Me” VHS. Suitable AF. MF truly wonderful work. A thousand salutes.🤙🏽
What a nice surprise to see your message in my inbox today when I woke up :) This and Tim Roger‘s Cyberpunk review coming out within just a few hours makes me so happy.
My god Panda, all you had to do was churn out a quirky little review of Jam on the Saturn, you didn't have to produce the absolute most interesting and comprehensive videos on the console ports to ever grace the internet. For real though, you did an incredible job. How does this only have 12,000 views?
I swear these reviews became something even more magical, they remind me of G4's documentary series Icons/Game Makers, but done faaaaaaaaaar better. Thank you for all of your hard work and the entertainment, already on my 3rd rewatch lol.
You are amazing. And hats off to the extraordinary work you've done here. I love your style of editing and good lord, was that a lot of info. But Hella entertaining and interesting. Didn't expect the wall with names at the end, so I still feel kinda important :D
Wow! That's all I have to say. You can be proud of your work! This is one of the most impressive videos I have seen on TH-cam. We are lucky to have people like you to go so deep into retrogaming! Thank you! :)
Well - as I expected, this was amazing - I prefer this to most professionally funded retro game documentaries I've watched. You have a serious talent and drive for tracking down devs - please keep it up, gaming archives and the gaming world needs you!
I don't comment on many videos, but this one was so excellent I had to. Your videos are so awesome and I am always excited when a new one drops. Keep up the great work. Also "Kill the Panda man!" had me cracking up 😂. I love that you can still throw some humor into these.
11/10!!! Outstanding... I've not enjoyed watching a retro video game review like this in years. God bless you PandaMonium, you truly are doing the lords (Segata Sanshiro's) work. HE'S ON FIRE!!!!!
I know I posted already but this is so damn good. One thing however caught my attention...Sweet Tarts and Red Bull? My friend, Red Bull didn't exist yet. It was Jolt Cola and Airheads for us in Miami. Nothing was hotter than heading down to the arcades to play NBA Jams wearing your Air Jordans, Nike Flights, Nike Force, Reebok Pumps, and even some looking to invent the Hippster look early in Dock Martins...it was all about the shoes back then. I was strictly an Air Jordan guy that tried a pair of Reebok Pumps but a nail punctured one of the shoes making it feel like I was carrying around an extra 10 pounds. I went back to my Jordan's.
@@PandaMoniumReviews I think I might do the same. If you can find it, try BAWLS soda that will make your bull run. That's a newer soda my younger brothers (also gamers) got me drinking for awhile during college. It was the only way I could burn the candle at both ends while staying an honor student. The bottles actually have nubs all over it so when you're tweeking from Caffeine overload you don't drop the glass bottle. ;)
@@PandaMoniumReviews Did you know about the cursing port of NBA Jams? The announcer says everything in the book. Apparently the original cab was supposed to include "get that sh*t outta here!" but the NBA said no. *Edit- I just got to this part in the video.
I’d never find myself watching a documentary about a port of an basketball arcade game over the course of a couple of weekends because of its thicc amount of content. This has to be my favourite overview of any port job I have ever witnessed, helped me get through a couple of work shifts on weekends. Reminds me of a bonus feature from the criterion collection. Excellent work and greetings from the isle of British people. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be nicking yer kettle and chocolates now :D
As a huge NBA Jam fan I must say this is an excellent video and retrospective! Keep up the great work, you earned a sub here for sure and my respect for the time and effort it must've taken to put into this video chock full of detail and love!
Man your videos are insanely good, and you keep making improvements after each one. I especially loved the addition of chapters in this one for better organization and makes it much easier to watch in multiple sessions. Great work panda!
What an incredible video. I have to wonder if there are be ANY other Saturn games with one-person development teams. I'd always figured that model got eradicated after the days of the Atari 2600. I fear for how long the Virtua Fighter 2 video will be.
Supposably if you set the difficulty to easy on the PS1 version there's a bug that cranks the difficulty to its maximum. Making easy the hardest difficulty in the game
I’ve heard about this! I was not able to find out if that’s a real thing or not, but I would totally believe it. The players on PS1 did remain very aggressive after I turned the difficulty down.
I don’t think that’s the case. It really depends on what team you play. It appear that the lowest rank teams are insanely difficult. So teams like Minnesota timberwolves, Dallas Mavericks and Washington bullets are very tough. But as you move up the ladder it gets easier. If you play random teams then the first team is usually the timberwolves if using emulators like pcsx or epsxe. However on a real Ps1 or Duckstation the first team when u power on the system is the Cleveland cavaliers. That is if U jump straight into the game without entering initials or going into the attract mode. I suspect that’s why the game was initially rejected because of the difficulty and snake probably did some changes to make the cavaliers play first so Sony testers weren’t overwhelmed by the cpu
@@DemiGodX Hey, you’re the guy that made the mod! That’s an interesting point you make about the team order. IIRC, I jumped in on real hardware WITH initials, so I believe the wolves were my first opponent on PS1. I’ll have to check my footage.
@@PandaMoniumReviews thank you for showcasing my mod a bit. There’s so much I still want to add. Even with the internet it still takes a lot of time, I can only imagine how long it took for the developers to find photos of various different head angles. They eventually cheated where they reuse a lot of head angles for many players lol It was easier with TE because they had access to the players and could film them
Awesome episode as usual. Your dedication astounds me, I dont like comparing people I watch because everyone does a great job but I will say your the most thorough without a doubt.
I was very young when NBA Jam came out. But I still remember what it was like being a kid in the 90's. This episode made me reflect on back when arcades were still relevant, Mortal Kombat was a hot commodity, and the Playstation and Sega Saturn blew away the old 16-bit consoles with how advanced they were.
Fan-freaking-tasting video! I’m watching this at 3:00 am and it’s totally worth it. One short note: the slower clock time in Saturn Jam always annoyed me, and it never occurred to me to just speed up the clock in the options menu. I’ll have to give that a try and play again.
Amazing stuff, just came over after your interview on RetroRGB. I have some constructive feedback, and I'm not sure if this has been considered or it's generally redundant haha. That said, this video is amazing but I worry the title/playlist is confusing. This feels like a fully fledged documentary for the game at large and not just that of a Saturn port; I worry the use of "review" also can lead people to bounce. Hopefully the videos are getting the attention they deserve and I'm just speaking waffle.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the vid! Yeah, I often think about the playlist structure and how to address the fact that these really aren’t just reviews anymore. The earlier vids are very much reviews, so if I retitled everything with “documents every Saturn game” or something like that, it would still be incorrect. Either way, this is just a hobby, so as long as I can keep making these, I’m satisfied. :)
@@PandaMoniumReviews Sweet, that's a perfectly valid justification. Like you said, it's a passion project and those that want to see this stuff (like me) will pull up a seat and see it all the way. Looks like I'll need to start from the beginning then!
Mind boggling video here. The production, pacing and story of not just the work but the unfolding events on how you sought out every actor involved just hooks you. I know finding them can be real tough, you're basically filling in the gaps with the lost history of the games industry. Has anyone ever declined to communicate? Most of these devs seem so enthused to talk about things they did 26 years ago.
Devs rarely decline. For the most part, this is reminiscing on “the good times” or at the very least, a time when game development was going through a wild transition. These were all small closely knit teams. The only times people have declined are if they didn’t actually do that much work on the game. I have had some people just not get back to me, though this is usually because the method of contact I used is something they don’t check anymore. No one has ever told me flat out, “no I don’t want to talk about it.” …No dev at least.
@@PandaMoniumReviews Hope it never happens! The positivity of the era is what keeps me coming back to it. Oh, and thank you for including my tweet at the end.
I was happy to see a new video from you but then I noticed it says 1 hour and 50 minutes. So I have to stop and plan to watch it knowing it will be an absolutly epic episode. Thanks for continuing this every saturn game review from someone who never owned a Saturn. شكرا جزيلا
PLEASE CHECK THE DESCRIPTION FOR AN IMPORTANT FOLLOW UP FROM THE DEVELOPERS I INTERVIEWED after you are done watching the video. :)
Corrections:
- Sega Magizin is actually German, not Danish. My apologies.
- EA got NBA endorsement for Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs in 1989, predating NBA Jam. So Jam is actually not the first video game with the NBA license, making my sentence at 10:01 straight up false. It might have actually been the first *arcade* game to get the license, and the first to have all NBA teams.
- Injury stats have no effect on the arcade machine, though it appears they do impact players on console.
I believe it was the first Arcade game to receive a NBA license
@@DemiGodX That would make sense, since those seedy joints were such a major concern of the league. Probably not an issue for those smaller console games.
Extremely good video! Thoroughly enjoyed it!
I love NBA jam, I have the cabinet here in the uk with nba te, hangtime, showtime pcbs.
Fun fact: I’m 10 min away from where iguana was, and my aunt was the cleaner there, she says she left the place clean , and couldn’t believe within hours it looked like a bomb had gone off, she is sure they didn’t eat, but only drank fizzy pop, coke I think she said, and empty cans would be piled up everywhere, with cds laid about with hand written scribbles on them. She recalls a life size statue in the corner which she believes was Spider-Man. I was about 13 at the time and was always promised that she’d take me down if possible, unfortunately it never happened.
A very late correction for an otherwise excellent video: Around 50:40, Kirby claims that the SH-2s do not have a cache and that if one touches the bus, the other one will stall. This is not correct. Each CPU has an internal 4KB cache used for instructions and data. It can also be split as a 2KB cache and 2KB scratchpad. One CPU will stall the other only if both CPUs attempt to access the external memory bus at the same time (either due to cache miss, write-through store, or explicitly reading a cache-through address).
[Coury] I'm reeling from how good this is... absolutely incredible work. I can't imagine the research that went into this. I was so into the NBA in the early 90s, and that opening montage had completely hooked. Your editing is so on point, but your writing and especially narration delivery kept me invested for the duration.
Thanks a ton Coury! It means a lot hearing it from the MLiG gang. 😎
Totally concur, learnt so much. Excited to play it while watching this 👍
I’m hyped that MLiG watches as well!
This channel is gonna be big. Throw this guy a collab already!
Fully co-sign this. Most video game reviews suck. And don’t cover the time and place around the game’s heyday.
This is masterfully insightful, THOROUGH, and spot on.
Genuinely supreme props, my dude. 🤙🏽
Oh and i did convert rob northern, i converted the code from the 68K version on genesis to R3000.. At the time Rob did not have a PS1, the devkits were very very rare!
What’s up Chris! Yeah, Snake did concede in a follow up email, I have it posted in the description. Thanks again for agreeing to chat with me, your story really adds a lot to the history of this game.
Hey, not sure if you will see this but I wanted to try to clarify some of the details of the dev team.
I was the lead developer at Iguana Entertainment in the UK on the Sega Genesis version and the Sega Saturn versions.
I worked with Chris Kirby and Daz Tunnicliffe.
Here are the full credits for the various versions we developed.
NBA JAM and NBA JAM TE
Sega Genesis:
Lead game programmer: Neil Hill
Frontend/UI: Steve Snake
SNES:
Lead game programmer: Jason Falcus
Frontend/UI: Steve Snake
Sega Saturn:
Lead Game Programmer: Neil Hill
Additional Programming Darren Tunnicliffe
Sony PS1:
Lead Game Programmer: Chris Kirby
Additional Programming Darren Tunnicliffe
Sega 32X:
The 32x used the main game logic from the Genesis version.
I (Neil Hill) updated the background scroller for this version but Steve Snake did all the heavy lifting for the port.
Sega Gamegear:
Chris Kirby
If you are interested in any further information on the development of the game DM me.
Hi Neil, thank you so much for clarifying those details, and for taking the time to post this. I hope you enjoyed the video, despite some of the slight misunderstandings. I will be messaging you here in a little bit. If you don't hear from me by this weekend, feel free to email the address in the about page of my TH-cam channel.
Thank you so much for your historic work on these fantastic ports of NBA Jam!
Hey Neil, just leaving another reply in this thread to let you know that I can't seem to DM you on TH-cam. Feel free to email me at nick@segasaturnshiro.com
Thanks again!
Absolutely amazing feature Sir, I've never been able to sit through a 2 hour retrospective on TH-cam before, but the time breezed past watching this!!! Kudos!!!
Wow, that’s great to hear Larry! I’m glad you enjoyed it. :)
@@PandaMoniumReviews Will Virtua Cop be longer??????
dude been on youtube since 2008 and i swear i always see ya in the comment section even on non gaming videos lol, hello again old friend who you've never met! still watchin and lovin your videos as well!
Simply because you've always been USELESS at creating content as great as this. ~
I can’t believe the sheer amount of detail, craftsmanship and work that went into this review of NBA Jam for the Saturn. It’s not a review. It’s a documentary of the history of the game and it’s ports. It was a pleasure to watch. Can’t wait for the 3 hour review of College Slam.
Thank you! College Slam should be a fun one. Will it be this long? Longer? Shorter? I don’t even know really, but three hours seems like a safe guess at this point. 🤪
@@PandaMoniumReviews Going by those estimates, Panzer Dragoon Saga should be 3-Parter with around 4 hours each?
@@Soonjai Jesus Waluigus, I hope not. 😂
My dude this is next level. It's almost as if you took the existence of a Saturn port to create a high effort, fully produced documentary about this. I can't wait to see how this spirals into a Peter Jackson-esque epic trilogy for your Sonic Jam video
You've really outdone yourself, you made a freaking full length movie. Did I miss where this landed on the quality chart? Thank you sir, and thank you Craig Stadler
I'm so grateful for this video. I didn't care about sports at all when I was a kid, so I never played Jam when it was contemporary. But now that I'm older and have a bit more appreciation for sports (and an undying passion for the SEGA Saturn), I decided to pick this one up and have had so much fun with it, since.
Every Panda review has turned into an absolute beast of research. Interested to see what this covers given the length!
Listening to the bit about how the original NBA code was all written in one single enormous file made me laugh a bit. I'm currently making a Castlevania SotN game on the Megadrive/Genesis, and my code for that is currently all in one single file too. As a beginner, it's reassuring to hear that even some of the professionals back in the day were just as sloppy when it came to neatly organising their code!
Hats off to the guy in charge of the Saturn port. Not only did he have to deal with this massive, disorganised monster of a file, he also had to contend with the usual lack of Saturn development documentation. Even reading the few thousand lines of my own code gets confusing, I have no idea how he managed to decipher someone elses.
Great video, as usual.
What an incredible documentary this was. I can’t get over just how good this channel is, absolutely stellar work and entertaining throughout. Thank you so much.
Like any good interviewing journalist, if you let people interested in talking tell their story, you'll hear things you never would have even thought about before you started!
This series makes me very glad I jumped into the Saturn rabbit hole - lots of great games to hear about coming up!
this channel is pure gold.
I kinda can't get over how much I love that song used in the intro.
Didn't have time to watch it all in one sitting, but finally made it through today. My god dude, you've really outdone yourself. The amount of work that you put into your videos is absolutely mind blowing. Your videos have gone beyond reviews, and become more like historical documentaries.
Your stuff is just getting exponentially better with each video. Insane! The Sega saturn deserves this.
Absolutely made my day, fantastic work! A proper epic length video. To quote the mighty Walrus: "Just remember, you're never gonna make it leaving it short."
Hope you had as much fun making it as we had watching it!
I sure did. :) Thanks!
How the hell is this channel under 5k subscribers? You made a nearly 2 hour documentary about NBA Jam to feature a review of the Saturn port for your overarching project of everything every North American Saturn game. And the documentary was fantastic on top of it despite the insanity of building a 2 hour documentary around what would have been a comparatively simple ask of simply reviewing Jam on Saturn.
DF Retro brought me here talking about the awesome NBA Jam episode. After watching this I binged all of the other episodes of Reviewing Every U.S. Saturn Game. This is an awesome series
I've been following this series since the Hi Octane episode. It's great to see the human element behind the making of the games on the Sega Saturn. It was interesting to learn how NBA Jam came into being and how the Sega Saturn version compared to the other ports. A great way to spend Halloween!
I’ve watched a lot of nba jam videos over the years and this is the by far the most comprehensive and informative one.
Holy f*ck, this was AMAZING. I was really sad when it ended. Almost 2 hours of complete retro bliss. I said it before, and I'll say it again: you make me feel like I'm in 1995 in a way no other channel does. You deserve all the praise and much more. Lots of big, high profile YT channels tried to compare the 32-bit versions of NBA Jam TE, and no one mentioned most of the differences you did. Amazing interviews and research as well. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
You're videos are incredible dude, couldn't imagine you topping that virtua racing episode but you've somehow done it!
I'm only 23 minutes in at the moment, but I have to say that this is already amazing. I was expecting one of your shorter reviews, but I was stunned when I looked at how much time was remaining after about 15 minutes. Great job on this video. I feel as though Mortal Kombat got so much more attention with respect to its creation, and a lot of this stuff is new to me, so I'm glad you featured it here. Easily one of your best videos yet, if not THE best.
Your reviews don't stop getting even better. They're fun and full of character with high quality research. You're bringing fascinating stories from the actual developers that could've been lost to time. Great, great job!
I finally took the time to watch this and was absolutely blown away by the quality and attention to detail. If there’s a Oscar for TH-cam video game documentaries, this deserves to be nominated!
This is amazing man. Seriously, these are among the very best video game related videos I’ve ever watched. Documentary level and then some.
The production value and content is off the charts.
Never stop making these!
Also just to want to throw out there, I believe this is the very first time ever on the internet where it was said or demonstrated that the Japanese NBA Jam has fixed AI.
I’m surprised nobody has ever discussed this before, and with how few people discuss PSX NBA Jam’s super aggressive AI. Quite a useful piece of original research. Enough for me to whip out my xstation and replace my copy. It actually makes the PSX version better than SAT.
Very glad Steve Snake reached out to you. He is a genius and a childhood hero of mine. For real, I wouldn’t be where I am today without him. His games and especially emulators are a key thing that set me down the computer science path I went down.
I’ll never forget the first time I launched KGEN. I had to know how it worked. My first emulator experience ever.
You’re getting some real heavy hitters here.
Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, you bring in a 2-hour documentary that is extremely entertaining and informative.
This is seriously the best retro content on TH-cam. And with all these interviews, one of the most important gaming preservation efforts. Truly amazing.
I gotta say, I appreciate every video you create regarding the material of every game. Here's hoping your channel grows big!
Another tour de force! PandaMonium triumphs again! Well done. So much great information and little known details. Great to hear a lot of this right from the people putting their fingers to keyboard! Bravo!!! Now I need to revisit the excellent Craig Stadler remix previous released on this channel. :)
Yet another epic review... uh I mean documentary. Great job, man. At this rate this will be the ultimate series of Saturn games documentaries.
Absolutely fantastic documentary review video, as usual. You deserve to have millions of subs with the insane high quality work you do. Love you. Keep it up!
Watched this channel pretty much morph from Sega Saturn reviews to just full blown documentaries. By the time you get to the end of the Saturn's life I have the feeling you will be giving Ken Burns a run for his money and run time ;)
Finally getting to watch this one while I fight a bout of pain induced insomnia but you never fail to impress me with how much research you have been putting into this series, cant wait to see what your next video will be. Keep it up!
The most criminally underrated TH-cam channel
Dude I cannot tell you in words how great this is. I'm just concerned for your health and wellbeing if you put in this amount of work into every US Saturn game
*Chef’s Kiss*
Share this everywhere! This channel deserves 100K by now! Much love and thank you for all your effort and dedication.
Panda,
I just wanted to say. I’ve been a Saturn-head for a long time. I got my Saturn when I was 13 years old. I just turned 25 and I celebrated it with a ten player game of NBA Action ‘98. Yes, I had ten people, ten controllers, and two multi taps. My point is that there are many people out there like us keeping Saturn’s legacy alive. In my option you are doing divine work. So please, keep it up! Also my first Saturn game was Sonic 3D blast because I thought the special stages looked cool.
Oh man what a great video. Loved chatting to you about Jam and if i ever get hold of DazT i will push him your way..
Oddly i noticed the highscore screen has my initials "CHR" and my then girlfriend now wife of 25+ years "CSR" Amazing!!
Oh and the differences was probably because code was shared by throwing a disk across the office. Source control DID NOT EXISIT! And dazT was 4 or 5 cubicles away from me! A tricky throw!
@@chriskirby312 That’s quite an arm you got there! 🤣 Thanks again for sharing your valuable stories with me for this video. In the off chance we ever cross paths, I owe you a beer.
I am so excited to see a new video!!! It's like Christmas!
PHENOMENAL! The amount of effort put in this video (along with how long it is) is insane. I didn't know anything about this game before watching this, and now I REALLY wanna play it. You took us on a journey, man. Get some rest if you haven't yet, you've earned it!
48:10 that's some real high-quality sleuthing you done there
It's amazing to the degree that Mark's arcade team went to ajusting the AI on the fly. It's just insane.
What an awesome story. Glad I've found this channel!
you're brilliant. keep going, you'll be getting over 100k on every video soon enough
2:20 the Ken Lobb J Moon mentions here is the person the Klobb SMG was named after a n Goldeneye on N64. He is now at Microsoft.
You could say this is a FUN FACT. That’s actually some really neat trivia, I had no idea. Always thought the Klobb was a fun gun name.
Congratulations for another great video! This entire series of videos you are doing should be part of video game history! Well done and researched!
Another incredible episode! I just watched the first hour and will be back tomorrow morning to finish it off. Thanks for all your hard work.
This video is absolutely amazing!! I mean the in depth coverage of this game's history is incredible!! What an outstanding job, loved every minute!!👍👍👍👍
Wow this is good… perfectly captured the 90’s atmosphere and sets the mood for some NBA Jam!
This video is just one of the many reasons why Pandemonium reviews is one of, if not the, best TH-camrs on the internet.
An almost two hour video of PandaMonium on NBA Jam? Is it my birthday? No it isn't. But damn close. Cheers dude. Gonna watch this on my Sunday morning and have a great start of my day.
The level of your investment is amazing. The interviews, the background research, it all adds to it and tells the entire story. I just finished watching The Last Dance series, so this came at the right time for me too.
I mainly played the SNES version, and was able to play the arcade version on a retro expo. There I was able to get the tank mini game!
@@onomatopoeia7505 The tank mini game!! Such a crazy easter egg. Gotta love those creamy textureless graphics.
@PandaMoniumReviews … just finished, and I realized your voice and delivery sound an awful lot like whoever did the voiceovers on “Michael Jordan Come Fly With Me” VHS.
Suitable AF.
MF truly wonderful work. A thousand salutes.🤙🏽
What a nice surprise to see your message in my inbox today when I woke up :) This and Tim Roger‘s Cyberpunk review coming out within just a few hours makes me so happy.
My god Panda, all you had to do was churn out a quirky little review of Jam on the Saturn, you didn't have to produce the absolute most interesting and comprehensive videos on the console ports to ever grace the internet.
For real though, you did an incredible job. How does this only have 12,000 views?
Soon as I saw this posted I knew it was gonna be a good day. Love Panda videos about the greatest console ever made. Keep up the great work sir.
Oh when these drop in they just make my day. Thanks so much for the work you put in to these.
So glad to see you back, and what a huge present you have brought with you! Thanks so much!
Your content is next level. Always a great watch.
I swear these reviews became something even more magical, they remind me of G4's documentary series Icons/Game Makers, but done faaaaaaaaaar better. Thank you for all of your hard work and the entertainment, already on my 3rd rewatch lol.
Fantastic long form essay, review is really underselling this look in at the history and relevance of Jam. Great work PandaMonium.
Thanks for the kind words HG101!!
Well done video, really great quality and well produced review.
+10 points for using the 90s word "sike!!".
I thought it was spelt, ‘psych’!
You are amazing. And hats off to the extraordinary work you've done here.
I love your style of editing and good lord, was that a lot of info. But Hella entertaining and interesting.
Didn't expect the wall with names at the end, so I still feel kinda important :D
Thanks so much Artem!! You are indeed REALLY important. :D
@@PandaMoniumReviews in the spirit of the 90s: yo, VIP. let's kick it.
Wow! That's all I have to say. You can be proud of your work! This is one of the most impressive videos I have seen on TH-cam. We are lucky to have people like you to go so deep into retrogaming! Thank you! :)
omg 1:50:56? You have out done yourself sir! I'll have to wait until the weekend to watch it - but I love having it to look forward to!
Thanks!! I initially didn’t think this review would be longer than a half hour, but here we are. :) Enjoy it whenever you are able!
Well - as I expected, this was amazing - I prefer this to most professionally funded retro game documentaries I've watched. You have a serious talent and drive for tracking down devs - please keep it up, gaming archives and the gaming world needs you!
You deserve way, way more subs and views!
I don't comment on many videos, but this one was so excellent I had to. Your videos are so awesome and I am always excited when a new one drops. Keep up the great work.
Also "Kill the Panda man!" had me cracking up 😂. I love that you can still throw some humor into these.
11/10!!! Outstanding...
I've not enjoyed watching a retro video game review like this in years.
God bless you PandaMonium, you truly are doing the lords (Segata Sanshiro's) work.
HE'S ON FIRE!!!!!
the quality is astounding! well done!!
I know I posted already but this is so damn good. One thing however caught my attention...Sweet Tarts and Red Bull? My friend, Red Bull didn't exist yet. It was Jolt Cola and Airheads for us in Miami. Nothing was hotter than heading down to the arcades to play NBA Jams wearing your Air Jordans, Nike Flights, Nike Force, Reebok Pumps, and even some looking to invent the Hippster look early in Dock Martins...it was all about the shoes back then. I was strictly an Air Jordan guy that tried a pair of Reebok Pumps but a nail punctured one of the shoes making it feel like I was carrying around an extra 10 pounds. I went back to my Jordan's.
Dude, to hell with that nail. Good thing you still had the Jordans.
Anyway, time for me to go tear up some airheads and mix them in with my Jolt cola.
@@PandaMoniumReviews
I think I might do the same. If you can find it, try BAWLS soda that will make your bull run. That's a newer soda my younger brothers (also gamers) got me drinking for awhile during college. It was the only way I could burn the candle at both ends while staying an honor student. The bottles actually have nubs all over it so when you're tweeking from Caffeine overload you don't drop the glass bottle. ;)
@@PandaMoniumReviews
Did you know about the cursing port of NBA Jams? The announcer says everything in the book. Apparently the original cab was supposed to include "get that sh*t outta here!" but the NBA said no. *Edit- I just got to this part in the video.
The quality and in depth of your videos are amazing. It’s that small details that makes it! I’m subbing!
I’d never find myself watching a documentary about a port of an basketball arcade game over the course of a couple of weekends because of its thicc amount of content. This has to be my favourite overview of any port job I have ever witnessed, helped me get through a couple of work shifts on weekends. Reminds me of a bonus feature from the criterion collection. Excellent work and greetings from the isle of British people. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be nicking yer kettle and chocolates now :D
As a huge NBA Jam fan I must say this is an excellent video and retrospective! Keep up the great work, you earned a sub here for sure and my respect for the time and effort it must've taken to put into this video chock full of detail and love!
An absolute delight to watch from beginning to end! Thank you for making this.
Man your videos are insanely good, and you keep making improvements after each one. I especially loved the addition of chapters in this one for better organization and makes it much easier to watch in multiple sessions. Great work panda!
What an incredible video. I have to wonder if there are be ANY other Saturn games with one-person development teams. I'd always figured that model got eradicated after the days of the Atari 2600.
I fear for how long the Virtua Fighter 2 video will be.
Savaki was mostly made by one guy. It's a 3D MMA kind of game. And it looks more impressive than some other studio developed Saturn 3D games.
This videos are getting more and more impresive man, definetly what the Saturn deserved, Thank you.
Tf how is this not a Netflix documentary????? This is QUALITY
I just keep replaying the opening city pop bit, I adore the editing used. Almost could be it's own video with or without the narration.
Congrats and thank you for a great video series idea covering the Saturn. Definitely worth a rewatch! 👏✊
Supposably if you set the difficulty to easy on the PS1 version there's a bug that cranks the difficulty to its maximum. Making easy the hardest difficulty in the game
I’ve heard about this! I was not able to find out if that’s a real thing or not, but I would totally believe it. The players on PS1 did remain very aggressive after I turned the difficulty down.
I don’t think that’s the case. It really depends on what team you play. It appear that the lowest rank teams are insanely difficult. So teams like Minnesota timberwolves, Dallas Mavericks and Washington bullets are very tough. But as you move up the ladder it gets easier.
If you play random teams then the first team is usually the timberwolves if using emulators like pcsx or epsxe. However on a real Ps1 or Duckstation the first team when u power on the system is the Cleveland cavaliers. That is if U jump straight into the game without entering initials or going into the attract mode.
I suspect that’s why the game was initially rejected because of the difficulty and snake probably did some changes to make the cavaliers play first so Sony testers weren’t overwhelmed by the cpu
@@DemiGodX Hey, you’re the guy that made the mod! That’s an interesting point you make about the team order. IIRC, I jumped in on real hardware WITH initials, so I believe the wolves were my first opponent on PS1. I’ll have to check my footage.
@@PandaMoniumReviews thank you for showcasing my mod a bit. There’s so much I still want to add. Even with the internet it still takes a lot of time, I can only imagine how long it took for the developers to find photos of various different head angles. They eventually cheated where they reuse a lot of head angles for many players lol
It was easier with TE because they had access to the players and could film them
This is such a well crafted video that it could be used as an NBA feature instead of a video game analysis...
Amazing video. It was worth every minute. Thanks for putting so much work into this. I learned so much!
Awesome episode as usual. Your dedication astounds me, I dont like comparing people I watch because everyone does a great job but I will say your the most thorough without a doubt.
Cool video, the technical details were fascinating.
Just want to say I love this channel and the videos you put out. Hope you keep them coming!
Seeing videos like this make it worth waiting for the next one, patiently building up the library of the console with the most creamy graphics
I was very young when NBA Jam came out. But I still remember what it was like being a kid in the 90's. This episode made me reflect on back when arcades were still relevant, Mortal Kombat was a hot commodity, and the Playstation and Sega Saturn blew away the old 16-bit consoles with how advanced they were.
Thank you SO much for the subtitles!! The content of the video is just crazy, as always 😊.
Another incredible review. Absolutely love your work
I so much admire your incredible thoroughness. Kudos, sir.
Fan-freaking-tasting video! I’m watching this at 3:00 am and it’s totally worth it.
One short note: the slower clock time in Saturn Jam always annoyed me, and it never occurred to me to just speed up the clock in the options menu. I’ll have to give that a try and play again.
How in the world does this channel only have 3.8K subs? TH-cam’s algorithm needs to work its magic.
Amazing stuff, just came over after your interview on RetroRGB. I have some constructive feedback, and I'm not sure if this has been considered or it's generally redundant haha. That said, this video is amazing but I worry the title/playlist is confusing. This feels like a fully fledged documentary for the game at large and not just that of a Saturn port; I worry the use of "review" also can lead people to bounce. Hopefully the videos are getting the attention they deserve and I'm just speaking waffle.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the vid! Yeah, I often think about the playlist structure and how to address the fact that these really aren’t just reviews anymore. The earlier vids are very much reviews, so if I retitled everything with “documents every Saturn game” or something like that, it would still be incorrect. Either way, this is just a hobby, so as long as I can keep making these, I’m satisfied. :)
@@PandaMoniumReviews Sweet, that's a perfectly valid justification. Like you said, it's a passion project and those that want to see this stuff (like me) will pull up a seat and see it all the way. Looks like I'll need to start from the beginning then!
Sir, you have made my day! What a great episode...you are spoilling us with better and better episodes :)
Mind boggling video here. The production, pacing and story of not just the work but the unfolding events on how you sought out every actor involved just hooks you. I know finding them can be real tough, you're basically filling in the gaps with the lost history of the games industry. Has anyone ever declined to communicate? Most of these devs seem so enthused to talk about things they did 26 years ago.
Devs rarely decline. For the most part, this is reminiscing on “the good times” or at the very least, a time when game development was going through a wild transition. These were all small closely knit teams. The only times people have declined are if they didn’t actually do that much work on the game. I have had some people just not get back to me, though this is usually because the method of contact I used is something they don’t check anymore. No one has ever told me flat out, “no I don’t want to talk about it.” …No dev at least.
@@PandaMoniumReviews Hope it never happens! The positivity of the era is what keeps me coming back to it. Oh, and thank you for including my tweet at the end.
Yay! New vid! I literally got caught up only yesterday. Perfect timing.
I was happy to see a new video from you but then I noticed it says 1 hour and 50 minutes. So I have to stop and plan to watch it knowing it will be an absolutly epic episode. Thanks for continuing this every saturn game review from someone who never owned a Saturn.
شكرا جزيلا
Dear Lord, you are now oficially insane. In a good way! Great video, the ammount of awesome information is spectacular. Now, onwards to the next game!