NBA Jam is a basketball arcade game developed by Midway in 1993. It is the first entry in the NBA Jam series, and was written entirely in assembly language. The main designer and programmer for this game was Mark Turmell. The release of NBA Jam gave rise to a new genre of sports games which were based around fast, action-packed gameplay and exaggerated realism, a formula which Midway would also later apply to the sports of football , and hockey . Midway had previously released such sports games as Arch Rivals in 1989, High Impact in 1990, and Super High Impact in 1991. The gameplay of NBA Jam... is based on the aforementioned Arch Rivals, another 2-on-2 basketball video game. However, it was the release of NBA Jam that brought mainstream success to the genre. The game became exceptionally popular, and generated a significant amount of money for arcades after its release, largely because of the fairly expensive prices for game play. The typical cost to play a full game of NBA Jam in the United States ranged from $1.00 to $2.00. Nonetheless, the game was a smash hit. The original arcade release generated revenue of $1 billion in quarters.
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