Hidden Levels #1: Mr. Boomshakalaka

Step back into the ’90s, when dunks broke backboards, catchphrases caught fire, and one arcade game turned every kid into an NBA superstar.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

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• 0:43Roman Mars?

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• 1:26Roman Mars?

  engaging, exhilarating, and rewarding experience for drivers. That craft isn't always something you can see, but it's something you'll feel: that flutter in your heart, the engine roars. Every Acura is designed with deliberate intention around how people actually use the vehicles. And that is precision-crafted performance.

• 1:54Roman Mars?

  This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  And I'm Ben Brock Johnson from the WBUR podcast, Endless Threat.

• 2:02Roman Mars?

  And today, we're bringing you the first episode from our new collaborative series called Hidden Levels.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  It's about how the world of video games has changed the world beyond video games.

• 2:12Roman Mars?

  In the next six episodes, we'll get deep into how games are made and designed. Everything from the history of the joystick to how nature is faithfully recreated in the digital world, to a dispatch from the front lines of the console wars.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  So, Roman, when did video games first change your world?

• 2:33Roman Mars?

  I mean, probably when I was in elementary school in the 80s. The arcade that I went to the most was a small section in a skating rink in Newark, Ohio. And so I first learned playing video games on roller skates, actually.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  That sounds, that sounds impressive.

• 2:50Roman Mars?

  How about you?

• 2:51Speaker 01

  I think, you know, I didn't have an arcade spot, but one memory that is really strong for me is I had the luck. My brother actually brought me to Japan when I was 12 years old. And I was really lucky to do that. It blew my mind in so many ways. But I went into a real deal Japanese arcade while I was there. And it was so incredible. I mean, the different kinds of games you could play, the sights, really the sounds too. We are audio people, Roman. I love sound first and foremost. And that's what I think of sometimes when I think of video games.

• 3:24Roman Mars?

  Absolutely. I'm exactly the same way. And there's something really special about designing game sounds so that it can cut through the din of all the other arcade games and kind of draw you to the machine.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Do you have a favorite sound that you think of when you think of video game sounds?

• 3:39Roman Mars?

  I mean, my favorite is there used to be this really big arcade game called Gauntlet that had like four joysticks on it, so you can play four different characters. And one of the sounds that the sort of game announcer said was, "Elf needs food badly."

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Elf needs food badly.

• 3:56Roman Mars?

  Or elf is about to die. And I think about elf needs food badly. Every time I'm hungry, literally every day of my life since I played Gauntlet, I think about this game sound.

• 4:11Roman Mars?

  How about you? What's yours?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I think of a couple of classics for me, like the Mortal Kombat, you know, Scorpion, get over here.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  You know, there was a game I played a lot called Cruisin' USA that had this kind of ridiculous female passenger voice that was like, yeah, all right, Hollywood, let's go.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Redwoods. Ooh, Hollywood. Radical.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  But one that I think of a lot is the Ryuken or Shoryuken, Street Fighter II sounds of Ryu or Ken doing the like, Ryuken, Shoryuken.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  That one, I just, I just say that sometimes to myself, just to make myself happy. So clearly, Roman, as, as audio podcasters, we love sound and we could go on forever.

• 5:03Roman Mars?

  Yeah. And the story we have for you today is all about an iconic video game sound. It's about a high energy vocal performance that helped spawn an entire franchise. The first episode of Hidden Levels is brought to us by 99PI contributor, James Parkinson. Here it is.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Growing up in Michigan in the 1970s and 80s, Mark Tymel was a wonder boy of video game design.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  He released a successful game as a teenager and was earning thousands of dollars a month while still living at his parents' house. By the time he was in his twenties, Mark was working full time as a developer in Chicago, designing coin operated arcade games.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  Coin op back in those days was always the cutting edge. It was better than any Super Nintendo, better than a Sega Genesis. It was really high powered. I could put more sprites on the screen, more bullets, more explosions. And so it was, for me, it was like being a kid in a candy store.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  The company Mark worked for was called Midway, and they were famous for bringing a number of big Japanese games to the US, like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. And in 1992, they released the iconic fighting game Mortal Kombat.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  But Mark was about to take Midway in a very different direction.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Mark was a big basketball fan and in the early 90s, he could tell that the NBA was really having a moment, particularly in Chicago. This was the height of Michael Jordan mania.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Chicago Bulls were about to clinch their first championship three-peat and the popularity of the league was at an all-time high.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  And Mark Tumel decided he wanted to capture the high-flying, razzle-dazzle energy of professional basketball and put it in an arcade game. He called his new creation NBA Jam.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  By the fall of 1992, NBA Jam was almost complete and Mark Tumel and his team decided to test out their new game at an arcade in Chicago called Dennis's Place for Games. They rolled in a 400-pound cabinet, put in the chip with the NBA Jam code and turned the machine on. Then Mark sat back to watch how the customers in Dennis's Place would react. He says that back then, there was a pretty simple way to gauge whether a coin-op game was going to be successful. You could usually tell in the first couple of hours.

• 7:47Speaker 04

  In the coin-op business, if you can get somebody to put quarters in, reach into their pocket, go to the cash machine, the change machine and put money in, you know, that's like really telling. It's very democratic, whether you like it or not.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  And as Mark watched, the customers at Dennis's Place voted with their quarters.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  They crowded around the NBA Jam cabinet, shouting, cursing, fighting for the joystick. It was bedlam.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  There were fistfights, you know, people gambling. The coin doors were jammed up with money. When somebody would do a big dunk and the backboard would smash into pieces, you know, they'll literally scream and run around the arcade. You know, it was awesome.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  I remember exactly how wild this game was. Growing up in Australia, I didn't have access to live NBA games on TV. But NBA Jam was the next best thing. It quite literally brought the excitement of the NBA to my fingertips. And I think there were a few different elements that drew kids like me in. For one thing, NBA Jam just looked good. It might be hard to believe now, but for kids like me who grew up on games like Pac-Man, NBA Jam was a whole new world. This was the dawn of digitised graphics, which meant that for the first time, designers like Mark could make avatars that looked and moved like actual people.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  You know, we would take videotape and run it through a digitiser that would, you know, create frames and we'd put it on the screen. And it was like, wow, you know, look at that. That's, you know, a photograph right there on my computer screen.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  At first, Mark recorded video of amateur players he found on local courts throughout Chicago to run through the digitiser. But when he finalised the official licensing deal with the NBA, he did some minor digital surgery.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  Then we basically chopped the heads off of all of our local athletes and then generated the heads of all of these NBA superstars to, you know, paste on top.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  Which meant I could play the game as a real-life basketball star, or at least the head of one. I could be Scottie Pippen, Hakeem Olajuwon, or Shaquille O'Neal. But the realism ended there, because the gameplay was pure fantasy.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  At times, NBA Jam felt more like Mortal Kombat than basketball. There were no fouls, no out-of-bounds, and the players were like superhumans. They leapt into the rafters for sky-high dunks and shot impossibly long-range three-pointers. When a player made three baskets in a row, the ball burst into flames and he became unstoppable for the next several possessions. But I think there was one element in particular that made NBA Jam stand out from all the other games in the arcade. It was an iconic sound that cut through all the bleeps and bloops and drew people to the NBA Jam cabinet like moths to a flame. Even if you didn't play the game growing up, you might have heard this sound.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  From downtown, launches a shot. He's a-

• 10:57Speaker 03

  I'm talking about the voice of the game's announcer.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Today, voice acting is a key component of most video game productions. But back in the 1970s, there were no voices in video games at all. High-quality audio recordings were just too large to fit on the soundchips of arcade machines. The earliest voices heard in video games were digitized, using a technique called speech synthesis.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Basically combining short sounds or syllables to form complete words. These synthesized voices were a clever solution to the problem, but they didn't exactly sound realistic. The space-themed shooter StratoVox was the first game to attempt this. As you fired at alien ships, a very unnatural-sounding narrator would shout a handful of distorted phrases.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  Believe it or not, the narrator there was saying "lucky" and "very good." One of the first games to use true-recorded voiceover was Dragon's Lair in 1983. They managed to do this using LaserDisc technology. The team didn't have the budget to hire actors, so much of the voice acting was done by the animators and the production staff.

• 12:17Speaker 05

  Please save me! The cage is locked with a key. The dragon keeps it around his neck.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Improvements in computer chip technology allowed for increased memory, and by the early 90s, it was common for arcade games to use real voice recordings, at least very short ones. These companies still weren't hiring professional actors, though. As a result, the voice performances were often bad, like really, really bad.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  You must recover all the energy immediately, Megaman.

• 12:49Speaker 05

  But where is Dr. Wily?

• 12:51Speaker 02

  That's a good question.

• 12:53Speaker 06

  Just one more page and I would have finished this book.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Die, monster! You don't belong in this world! Captain Wesker, where's Chris? Stop it! Don't open that door!

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, that wasn't going to cut it for NBA Jam. This new basketball game was going to need a voice that could match the high-octane style of the gameplay and cut through the noisy commotion of an arcade to draw people in. Someone with a distinctive delivery that would keep people dipping into their pockets for more quarters. They needed this guy. So firstly, can I just get you to introduce yourself, please?

• 13:30Speaker 07

  Hi, everyone. Tim Kitzro from NBA Jam Boom Shakalaka.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  That was very loud.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Tim Kitzro was not a famous actor back in the early 90s, and he certainly didn't grow up with dreams of becoming a voice actor for an iconic video game. But he'd always been a showman. He was one of seven children, and he was the entertainer in the family. He says his goal at dinner was to get milk to come out of someone's nose.

• 13:55Speaker 07

  One of my heroes is Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices, Looney Tunes. So when I was younger, I often did cartoon voices like Underdog, you know, the, "If you ain't my signature, says underdog must die." Or Droopy Dog. There's a telephone, Butch. It's a dame. What'd she say, Butch? She's so unselfish.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Tim got into theatre in high school and went on to study acting at Purchase College, where he crossed paths with some heavy hitters.

• 14:27Speaker 07

  My roommate was Stan Tucci, Vin Rain's. So a lot of big names came out of that place.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  But Tim's career didn't take off quite like those two. He spent the 80s as a genuine actor, bouncing between cities like New York and LA, looking for work. And eventually, he wound up in Chicago. He trained with the comedians at Second City while auditioning for commercials and playing the drums in a local band. His career felt like it was stuttering, until it took a very unlikely turn.

• 14:57Speaker 07

  Of course, the way the world works, sometimes you have one plan and then it goes another way.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  It all started because a couple of Tim's bandmates worked in Midway's pinball division. They often needed people to record little bits of voiceover, and they knew that their drummer Tim was pretty good at impressions. One day, they asked him to help out with a Gilligan's Island pinball game.

• 15:20Speaker 07

  So I was hired to do Mr. Howell from Gilligan's Island. Maybe I can buy a new dinghy for my yacht.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Over time, Tim became a regular voice on Midway's pinball games.

• 15:32Speaker 07

  I did the Twilight Zone, Attack from Mars.

• 15:35Speaker 08

  This is an emergency broadcast. The Earth is being invaded by flying saucers from Mars.

• 15:42Speaker 07

  The Shadow, World Cup Soccer, NBA Pinball, you know, or Fast Break, whatever. It was just, it was just going in and having fun. And actually, this time I was getting paid for it.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Being a voice actor for pinball was a fun side gig, but not much more than that. Tim never felt like it had the potential to be an actual career.

• 16:01Speaker 07

  I really had no idea what I was doing, you know, getting into that business. I knew that I loved playing pinball, but pinball, as I said, 15 games later, you know, I still didn't know much about the industry, still couldn't play worth a lick. It was just a, a fun, extra gig for extra money, extra beer money.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Meanwhile, Mark Tumel and the NBA Jam crew were putting the finishing touches on their brand new basketball game. They'd signed the licensing deal with the NBA and figured out the gameplay and the graphics. And at a certain point, they started to think about the sound. A guy named John Hay handled just about every aspect of the audio for NBA Jam. He wrote the game's deeply 90s soundtrack.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  And in order to make the game sound more lifelike, he went out and recorded all these basketball sounds in the wild, like balls being dribbled or sneaker squeaks on hardwood floors. But Mark Tumel and John Hay knew that one of the most important sonic elements was the voice of the game's announcer. They wanted a commentator who would make the game come alive and sound like the way the NBA sounded on TV. Mark even thought about hiring an actual NBA commentator, but they didn't have the budget. Luckily for them, an affordable alternative was kicking around the office, drinking beer with the pinball guys.

• 17:22Speaker 07

  I used to just get regular calls because every, you know, every couple of months there was a new pinball game and it's like, let's, let's go to Tim. And so this felt no different to me.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  The recording studio was located in Midway's pinball factory. It was a giant noisy space with lots of workers and hundreds of pinball machines. But all the way in the back, there was a little five foot by five foot vocal booth. They called it the Meat Locker.

• 17:46Speaker 07

  It was kind of a depressing little place, but it was cosy. It was like our little world. It was just the sound guys, you know, not much bigger than a household giant refrigerator and a little window to, for me to see John. So yeah, although it was kind of dingy and dark and small and everything else, it was, it was home and you know, it's where some of the best, best work was ever done.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Mark and John worked to brainstorm a library of words and phrases they needed Tim to record. First, they needed the names of every player in the game and a few different takes for each so that it wouldn't sound repetitive. Then they started compiling a list of all the different things that happened in a basketball game that Tim was going to need to react to. Just like a TV announcer, he needed to say something every time there was a big dunk or a three pointer or a blocked shot. John Hay wrote lines for each category, some of them taken directly from NBA broadcasts. When Tim Kitzrow finally got into the booth, he decided he wanted to model his delivery off a veteran NBA announcer, Marv Albert. Albert was the most famous basketball commentator in the world at the time and he had a flamboyant, energetic style.

• 19:00Speaker 07

  You know, jump off point was realising that to me, Marv Albert compared to other sports broadcasters, he brought that extra energy and I knew that I wanted to emulate that.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  But Tim was going to be Marv Albert turned up to 11. Marv Albert with a splash of Mortal Kombat. To get in the right headspace, Tim would visualise high-flying dunks and channel that energy into his performance.

• 19:26Speaker 07

  So that's where I kind of got that timber, that tone that, you know, that NBA Jam had, based off of like what I heard and then just making it my own. Rejected! He's heating up! He's on fire!

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, Tim's a, I mean, he's amazing. He's a genius.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  This is Mark Timell again. He says that Tim didn't stick to the script. Right away, he started getting creative.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  He's so quick-witted, you know, he's always willing to, you know, iterate and improve and take feedback. And when Tim went into the studio, he would just ad lib and it was magic, you know, immediately.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  But Tim had to improvise within constraints. The arcade machines at the time still didn't have a lot of memory, so his catchphrases needed to be short, like half a sentence.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Or even just a single word.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  As for the game's most famous catchphrase, Tim doesn't take credit. The exact origin story is a little murky, but Tim believes it was a suggestion by John Carlton, one of the game's artists. He'd been listening to the funk group Sly and the Family Stone, and on the song "I Wanna Take You Higher" there's a chorus where they sing...

• 20:55Speaker 07

  Boom shakalaka, shakalaka, boom shakalaka, boom shakalaka. I wanna take you high! But it was, they were just like, boom shakalaka, shakalaka, boom shakalaka. They weren't saying boom shakalaka, they were saying boom shakalaka, shakalaka, boom shakalaka, boom shak...whatever.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  Actually, the song goes boom like a laka.

• 21:16Speaker 07

  You get the point. So he just said, "Hey, John, tell Tim to say Boom Shakalaka." Once again, this is the story that I heard. I'm there, but I don't remember it. But I do remember vaguely John just saying to me, "Say Boom Shakalaka." And I just said, "What does that mean?" He goes, "I don't know, just say it." And I went, "Boom Shakalaka." And I said, "Is that it?" And he goes, "Yeah, do a couple more." "Boom Shakalaka." "Ooh, Boom Shakalaka." He went, "Yeah, that's probably good." "All right, moving on."

• 21:46Speaker 03

  The recording sessions for NBA Jam were done in around 20 hours. And when Tim was finished, he didn't think it was a big deal at all. As far as he was concerned, this was just another gig. Like Gillington's Island Pinball. Little did he know that those 20 hours would change the course of his life. And from that point forward, he'd be known to the world as Mr. Boom Shakalaka.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  After the success of their test night at Dennis's place for games, the NBA Jam team was confident that their game was not a dud. But still, Mark Tummel had this lingering worry that the game wouldn't translate outside of Chicago. After all, he could see the backend data showing which NBA teams people were choosing to play with.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  So I knew, looking at the stats, that the Bulls were just dominant. Everybody was picking the Bulls. And so in the back of my head, I thought, "Maybe this is a Chicago thing."

• 22:39Speaker 03

  When the game went live across the country, Mark flew to LA to see how it played there. He went to an arcade in Westwood, where NBA Jam had just been installed.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  And I walked in and I just watched. And it was the same bedlam that I had seen in Chicago, except that the players were picking the Lakers. And so it really was that moment where I said to myself, "Wow, you know, this, this is going to happen in every NBA city at the very least. And this is going to happen around the country." And sure enough, that's exactly, you know, what happened.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  NBA Jam was picked up by arcades all around the country. And city after city, people happily forked out their hard-earned quarters in order to rain down three-pointers with Detlef Schrempf or dunk from half-court with Clyde Drexler.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  If there was one group of people who seemed to love the game most of all, it was NBA players. On his days off, Miami Heat star Glenn Rice would wait in line at the local arcade just to play NBA Jam as himself. Gary Payton, a point guard with the Seattle Supersonics, demanded to know why he hadn't been included in the game. He even sent personal photos to Mark Tumal that he could use to make Payton's avatar. And then there was Shaquille O'Neal.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  We got contacted from the distributor in Orlando and said that Shaq wanted to buy two games.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Shaq wanted one NBA Jam machine for his own house and another for the Orlando Magic's team jet.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  They brought one of the NBA Jam cabinets onto the jet and it travelled with them on the road. And they would wheel it up into Shaq's hotel suite. And the players, instead of going out and partying or clubbing, they would go in and just play and play as each other. Even the opposing team would come in the night before the game or after the game and play.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  In 1993, NBA Jam was the talk of both the arcade world and the world of professional basketball. But back in Chicago, Tim Kitzroy still hadn't played the game.

• 24:54Speaker 07

  So I asked John, I said, "Hey, where could I go see NBA Jam?"

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Tim went to a nearby arcade and walked up to a cabinet that he assumed was NBA Jam. But it turns out it was a different basketball game, one of their competitors. And Tim was not all that impressed by the announcer.

• 25:11Speaker 07

  It would be like, "Nice shot, for two, he makes it." I was like, "What the hell is wrong with that guy?" And I walk over, you know, to watch the NBA Jam, you know, "He's on fire from downtown, not tonight!", you know, whatever. And I was like, "Well, that guy's pretty good."

• 25:29Speaker 03

  And it was clear that the kids in the arcade agreed with him. They were absolutely loving NBA Jam.

• 25:35Speaker 07

  And that was like, you know, this moment where I went, wow, this is something. This is like, you know, made the equivalent of being, you know, someone from like, you know, a group that hears their song on the radio for the first time. It's like, this is a hit. And, and I got kind of charged, but I couldn't resist sometimes just by accident. Didn't think about it, but I'm watching and I would start to say like, rejected, ugly shot. Get that stuff out of here. Boom, suck it up. You know, someone turned around, hey, man, you still like the dude in the game? I go, dude, I am the dude. And then they go, it is, it is you.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  NBA Jam went on to become a bigger hit than anyone ever expected. To use an arcade term, it was a quarter muncher, devouring coins like a hungry hippo. In its first year, NBA Jam made $1 billion in revenue, one quarter at a time.

• 26:26Speaker 07

  I was out at Midway in their lunchroom and there was an article on the board, you know, just like a Xeroxed article that said, NBA Jam surpasses, breaks all records, makes a billion dollars in quarters first year. And I just said, who wrote this? This is funny. I just absolutely convinced it was someone just having, you know, some fun to kind of like prop up the team and, you know, give them some confidence like, yeah, NBA Jam's a great game, but had no idea in reality, the game made a billion dollars. And that was the moment my brain went, wait a minute, I made 900. What?

• 27:02Speaker 03

  It's impossible to say whether or not the game would have been successful without Tim Kitzrow, but his contribution is undeniable. In 1994, a version of NBA Jam was released for the Super Nintendo. At that time, home consoles had a lot less memory than arcade cabinets. And so certain elements had to be stripped from the game to make it small enough to fit on a cartridge. In the end, they cut the music, but retained the sound effects and Tim Kitzrow's iconic voice.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  As new versions of the game got released, Tim was able to renegotiate for better compensation. And while NBA Jam didn't make him rich, the game changed the course of his career and his whole approach to video game voice work. It went from this side gig he did for beer money to a viable career.

• 27:54Speaker 07

  I wasn't going into a room of 20 people who looked like me to do a Bud Light beer commercial or a cheesy sitcom audition or an extra part in a movie. This was people saying, "We want Tim because Tim delivers the goods."

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Off the back of NBA Jam, Tim became the voice of other midway sports titles like NFL Blitz,

• 28:18Speaker 08

  Midway presents NFL Blitz!

• 28:21Speaker 03

  NHL Hits,

• 28:23Speaker 08

  Welcome to Boston! Pickouts are too front teeth and let's do this!

• 28:27Speaker 03

  And MLB Slugfest.

• 28:29Speaker 07

  And now sit back, it's time to play ball!

• 28:34Speaker 03

  By this stage, the technology had improved to the point where there were really no limits on how much voiceover you could include in video games. And with the freedom to get as wild as he wanted, Tim delivered some truly outrageous baseball banter.

• 28:47Speaker 07

  Hey, here's one, Jimmy. Famous people did it alive. All-star team on the mound. I got Abe Lincoln. Why? Abe Lincoln, he's got these beady eyes, that little drifter beard. He's intimidating. Who do you got? With Slugfest, I wrote all the creative colour commentary. So that was actually the most exciting part of my career. I was not only making really good money, I was writing and basically in charge of the content. So I was given the opportunity to basically create the whole world.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Tim Kitzrow is not the most important voice actor in video game history, but his performance in NBA Jam is certainly one of the most beloved. And his role in the game's success set an important precedent for how voice acting can elevate a video game and bring it to life. In the decades that followed, game developers began to invest more and more in vocal performances. And sports game companies started spending money to hire real-life announcers to do commentary. In fact, one of the most famous video game franchises of all time is named after an announcer.

• 29:51Speaker 09

  Welcome to Madden NFL 2000, the new millennium of football.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  And Tim's influence wasn't limited to video games. It fed back into the sport of basketball itself. Over time, NBA Jam catchphrases like "he's heating up" have become part of the general basketball vernacular. And if you turn on a game today, it's pretty obvious that many basketball commentators grew up playing NBA Jam.

• 30:18Speaker 10

  Crosses over, finds Zubac, gives it up to Harden at the free throw line. A lob to Zubac! Boom, shakalaka! As he dumps it with two hands. And the Clippers lead 17-7. Oh my goodness, feeling like NBA Jam here early. Clippers all dunks, crossing to the rim. Tim's right move left, attacks the paint, leaves it out for the cutting Boston. He'll dunk it over the top of Lopson! Brandon Boston! Boom, shakalaka!

• 30:43Speaker 08

  Boom, shakalaka! Yeah! Boom, shakalaka! Yeah! Boom, shakalaka! Oh! Boom, shakalaka! Come on! The rebound!

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Apple buzzer!

• 30:55Speaker 08

  The rebound!

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Win!

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Apple buzzer!

• 31:03Speaker 08

  It's good!

• 31:09Roman Mars?

  Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections on by default. Built-in content settings for the content teens can see, contact limits for who can contact them, and time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. Teens are automatically placed into teen accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. This episode is presented by Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort from start to finish. Enjoy priority check-in and boarding, followed by access to peaceful lounges.

• 31:54Roman Mars?

  Onboard, savor menus created by renowned French chefs paired with wines and champagne selected by Smollet. Stay connected with free high-speed Wi-Fi. Then unwind in a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with a mattress topper developed with Sofitel MyBed, a signature touch of French hospitality. The art of travel elevated. Because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional.

• 32:23Roman Mars?

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• 32:58Roman Mars?

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• 33:33Speaker 01

  We are back with Hidden Levels in our first episode, Roman Mars.

• 33:38Roman Mars?

  Ben Brock Johnson.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  We have been talking NBA Jam, and the vocal performance is really just one of the most distinct things about the game because NBA Jam has all these other quirks. And these quirks really make this game legendary. It has so many hidden design details, exactly the kind of stuff we're talking about in this series. Let's talk about a few of these hidden design details. You game?

• 34:02Roman Mars?

  Absolutely.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  All right. So James Parkinson, in the story, he talked about how the game wasn't the most realistic depiction of basketball, even though they were using this new technology to capture people, maybe not super realistic.

• 34:16Roman Mars?

  Sure. I mean, the ball caught fire, so that rarely happens in a basketball game. But yeah, I get you.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Right. So if you knew where to look in this game, you could also unlock secret players who were not athletes, at least that I know of. So Bill Clinton is one example. Al Gore is another.

• 34:33Roman Mars?

  Oh, I had no idea. What other examples are there?

• 34:36Speaker 01

  George Clinton could also be unlocked as a character.

• 34:41Roman Mars?

  All the Clintons are represented.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  All the Clintons, man.

• 34:45Roman Mars?

  George Clinton.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  That's right. And he was a character named P-Funk. That was in the tournament edition of the game. You could also access one of the people who we heard from in the episode who made NBA Jam. We don't think of programmers as ballers necessarily, but all the programmers were playable in the game and that includes Mark Turell, who we heard from earlier.

• 35:09Roman Mars?

  Was he particularly good at the game as a player?

• 35:12Speaker 01

  It may shock you to learn that he was practically unstoppable.

• 35:17Roman Mars?

  I mean, you know, that's what I would do.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Same.

• 35:21Roman Mars?

  That's awesome.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Here's another interesting sort of secret Easter egg in the game, Roman. It's called super clean floors, which if a player activated this, the basketball court would become very slippery and the players on the other team would fall over all the time. I actually remember, I remember being the target of this and playing the game and it basically renders the game impossible for you. It's crazy.

• 35:46Roman Mars?

  I mean, they put so many fun and clever things into this game. It's like, it's awesome.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is awesome. And here's one that is awesome, but only if you're a Detroit Pistons fan. Going back to our buddy Mark Turell, the programmer, the unstoppable player in the game and also programmer of NBA Jam. He was a Pistons fan and he hated the Chicago Bulls. So a few years back, Turell confirmed something to Sports Illustrated. If you were playing the Pistons against the Bulls in NBA Jam and it was a close game, the game was programmed so that the Bulls literally could not score a last second shot to tie or win the game.

• 36:26Roman Mars?

  That is. Diabolical. I mean, this is like especially in the time period of the of the 80s and 90s, when the Bulls were this like huge dynasty, like Michael Jordan was, you know, the GOAT. And I'm sure everyone wanted to play as the Bulls and to think that they couldn't win if they played against the Pistons is hilarious.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  It's really funny, but also you couldn't play as the GOAT. So for years, Jordan would not license his name to NBA video games. He wanted to retain his likeness rights, of course. So you could play as Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, decidedly less exciting. And some basketball games, no offense, Scottie and Horace, but some basketball games actually had a generic player 99 instead of Jordan later on.

• 37:09Roman Mars?

  So you could play kind of as generic Bulls player, which you could imagine as being Jordan?

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could pretend 99 was 23. Okay, so Roman, here's a final example of the amazing strangeness of NBA Jam. There is actually a game inside of NBA Jam, the game, that has zero amount to do with basketball.

• 37:31Roman Mars?

  So you could just, you just break out and play another game?

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Totally different game, but it's one you might recognize. So in the arcade version of NBA Jam, you could access this second game where you play as a tank and have to drive around these different kind of three dimensional geometric obstacles. And I think you might recognize it. So here's what it looks like. Here's a playthrough on YouTube. Take a look.

• 37:59Roman Mars?

  Totally, because this is a game that was inside the aforementioned skating rink in Newark, Ohio. And this looks almost exactly like Battle Zone. I mean, like Battle Zone had these vector graphics that I thought were absolutely gorgeous. In fact, if I were to create a game today, it would all be vector graphics, to tell you the truth. But it looks so much, yeah, it looks, it's, it looks like Battle Zone.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Battle Zone is a favorite of mine as well. I don't know how you would play this game on roller skates, Roman, because Battle Zone had those like two joysticks that you had to move. But like you said, like, it looks like a game that is designed now, if that makes sense, even though it's, it's so old. There was this legendary cheat code in NBA Jam that allowed for this. And to access this second game that was kind of a Battle Zone reference, both players would have to hit X, Y, Z and pull down their joysticks at the same time. And then you could actually get into this tank game, which was really just an homage to Battle Zone.

• 38:56Roman Mars?

  That is so cool. And everyone using their joystick and buttons in this way brings us nicely to our next episode, where we're actually talking about video game controllers.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  That's right. Next time on Hidden Levels, one of the most elemental parts of video gaming, whether or not you're on roller skates, we are diving into the history of the joystick.

• 39:17Speaker 11

  There's a kind of direct manipulation quality to it. Do you want to move forward on a screen? Press the stick forward. Do you want to move backwards within the environment of the screen? Pull the stick backwards.

• 39:30Roman Mars?

  That is the next time on Hidden Levels from 99% Invisible and Endless Threat. This episode was produced by James Parkinson, edited by Emmett Fitzgerald, mixed by Martin Gonzalez, original music by Swan Real, Jamila Sandoto, and Paul Vitkus. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vitkus. Fact checking by Graham Hesha. This story was adapted from James Parkinson's podcast, Gameplay. You can find a link to that show on our website. The managing producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. Hidden Levels was created by Ben Brock Johnson from a LoadRunner fever dream with power ups and cheat codes thanks to the team at NINPI and Endless Threat.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Endless Threat is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR. The rest of our team tackling unsolved mysteries, untold histories, and other wild stories from the internet includes my illustrious co-host Emery Severson, managing producer Suma Tajoshi, editor Meg Kramer, producers Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, and Franny Monahan, and sound designer Emily Jankowski.

• 40:31Roman Mars?

  And for 99% Invisible, Kathy Too is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstad is the digital director. Delaney Hawes, our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Laishma Dawn, Jacob Medina Gleason, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. The art for this series was created by Aaron Nester. We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast family, headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California. We have another episode of Hidden Levels on Friday. See you then.

• 41:14Roman Mars?

  No, yeah, right. Okay. Here it goes. Boom shakalaka.

• 41:26Speaker 12

  Hi, I'm Gabby Wendy with Longwinded, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible, so listen to my podcast, won't ya? It has great insights, exceptional humor, and plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls. And some even say it's a great way to fall asleep due to my soothing voice. And I don't take that personally. Fall asleep. A listen is a listen, even when you're sleeping, and a view is a view, even with your eyes closed. If you dare, and it doesn't take much gumption, enjoy. Listen to Longwinded wherever you get your podcasts.

• 42:07Speaker 13

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• 42:31Speaker 14

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• 42:55Speaker 13

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