NBA Jam (Wii)

NBA Jam is one of many titles by this name.

To do: Tons. Plenty of developer notes. Potential for the Sprite and Adidas unlocks to have graphics and/or be fully working in the Wii version. Unused Michael Jordan-related files. There are existing hacked bounceproject.xml files that should unlock things like Bryant Reeves, but it's not clear what specific edit unlocks him and not other bugged unlocks. If someone could find an old archive of EA press releases or strategy guides, they should be able to find the codes/unlocks that were bugged, finding the original trigger for Reeves, and thus which trigger to patch functionality for. Link rot has not been kind to this game. I suspect a lot of this was documented on EA forums (now dead) and by EA community managers...

Inaccessible Character#

Bryant Reeves was meant to be unlockable (citation needed) in this game, and was unlockable in the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 followup (citation needed). Due to a variety of bugs that also affect other unlockables (making them hard, but technically not impossible, to unlock), he is totally unavailable to unlock in the Wii version.

With hacks, he can be added to a save file and played normally. Simply edit Bounceproject.xml to make the trigger that was supposed to unlock him actually doable (such as winning a game against the CPU).

Bugged Unlocks#

Although Bryant Reeves is the only fully impossible character to unlock, there are other unlocks that are far more difficult than intended. Some bugs seem to revolve around the triggers only running if certain tasks are completed in a single session (without turning off the console). Supporting information possibly including EA support messages and in-game messages indicates the challenges are not supposed to be this hard.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/984942-nba-jam

The bugged challenges are supposedly:

• Eastern Conference Domination
• Western Conference Domination
• NBA Domination
• 10K Scorer
• Grand Scorer
• 100 Club

Unused Content#

There are references to online play, but the Wii version can't go online. The follow-up on Xbox 360 and PS3 did have online, however.

For example, Bounceproject.xml has lines like this:

<Rule name="Online: Play a ranked game online" 
 category="164" id="3574746964" 
 description="Special Case Code Handles this - do not change data or event trigger" priority="low">

There are references to Sprite and Adidas in bounce.db, both of which are available costumes in the 360/PS3 version.