• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

NBA Jam and NBA Jam: On Fire Edition - what's the difference?

I picked up NBA Jam (PS3) for cheap at the weekend, remembering having a lot of fun with the game on 360 with a friend, only to find it's totally not the same! You can't tag to your partner, it's baffling!

So I looked into it and found out there's a re-release called On Fire Edition - so I am thinking about grabbing that, only to find it's apparently missing content from the original?

Any GAFers know what's changed between the versions?
 
I think On Fire was a sequel of sorts, with the sort of uninspired additions one expects from a NBA Jam sequel. The biggest problem for Midway with this whole franchise was that the first game was perfect.
 
ssCq2gN.jpg
.
 
I actually just found this on a forum dedicated entirely to basketball video games. Maybe this will help.

Plenty. NBA Jam was a pretty faithful reboot/remake of the original games with today's players and I think it's kind of underrated; the situation with NBA Elite 11 certainly didn't help matters. It's fun and plays a lot like the originals, though that means the CPU can be a bit cheap at times. Classic Campaign is familiar but a little repetitive (and you're locked to one team per campaign), while the Remix Tour changes things up but again, the CPU is a bit cheap when it comes to some of the boss battles and other challenges.

On Fire Edition was a huge improvement. As big a fan as I am of the original games, OFE is probably my favourite arcade basketball game. The Real AI makes playing against the CPU a lot less repetitive while being challenging in a fairer way, most of the time. They combined Classic Campaign and the Remix Tour into Road Trip, where you can select a new team for each game (kind of like the old ladder/tournament mode in the originals) and the challenges are pretty fun and varied. It's also received a couple of roster updates, though none of the newly added players are referred to by name in the commentary.

For what it's worth, online support for NBA Jam has been discontinued, while it's still going for On Fire Edition. Note from FF: This post is from 2013, so I don't know if this is true anymore.

Both are fine games, but OFE is definitely superior with noticeable differences in the way the CPU plays and a better game mode that can be played solo, with someone else on the same console or someone online, all without starting a new game. EA did a fine job with it.
 
Ofe has a worse single player campaign but has tons more secret teams and characters. It is also balanced more towards offense where nba jam big men can absolutely slaughter on D
 
Less game types, but it's up to you if the game types are really any better than standard play (half court ball, this explode the backboard game, other subtypes basically)

Cool, thanks. But it does still have the unlockables? Sounding good.

Why the fuck can't you control your teammate in vanilla NBA Jam, that's the real question. What were they thinking?
 
NBA Jam on iOS gets updated rosters every year...

So, by default NBA Jam iOS is the definitive version.

But OFE is great!
 
Differences are mainly campaign and content. OFE is miles superior to the first release of NBA Jam on 360. This game's also backwards compatible on Xbox One, downloaded again due to memories. Shame the rosters weren't updated.
 
Oh my god, I suck at this game so much.

I need NBA Jam tips! How do I even block a shot!? Triangle button apparently but it never works!
 
Top Bottom