Players choose an NBA team, each with two or three superstar players (or at least their digitized faces), and play a side-scrolling basketball game, split into four quarters (each new 3:00 quarter is a buy-in). Players can also enter their initials to keep track of their progress, which encouraged repeat business. In addition to high-flying dunks and rainbow three-pointers, players can push each other to the ground without being called for fouls -- much like Midway's earlier game, Arch Rivals.

NBA Jam was the first licensed sports coin-op video game ever. Originally, the NBA was not keen on the idea, as they didn't want the wholesome NBA logo to be seen in "seedy" coin-op locations like bars or strip joints. However, once the Midway team showed them some preliminary footage of the game, they were thrilled and gave it a green light. The success of "Jam" paved the way for future officially-licensed sports arcade games.

During its original arcade run, NBA Jam earned profits of $1 billion dollars -- roughly three times the take of the movie Jurassic Park!

The high-flying dunks were performed by Willie Morris Jr., a bouncer at a Chicago club. Morris has returned to do motion capture/video tape work for Midway's other two basketball games as well.

Due to his seperate and expensive licensing agreement, Michael Jordan is not in the game, and has not appeared in any Midway basketball coin-op to date.

The game was a big hit with the players themselves -- Shawn Kemp and Shaquille O'Neal own or owned machines. After the success of the first game, Gary Payton sent his photos to Mark Turmell and asked to be put into the next game!

The addition of the designers as secret players was merely an in-joke with the design staff, but ultimately became a huge part of the game's appeal and earnings. "We had to chop the heads off the models we videotaped to put the real NBA plauyers' heads on," said Turmell in a 1994 interview with SLAM magazine. "So we thought, 'Shoot, we might as well paste our own heads on there, too.' It was supposed to be just for us when we play at home or in the office -- we did not intend for it to become a selling point. But it did." Turmell's own secret character is "tall, I'm as fast as Spud Webb and I can shoot as good as Pipped."

There were rumors about the cheerleaders being playable characters in the original Jam. On the record, Turmell said they are in there, but their codes were intentionally complex and their existence did not please the NBA, so the information has never been released. To date, no valid codes to play as female characters have been found. However, there are cheerleader codes for NBA Jam TE.

Since the name "NBA Jam" is owned and controlled by the NBA, Acclaim later aquired the license and made a 3D coin-op version, NBA Jam Extreme, which was not successful. Acclaim still uses the "Jam" name for its line of home console NBA games.

• MJT Mar 22 - Mark Turmell, lead designer (and the most powerful character in the game)
• SAL Feb 1 - Sal DiVita, artist
• SL_ Jun 24 - Shawn Liptak, programmer
• TWG Dec 7 - Tony Goskie, animator
• RJR Jan 17 - Jamie Rivett, programmer
• WIL Jan 1 - Willie "Air" Morris, player model
• HOW Jul 15 - Stpehen Howard, player model
• SNO Jan 3 - Sheridan Oursler, Midway staffer

  Since Mark Turmell is a Detroit Pistons fan, he sweetened the arcade code to give them a slight advantage over their regional rivals, the Chicago Bulls. Turmell said in an interview, "If it boiled down to a last-second shot, forget about it -- the Bulls would never score."