Bugs:NBA Jam Tournament Edition (Genesis)

This page details bugs of NBA Jam Tournament Edition (Genesis).

Save Bug

I was working on NBA JAM TE for the Genesis, which used a flash chip to store game data. The game had been tested for months, and everything was ready to go, so the publisher ordered 250,000 copies of the cart. But it soon became apparent that no one, for months, had reset the flash chips on the test carts to make sure the flash init routines worked correctly. Nor did anyone order any carts for testing.

It was only after all the carts had been ordered that we discovered the flash init code was dead, and that the carts could not save games properly! The studio went into meltdown trying to figure out how to ship 250,000 broken carts. Suggestions of production lines adding extra resistors and other hacks to every cart were tried and failed.

When all seemed lost, someone figured out if you played the games in an odd, and very specific order, the flash memory would sort of work. So an extra leaflet was added to every box explaining how to use this "feature."

- Chris Kirby

(Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/249475/More_dirty_coding_tricks_from_game_developers.php)

The leaflet mentioned basically tells you to play two warm-up games with the initials XXX and NBA to "initialize the AutoStat feature".