Double Dribble (NES)

Double Dribble
Also known as: Exciting Basket (JP) Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami Platforms: NES, Famicom Disk System Released in JP: July 24, 1987 (FDS) Released in US: September 1987 Released in EU: December 13, 1989 This game has unused sounds. This game has regional differences.

Double Dribble is an early basketball game for the NES, infamous for the bad quality of its voice sample at the title screen. Fans have interpreted the sound as "Bubble Bibble" or "Vubble Dwibble".

Voice Samples

32 years after the game's release, it was accidentally discovered that Double Dribble's voice samples were actually corrupted. More specifically, the DPCM samples are formatted correctly but the 2A07/2A03 (the sound chip in the NES/Family Computer) reads the bits in each of the sample's bytes backwards, causing the playback to sound very hissy or "crispy". Below are fixed versions of these samples, along with a unused sample thrown in the mix.

Description	In-Game version	Fixed version
"Double Dribble"
"Jump Ball"
"Free Throw"
"Dunk Shot" (Unused)

It's actually worth noting that this doesn't just affect Double Dribble: a wide variety of NES games suffer from this exact issue.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Japan	World

A different title screen. Yup.

Intro

Japan	World

The intro was given a bit of the US of A. Palm trees (that are apparently as tall as skyscrapers) were added to the background (which as a whole was redrawn), the stadium was redrawn, the generic balloons are now all the same color, and the Konami logo balloons and blimp now carry the American flag.

Music

While Konami had previously brought over their own Famicom Disk System games (such as Castlevania, Rush'n Attack and Stinger) to the NES for international audiences, Double Dribble (a.k.a. Exciting Basket) would mark the first time they would port a game that utilized the extra audio hardware in the FDS. Due to the NES lacking said hardware, for the NES port Konami would have to alter the music and sound effects that utilized the extra FDS audio (similar to what they would later do for Castlevania II and Gyruss).

Track names taken from the album KONAMI FAMICOM CHRONICLE Vol.1: Disk System Compilation (EMCA-0018) where available.

	Exciting Basket (FDS)	Double Dribble (NES)
Press Start BGM
Select Screen BGM
Half Time BGM
Game Set BGM

While most of the (admittedly-short) soundtrack was reworked to use the NES hardware, Konami for whatever reason chose to remove the main song that plays during gameplay in the FDS version.

Exciting Basket (FDS) - Main BGM

In place of that, Konami added a rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" to the intro of the NES version.

Double Dribble (NES) - Intro BGM