Double Dribble (NES, Famicom Disk System)

Double Dribble
Also known as: Exciting Basket (JP) Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami Platforms: NES, Famicom Disk System, Arcade (PlayChoice-10) 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 "Dubble Dibble", "Bubble Bibble", or "Vubble Dwibble".

Voice Samples

For some bizarre reason, the game's voice samples are actually corrupted. Much of the announcer's speech becomes unclear, and the "Free Throw" sample becomes "Too Slow".

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

The reason for this corruption actually isn't on the software end, but the hardware one: the 2A03 outputs DPCM samples by reading the bits in each byte from right to left, effectively reversing the bit order. For example, 00111111 (3F) is read as 11111100 (FC). This causes properly formatted samples to be output incorrectly, since most developers assumed each byte would be read from left to right. This would not be discovered for 32 years, and only by sheer accident. Several pieces of current NES software (music makers/players, emulators, etc.) have since implemented a "Bit-Reversal" function in one way or another.

It's worth noting that this doesn't just affect Double Dribble: a surprisingly wide variety of NES games suffer from this exact issue. Nintendo's own games like Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, and The Legend of Zelda have samples specifically formatted for the console, suggesting that knowledge regarding the hardware bug was widespread among first-party developers.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

In the European version, the copyright info is slightly different and the Konami logo is yellow and red instead of orange and red.

Japan	US	Europe

Intro

The intro was given changes for the NES versions: 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.

FDS	NES

Music

While Konami had previously brought over their own FDS games (such as Castlevania, Rush'n Attack, and Stinger) to the NES for international audiences, Exciting Basket/Double Dribble would mark the first time they ported a game that utilized the extra audio hardware in the FDS. Due to the NES lacking said hardware, Konami had 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 are taken from the album KONAMI FAMICOM CHRONICLE Vol.1: Disk System Compilation (EMCA-0018) where available.

	FDS	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:

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