Slam City with Scottie Pippen (Sega CD) Playthrough
251A playthrough of Digital Pictures' 1994 license-based FMV basketball game for the Sega CD, Slam City with Scottie Pippen.
This video shows the entire game. I start out by taking on each of the main four opponents with the default settings:
Vs. Fingers 2:09
Vs. Maddog 9:12
Vs. Juice 12:19
Vs. Smash 15:53
Then I switch to 21 point buckets mode games and play a few more times against the four to accrue enough respect to take on Pippen.
Vs. Scottie Pippen 1:32:50
Secret bonus video clips 1:40:24
Slam City with Scottie Pippen was one of the many FMV-based games produced in the early nineties by Digital Pictures, a company probably best known for creating Night Trap and Sewer Shark.
It was also one of the many games of its day to feature an NBA star, and somehow, sitting alongside the likes of Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City and Shaq Fu (https://youtu.be/yGWEcTCBOcE ), Slam City's take on basketball didn't seem completely absurd.
The four chumps on the wall are acting ill because they're so full of ball, and it's your job to take them on, one-on-one. You play as Ace, an ambitious street baller who plans to challenge local scene kings to become recognized as the best in the city. Once you've gained enough respect - one billion "respect points" worth, to be exact - you might just find that Mr. Pippen is on standby, waving just to say, "Hi." And to firmly put you in your place.
(No more Vanilla Ice lyrics from this point forward. I promise.)
Slam City with Scottie Pippen is a unique game, to say the least. It's not a basketball game so much as it is an interactive movie about basketball, and it's not nearly as terrible as that description probably makes it sound.
Each of your opponents has a set of "tells" that you have to learn to read and quickly react to, not entirely unlike what you see in the Punch-Out!! games. The easier guys can be beaten by merely going with the flow, but some of these match-ups require you to pay close attention to body language and what's said.
For example, if you're on offense and Scottie taunts you with, "Bring it on," he's going to lunge to your left for a steal the instant he passes you the ball, so you'll want to immediately break right in order to make the dunk for big points. You can still shoot if you miss the openings, but that should be your last resort since regular shots earn fewer points than dunks and can be blocked.
The same goes for defense. If Juice impatiently yells, "Ball! Ball!" at you, you'll be able to steal the ball right about the time the shot clock flips to seven seconds. Failing that, you can throw your arms up to "reject" her shot, or you can settle for crowding her until the clock runs out.
Like Punch-Out!!, Slam City is an easy game to grasp, but it requires you to pay close attention to the little details and to learn your opponents' behaviors. It's quite difficult at first, but once you've acclimated yourself to the control scheme and the game's sense of timing, things smooth out and the game becomes much more fun.
There is an impressive amount of "real game" here for an FMV title, and the video footage pulls its weight. Between the colorful cast of trash-talking stereotypes, the grungy (yet spotlessly clean) courts, and the solid production values, it nails the 90s "corporate ghetto" schtick perfectly. It even features a theme song performed by No Tippin' Pippen himself, and it's every bit as cringe-inducing as you could hope it to be.
The video quality is nothing to sneeze at, either. The Sega CD version can't compete with upgraded 32X version or the fantastic looking Dos port, but by Sega CD standards, this looks great. The playback is smooth, the characters are well defined, and important details don't randomly dissolve into indecipherable pixel mush. (Yes, American Laser Games. I'm looking at you!)
Even if you aren't a fan of interactive movies, Slam City with Scottie Pippen offers enough creativity and substance to make it worth checking out. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you can approach it with an open mind, there's a lot to like here.
And if you like this one, you might also be interested in Digital Pictures' Quarterback Attack with Mike Ditka (https://youtu.be/h4QEEA1hBS8 ). It builds off of what was done here, and it too was pretty good.
If you're into FMV games as much as I am, you might like to check out my playlist dedicated to them: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gSj_kh1fHuDb4EJqsboXru02vyjoV_Y
And for more Sega CD games, look here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gSj_kh1fHvpLAN14Y5BeKrlyJdw8Gmd
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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