Street Slam (Neo Geo AES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
204A playthrough of Data East's 1994 basketball game for the Neo Geo AES, Street Slam.
Played through as Miami on the normal difficulty level.
Street Slam (or Street Hoop, or Dunk Dreams, depending on your region) has the distinction of being the only basketball game ever officially produced for the Neo Geo, and thankfully, it's quite a good one. It was one of the few games that Data East produced for the hardware, but it upholds the level of quality that we saw from them in titles like Karnov's Revenge, Magical Drop, and Windjammers.
Instead of being of the EA-style "simulation" variety of sports games, it's crystal clear that it was always intended to be a fast-paced coin-op title first and foremost (though it was just as excellent on the AES at home!). The gameplay consists of 3-on-3 "street" games - goal tending is completely allowed here. There are ten available teams that you play through, all representing major American cities in the US release. The Euro/Asia and Japanese version use countries instead to represent the teams, though they're functionally identical across all versions. Regardless of which you're playing, team choice is quite important as each team has some pretty significant differences, indicated by the ratings at the bottom of the selection screen.
The gameplay is fairly simple, as evidenced by the game's use of just two buttons - one is for defensive moves, and the other is for offense. The functions change based on context, though, and the actions are largely based on the timing of button presses and the direction the stick is being held in. It's pretty intuitive and allows for a surprising number of moves and combinations, and it will feel familiar to anyone that played NBA Jam. There is also a "super shot" meter (resembling super meters from fighting games) at the bottom of the screen that fills with each successful shot, and when this meter is filled, you can launch into an unblockable showboat move that will never miss. These are pretty nice in how they allow you to control the pace of the game, and the explosions/flames that result are pretty fun to watch as the shockwave knocks everyone to the ground.
The action is solid and fun - like I said, it's quite similar to NBA Jam - but the real selling point here is the thoroughly over-the-top presentation. The level of bombast has been set to 11, and it's awesome. Everything is over-exaggerated and highly stylized in a way that would only ever be seen in the 1990s. The characters are all huge and really well drawn, the animations are all fluid and link together convincingly, the backgrounds sport a heavy amount of attention paid to detail, and those super shots are quite funny in how overly dramatic they are. This was an extremely nice looking game in 1994, and its charm still holds up well. It's dated, but it's still just so fun to watch.
The sound fares even better than the graphics. The music is incredibly loud, loaded with synths and samples that would sound right at home in pop music from the early 90s, and the voices! Oh man. All of the songs feature vocals, which was quite a rarity at the time - many games had done this before with one song, but *every* track in Street Slam has a full complement of vocals, and at some surprisingly high quality for a non-CD title. They're all ultra-corny (much of it is rap that approaches Engrish at some moments, and the muddled pronunciation in some of them lead to some pretty hilarious moments of misunderstood lyrics), but they're all quite memorable and frame the action surprisingly well. Outside of the music, the announcer enthusiastically announces everything happening on the court, and the players often grunt, yell, and taunt as they brutalize each other for the win.
Like Burning Fight, my first exposure to this one was when I got it cheap for the Neo Geo CD. It went into the machine every time someone came over for quite a long time - I really got into it. Years later, I still have the game in my MVS cab! For those without the hardware, though, it can easily be played via the Wii's Virtual Console or the Data East Arcade Classics compilation (also on Wii). It's unfortunate that the sequel never received any console ports, but hey, at least we have this one. It's fun, it's quick, and it's loud - it's everything you'd expect out of a game that could be played on the iconic candy-red cabinet that you'd find tucked away in the corner of a bowling alley, news agent, or diner.
Oh, and remember Lucky Glauber, the basketball/karate guy from the King of Fighters '94 USA team? Though he was an original character for KOF, it seems as if someone at SNK might have been inspired by another Neo Geo title while creating his character... :)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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