Raw Thrills’ NBA Superstars is one of the highest profile arcade releases of 2024. Already having been given a limited release to Dave & Busters, I can confirm today that the game is now available in North America. Read on for more.
What Is NBA Superstars?
As a quick primer in case you missed the news about this game back in the Spring, NBA Superstars is a spiritual successor to Midway’s smash 1993 hit, NBA Jam. Not only do many members at Raw Thrills (and Play Mechanix, who developed Superstars) hail from Midway, they also got the voice of NBA Jam, Tim Kitzrow, on-board to do voice overs.
As we had reported and many of you have seen with your own eyes, the game has been at Dave & Busters locations since June. They had the game first as a kind of timed exclusive, but that exclusivity has ended and now the rest of the market can get their hands on it.
NBA Superstars Shipping
I have confirmed with Raw Thrills that the game is actively being produced at the factory and being shipped out as of right now. From a few social media posts that have been shared with us, a couple of locations out there (including one in Canada) have already received their units. If you are interested in this one, then I imagine you might have already placed an order; it may take some time for them to get through all of the orders on the production run though.
One thing that has been asked on the Arcade Heroes Discord is: What about the connected Superstars website & player accounts? I checked and that will be launching “later this year,” although no date was provided. But it is in development, so when that rolls out, we’ll be sure to discuss it here.
And what about Europe? We have many European readers, and this is always a tougher question to answer. We have not heard of NBA at any location there as of yet, however, the game is listed on Bandai Namco Amusement Europe’s website (they are the official distributor for Raw Thrills in Europe, among other US companies like Adrenaline and JET Games). It should be available to order now, but may still be a wait for the units to ship to them and to buyers. Godzilla Kaiju Wars seems to have been that way; the first known cabinet of it on location in Europe came just recently, and even then only at a Namco Funscape.
There is also the factor that it’s ultimately up to locations themselves to make the investment – I’ve seen people complain about one certain game that they want to see in their area there, but if they don’t, distributors can’t force operators to buy anything. NBA is similar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in that it is a revival of a big name 90s success, and though older operators will have fond memories of that, TMNT still wasn’t quite as widespread across the world as RT’s other games. Part of this is of course down to the reality of drivers and shooters performing better than most traditional stick and button affairs now, but still…
If you have had a chance to play the game, what are your thoughts on it? Do you think that NBA Superstars is a worthy successor to NBA Jam?
I played NBA Superstars and found it to be a little slow compared to Jam. The controls were also a little more complex and the addition of a third player as a required drone changes things considerably from the Jam games. I strikes me as a mix between Acclaim’s NBA Jam Extreme and Midway’s console exclusive NBA Hoopz.