When NBA Jam creator Mark Turmell first began working on the legendary video game in 1993, there was one major challenge: He wasn't a big NBA fan at the time. So Turmell sat down with sound designer Jon Hey in January 1993 and pored through the rosters they received from the NBA. The two would peruse newspaper boxscores for days, looking for players that would pop so Turmell could make final decisions on who to include in the first edition of the game.
"Remember, this was pre-Internet," Turmell said. "(If) there was somebody that was excelling at that time, that caused me to put them into the game.