8 /10 1 Votes
Initial release date 1996 Genre Sports game | 4/5 Emuparadise Publisher Acclaim Entertainment | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date(s) Super NES
NA: February 1996
Genesis
NA: 1996
Game Boy
NA: March 1996
Saturn
NA: 1996
PlayStation
NA: 1996
DOS
NA: January 31, 1996 Platforms Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, PlayStation, Game Boy, Sega Saturn, Microsoft Windows, DOS Developers Acclaim Entertainment, Acclaim Studios Austin, Torus Games, Acclaim Studios Teesside Modes Single-player video game, Multiplayer video game Similar Acclaim Entertainment games, Sports games | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
College Slam is a college basketball video game published by Acclaim. Many gaming critics accused it of being a thinly veiled repackaging of NBA Jam. It includes most major Division I colleges, but there are many, such as the University of Tennessee, the University of Notre Dame, and Mississippi State University (who had just made a run to the Final Four that year), that are not included. The player can play tournaments, a season, or a single game.
Contents
It was released for the Super NES, Genesis, Game Boy, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, and PC.
Gameplay
Each team starts out by picking any two out of five players to play with during the game. During timeouts, and at half-time, the player has a choice to make substitutions. When a player makes two baskets in a row, the announcer says "He's heating up", and if he makes three baskets in a row without the other team scoring, he says "He's on fire!", which makes it easier to score.
In the season mode, the player can pick from 44 teams, and then play a 20-game season against quality competition. In the tournament mode, 16 teams compete for a chance to win the national championship. The player also has the ability to edit teams and players. Like NBA Jam before it, the gameplay is goofy, but yet competitive as players can easily make full-courts shots off and on (but usually often) and can score 3 in a row to get a flaming ball (to have a chance to label yourself player of the game). Occasionally the college ball players can get struck by lightning as they dunk.
Reception
The two sports reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the PlayStation version scores of 6.0 and 5.5 out of 10. Though they acknowledged that some players would find the college license appealing, they remarked that the game differs too little from NBA Jam to stir real interest, with one of them noting that "Some of the players look exactly the same as they did in Jam except for a color palette change." Tommy Glide and Greasy Gus of GamePro concurred that the game retains the fun of NBA Jam, but that the new alley-oops and player substitutions don't significantly enhance the game, leaving College Slam a pointless clone.
