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NBA Jam voice Tim Kitzrow talks 25th anniversary of the iconic game

By Ed Easton Jr.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT - OCTOBER 05: Rudy Gobert #27 of the Utah Jazz plays video games with young fans during Game Night with the Jazz at vivint.SmartHome Arena on October 05, 2017 in Salt Lake City, Utah. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2017 NBAE (Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images) Rudy Gobert
SALT LAKE CITY, UT - OCTOBER 05: Rudy Gobert #27 of the Utah Jazz plays video games with young fans during Game Night with the Jazz at vivint.SmartHome Arena on October 05, 2017 in Salt Lake City, Utah. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2017 NBAE (Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images) Rudy Gobert /
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The iconic franchise NBA Jam turns 25 this year. Tim Kitzrow, the voice of the video game, shares memories of the past and possible future of the series.

It’s tough to find someone who hasn’t heard the phrases “He’s on fire!” or “Boomshakalaka!” growing up in the 1990s. Each saying echoed out of hundreds of arcades and eventually home consoles such as Nintendo and Sega, giving thousands the chance to hear the talented voice of Tim Kitzrow.

Kitzrow shared with Hoops Habit the unique origin of his famous lines, NBA Jam‘s future and his latest project Mutant Football League.

What year did you get started with NBA Jam?

"Just prior to ’93. Jon Hey who wrote the music and did the script and was the producer for NBA Jam, said I was talking with Mark Turmell, and they’re across the street in the Midway Games building. He said, they’re working on new NBA basketball game and want to know if you want to be part of that. Santa Claus coming to you, you want to a new Corvette?  Yes, I think do want to be a part of the NBA Jam thing, whatever that is."

How was the immediate reaction?  Was it automatically a popular game when it was released back in 1993?  

"Oh, yes. Right from the get-go, all the arcades, it was jammed — NBA Jam perfect — jammed with people. And often, like literally five, 10, beep recorders on the machine, like a pool, kind of thing of everybody, like, I got next, I got next.  People yell, and hooping, and hollering, that was the real fun, is that I could go out and see my pinball games, and check out my voice in all these really cool pinball games. But you’d never have a crowd around a pinball game.But this, you had people really, like, high-fiving each other, taunt each other, trash talking each other.  And when guys would take off for the crazy summer, it’s all dunks. You just heard people going crazy and it drew a crowd. The crowd around the cabinet drew crowds. So, I knew it was something special right away."

Now, there’s a bunch of sayings on it that you say during the game, Boomshakalaka.  That’s the one everyone associates automatically with NBA Jam.  Where did that come from?  Was that all you or did it come from something else?  

"Well, the cool thing was that the script, Jon Hey wrote the script, but we would often just come up with some of our minds, and we were there, and improvise. And the office was very close where the sound booth was. And guys have these little offices, and one guy, John Carlton, sticks his head out the door, and he was listening to Sly & the Family Stone. That song, I Want to Take You Higher, in which Sly, in the chorus goes—he doesn’t say, Boomshakalaka. He goes, Booshakalaka, booshakalaka. And he thought that was, kind of, a cool phrase. He goes, tell him to say, Boomshakalaka. He mistook it. He thought that he was saying Boomshakalaka.  So, think of that, it was just a complete accident and kind of a coincidence.He’s listening to Sly, he mishears the lyric, and John says, say Boomshakalaka.  And I remember saying to John like, Boomshakalaka, what’s that? He’s, ‘just say it.’ So, Boomshakalaka. And he goes, ‘Yup, that’s it.’ I just stumbled onto it. It’s like a finding a diamond in the bottom of a garbage heap. You don’t know what it is and you can’t believe that it’s going to be that valuable.  And then you realize it’s a diamond and we got the diamond.And since that moment, you can look Wikipedia and other stuff, and Boomshakalaka might have a been a phrase in, I think, a Caribbean song way back in the ’50s or something. So, the word, I think, actually had been out there and maybe that’s where Sly heard, Boomshakalaka, and he turned it to Booshakalaka. But anyway, it wasn’t known certainly in the sports culture, the American vernacular until it was in NBA Jam.  So, it’s pretty cool to, kind of, be responsible for a phrase that been around for a full generation now."

How did celebrating the 25th Anniversary of NBA Jam during a Los Angeles Clippers game come to fruition? 

"Well, I’ve been busy the last few years realizing that–EA Sports holds the title right now for NBA Jam, but they have been very lackadaisical about doing updates and doing a full-on reboot.  The last one we did was 2011, the On Fire edition. Which by the way, 2010, 2011, if anyone hasn’t played those versions, they’re awesome.  If you like the stuff that I do, I have probably 500 lines in it as opposed to maybe 30 lines in the original.  So, I’ve been calling NBA teams the last few years thinking, ‘Hey, this is a chance for me to go beyond the video games and start to do highlights for NBA teams doing my NBA Jam style announcing.’  So, the first guys that got in touch with me were the Houston Rockets, Jim Adessa. And I went down there and did a highlight video for them.They sent me highlights, I record them, and then they do the graphics. And that particular video won the best in-sports game presentation video for all four major league sports. So, everything you’ve ever seen on a Jumbotron for the year, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, it was voted the best video. And then, Joe Legaz, from the Clippers, the head of marketing was there, and I had put a call in to his office at one point. So, he said, ‘Yes, I saw that video. It’s great.’ He goes, ‘Let’s do something.’ That was last year. And I said, ‘Joe, it’s the 25th anniversary.’ He was like, ‘Oh, that’s even better.  We could do something really special.’ So, we kind of got on the phone half a dozen times during the year. He came up with some ideas. I did a highlight video for them, and then came out. I introduced the game with Mark Turmell, the creator, who now lives in San Diego.So, it was just great to be recognized and to see how many fans are still so excited about the game. The players were put up on the Jumbotron to tell their favorite duos, NBA Jam duos when they were kids playing NBA Jam, which was a lot of fun. Kids being 12, 13 years old, were like, ‘Hey, can you say Boomshakalaka, sign this, sign that?’  It’s like there’s a whole new younger generation that actually just learned it from either their dad’s games, the old school stuff, or they have the downloadable, on the phone, and EA version which was Wii, XBOX and PS4.  So, there’s a new fanbase and it was great fun being out there."

https://twitter.com/LAClippers/status/952286545708335104

How did players react to meeting you and actually hear your voice, relating it to the game?  Are there any interesting stories behind that?  

"Well, the new generation, like with Steph Curry, there was a promo video for EA sports On Fire edition which had him, or the 2010 edition, just when he came in the league with Kevin Durant and some other players out at EA sports playing the game, they were just having a blast. Just loving it, laughing, cracking up. There’s a YouTube video where he is asked to do the NBA Jam brackets of current players. They picked current duos that they thought would be in NBA Jam. And he had to explain why he and Klay would be the best duo. So, it’s fun to see the new generation is really into it.Some of the old schoolers, like I was on FOX pregame interview on court, and Corey Maggette was next to me. He goes, ‘You know, when I was younger, I was 15, I loved the game so much.’ He goes, ‘My parents actually bought me an entire NBA Jam arcade. I have it at my house. He was just a big, huge fan. And my biggest story about just the irony me being basically a nobody, you wouldn’t know because it’s my voice. People don’t recognize me for my face but Steve Smith, met him at a restaurant, and someone told him I was the NBA Jam guy and I’m going over to just see him, and go, ‘Wow, I’m so happy to meet you. I was a big fan of yours. Love to watch you play Michael Jordan.’ And he comes to me and he says, ‘Hey, man, you’re the NBA Jam guy. I can’t believe I’m meeting you. I can’t wait to tell my kids that I met you.’  He goes, ‘We were just playing it yesterday at the house.’  I said, ‘You were?’ He goes, ‘Yes, on the arcade.’  I go, ‘Like the Super Nintendo?’ He goes, ‘No, the full-on arcade. I have one at my house.’ I said, ‘How did you get one of those?’ He said, ‘Well, they gave an arcade to everyone who was in NBA Jam. That was our payment.’ And he goes, ‘I love the game. My kids love it.’Gary Payton, I met him this last summer and he was the guy who was not in the original game but he and Michael Jordan wanted to be in the game. So, they called Midway and I had to come back in and record their names. And we did a special one-off NBA Jam for Michael Jordan, and Gary Payton and Ken Griffey, because Ken Griffey and Payton were friends. So, he was telling me just how much fun it is to be in that game. And he goes, ‘I’ve got all three arcade cabinets in my house in Seattle right now if you ever want to come out and play.’ He goes, ‘My kids love it.’  He goes, ‘We keep it in great shape because they’re going to be worth some serious money.  They’re the only ones that exist in the world with those guys in it.’"

What do you expect from your latest game, Mutant Football League? 

"Mutant Football League is a dream come true because — NFL Blitz, of course was one of my favorite titles, but a few years ago when we did it, we did it with EA sports, NFL had watered things down. They were very much involved in the process. Didn’t want any of those crazy late hitch, the more violent stuff that NFL Blitz was known for.  So, the game, I think, was really good, the one we did for EA sports, and looked for that one out at the used game store.  But this one allows us to go crazy because there’s no NFL license.It’s the MFL, it’s mutant, it’s orcs, it’s skeletons, it’s robots. And it’s just a ton of fun based on that really fast crazy, arcade style, over the top. We’ve got artists from Marvel comics creating some of the most beautiful, stunning visuals you’ll ever. We’ve got buzzsaws, they crisscross the field. There’s lava flows, mine hazards, all these things you have to negotiate while you’re on the field. You can catch a pass and then run through a buzzsaw, like a Looney Tunes cartoon. Get cut in half while you’re on your way to getting a touchdown. You got dirty tricks where you can use a bomb to kill your opponents. You have a shotgun that you can pull out. So, when the quarterback is in the shotgun formation, it takes on a whole new meaning, he can actually pull out a shotgun and shoot the guy coming at him so he doesn’t sacked. It plays great.So, this is, kind of, an homage to the Mutant Football League—no, Mutant League Football which came out in ’93, which EA Sports had.  Back at that time, there was also Saturday morning cartoon shows. So, if you look at Mutant League Football on YouTube, you can see that they had collectibles, they were trading cards. So, it really has a powerful fanbase of hard core mutant lovers. So, yes, real excited about that and once again, in this day and age, we do an arcade style stuff which is my forte, I’m not a sim guy.  It’s really exciting."

Is there a new edition of NBA Jam expected in the near future because of the 25th anniversary?  

"Well, what I can say is that, I’ve had conversations with several different parties that want to resurrect it in one form or another.  It’s tricky because there were some rumors already came out that weren’t true about who was going to do it, etc., etc. But, I can tell you that there’s a lot of stuff being done behind the scenes and we hope to be able to announce something positively, and very shortly, and it’s all key, because we think it’s really important to get it done for the 25th anniversary. If not, it’s still fine.There’s always plenty of room for Jam. It just makes a little extra special like having the Star Wars anniversary. When you’re a franchise and you hit 25, there’s that extra charge, and people on collectibles, they want part of that nostalgia to hold on to and certainly would drive sales to be, during this year. But there’s also a major arcade machine maker that has spoken to me and they want to bring back the retro arcade cabinet with the actual original retro game.Because arcades have come back in a big way as I’m sure you know all around the country. Arcades are popping up everywhere. Some of them you play for free. Some you pay for a day.  There’s a place, a Ghost Arcade here in Chicago, the largest, I think in the country. I think it’s $10 or $15 you can play for as long as you like. The resurgence and popularity of arcades with classic video games and pinball games is really popping up. So, this would be a great move to bring back the cabinet because I think, NBA Jam, as I said, in the beginning about all the people gathering around it, and you mentioning how people are doing, tournament, it’s really that kind of game that you can’t get that experience anymore sitting on your couch with the headset on.  It’s to be played with friends, with people watching, and having high fives, and going crazy.  So, I’m really hoping that that works out.  That would be great to see."

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For more on Tim Kitzrow follow him on Twitter at @Tim_Kitzrow and check out his new game, Mutant Football League wherever video games are sold.