NBA Jam (Wii)

NBA Jam
Developer: EA Canada Publisher: EA Sports Platform: Wii Released in US: October 5, 2010 Released in EU: October 14, 2010 This game has unused playable characters. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused text.

NBA Jam is one of many titles by this name.

Character: Bryant Reeves

Bryant Reeves was meant to be unlockable (citation needed) in this game, and was unlockable in the 360/PS3 followup (citation needed). Due to a variety of bugs that also affect other unlockables (making them hard, but technically not impossible, to unlock), he is totally unavailable to unlock within the game. With hacks, he can be added to a save file and played normally. Simply edit Bounceproject.xml to make the trigger that was *supposed* to unlock him actually doable (like win a game vs. the CPU).

Bugged Unlocks

Although Bryant Reeves is the only fully impossible character to unlock, there are other unlocks that are far more difficult than intended. Some bugs seem to revolve around the triggers only running if certain tasks are completed in a single session (without turning off the console).

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/984942-nba-jam

Unused Xbox 360 / PS3 Content

There are references to online, but the Wii version can't go online. The follow-up on 360 & PS3 did have online, however.

For example, Bounceproject.xml has lines like this:

<Rule name="Online: Play a ranked game online" 
 category="164" id="3574746964" 
 description="Special Case Code Handles this - do not change data or event trigger" priority="low">

There are references to "Sprite" and "Adidas" in bounce.db, both of which are available costumes in the 360/PS3 version.

To do: Tons. Plenty of developer notes, potential for the Sprite & Adidas unlocks to have graphics and/or be fully working in the Wii version. There are existing hacked bounceproject.xml files that should unlock things like Bryant Reeves, but it is not clear what specific edit unlocks him and not other bugged unlocks. If someone could find an old archive of EA press releases or strategy guides, they should be able to find the codes / unlocks that were bugged, finding the original trigger for Reeves, and thus which trigger to patch functionality for. Link rot has not been kind to this game. I suspect a lot of this was documented on EA forums (now dead) and by EA community managers.