Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City (SNES)

Developer:

EA

|

Release Date:

1995 (EU)

|

Systems:

Super Nintendo

---

Today on Super Adventures, I've found you something from the first half of the 90s and I didn't even need to glance at the copyright year to know that.

Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City has been on my list forever and I've no idea why it's taken me this long to get around to it. I mean look at that title screen; even if the game's bad it'll be good. I'm not sure you're even technically allowed to bring two elementally charged balls onto the court, but I wouldn't want be the one to tell him that.

I haven't looked too deep into how the game was reviewed so for all I know this is actually a well regarded piece of quality entertainment. But I have discovered that it was the first game designed by artist Amy Hennig, who ended up in the role after the first designer quit. She then transformed into 'head writer and creative director Amy Hennig', and went on to develop the Soul Reaver and Uncharted games. Still no sign of Chaos in the Windy City 2 though.

---

Oh that's cool, the game starts with a comic book intro, scrolling down the page to show events transpiring.

It's a windy day in Chicago (the windy city) and basketball star Michael Jordan arrives for practice to find that everyone else has dumped their gear and gone down the pub instead. But before Jordan even has a chance to look for the light switch he receives a b-mail from through the skylight. It turns out that his team have actually been kidnapped, and only Dr. Max Cranium can help him find them! Or maybe he's the kidnapper I don't know, the note's vague.

That can't have been easy for the Doc to arc that ball right through a skylight from the ground. In fact I bet you if you could look on that roof you'd find two or three other balls with that same message on them that didn't quite hit the target, getting more scrawled and unreadable each time.

That night a guard lets Michael into the closed museum.

"Hey you're that famous basketball player! Of course I'll let you in to wander around the exhibits in the dark!"

He finds a secret door in the Egyptian room and enters warily... finding himself at the entrance to an underground prison. Michael calls in a S.W.A.T. team set out to find his friends! Alone!

Man, that is a surprisingly nice looking map screen. It's got colour-cycling on the water, blinky lights on the buildings, a shiny rotating anti-aliased question mark, and a great use of perspective.

Out of curiosity I opened up Google Maps to compare it to how Chicago actually looks, and they've put a lot of the right buildings in the right places, with the famous Sears Tower dominating the skyline on the left and the famous Navy Pier restaurants and theatres right next to the famous water filtration plant at the bottom. To be honest I'm not very familiar with Chicago, I'm just reading names off the internet here, so I was a bit surprised to learn that the Field Museum is a real building and it's right where this map says it is.

Also I like how Michael Jordan has patches of skin missing revealing his metal cyborg endoskeleton beneath.

Whoa, each area has its own map, and it's an actual map showing what the stages look like and how they connect. X marks the entrances, weirdly. I feel like I should be sketching this down for when I get lost later.

It seems that I'll be able to return to any stage I've beaten, but right now I've only got stage 1, the information page, and the exit to choose from.


CELLS: STAGE 1.

A basketball zombie that throws its own head at me? That's pretty cool I guess. I'm still going to kill them all though.

This is the first basketball platformer I've seen, but in a lot of the football platformers I've played like Soccer Kid and Marco's Magic Football, I had to teleport the ball back to me after kicking it off screen. Jordan doesn't have that problem though as he had the foresight to bring infinite balls with him. He loses one with every attack, but he's always got another in his hand ready to go.

Great, now I have Soccer Kid music in my head.

Seems Michael's face at the top left of the screen might not disintegrate into a metal skull as he takes damage, but it's certainly not helping his mood. I'm pretty happy though now I've learned that he's got hitpoints and I won't get him killed in a single b-ball impact.

Huh, someone's left a keyring floating right near the start of the level. These grey keys presumably open up the grey locks in the background, so I should probably climb down and check out the wonky looking doors I've just walked past.

First though I need to shoot some hoops.

Aww I broke it with my first shot.

I've only got the one button to throw a ball, but I've got two jump buttons and if I take a shot during a 'slam jump' he'll slam the ball straight down instead. Handy for wrecking nets.

By the way, I should point out that this is a Super Nintendo game, and the console's designed so that the graphics it puts out are stretched about 17% wider when they're displayed on a television. I haven't compensated for that here, so all these screenshots are the wrong aspect ratio... but they don't really look it do they? I mean check out those perfectly round circles on the HUD at the top.

On a television screen they'd come out looking more like this. It's not really a big deal and I normally wouldn't bother bringing it up, except this is a basketball game. It's all about the circles.

And inside door #1 is... breakfast cereal? Finish the entire box off dry in one go and it gives you health! Or maybe just knowing that he has it in his pocket for later is improving his morale, I don't know.

By the way check out this giant sparkly baseball I've collected. This is a special kind of ammo that does special things and... I've just realised that I wasted one on that hoop earlier. I need to cycle back to my regular infinite basketballs and save the sparkly ones until I need them.

Right, so I need to find green key to get the lift working, and a set of gold keys to finish off opening up the doors. I thought I'd searched this whole area down here, but I guess I missed something.

Even better than a key, this grey key door contained one of Michael's kidnapped pals! Man I can't believe that Chaos in the Windy City has dialogue choices. Seriously I'm playing a basketball platformer with more conversation options than some RPGs.

Turns out that a little dude with a big head locked up the other players all over the city. He's holding them for his dastardly experiments, so I really need to get to them fast before he decides he needs more basketball cyborgs.

And then the guy magically disappeared into a cloud of smoke. Basketball is weird.

Anyway, it turns out that he had the green lift key on him, which makes absolutely no sense but I'm not complaining. It's my key now.

Oh damn, I can see this becoming a problem. Jordan's actually very good at jumping, but getting him to hit a target and stay on it could be tricky, and this is going to become something to worry about when there's a bottomless chasm or spikes down underneath.

Golden homing basketballs beat silver pinball spider. Which is good, because I don't need giant robot spiders in my world, especially when they crawl around on ceilings waiting to pounce on me with their razor-sharp blade legs.

I should mention that the ball makes a convincing thud when he dribbles with it, which is good because he never ever stops. Well except for when he's throwing it, or jumping, or climbing a ladder, or having a chat.

I'm pretty pleased with myself for figuring this out immediately. That's a little trick I learned while playing Gargoyles a couple of months ago... though back then I dropped a gargoyle through it instead of a basketball.

They could've added a few clues though, for players who haven't been smashing through floors in other games recently. That one tiny crack doesn't really give it away, and this isn't a secret area I'm breaking into here, this is the next area of the level.

This on the other hand is definitely a secret area. Dare I step into the mystery zone? Oh too late I just did.

In retrospect I really should've expected the mystery zone to involve a bit of basketball. I've got to smash as many hoops as possible within the time limit to get fabulous prizes, like this silver basketball token for instance! I guess if I find 100 I can get an extra life, but who knows?

Six seconds later I was kicked right back out into the regular level again. So I'd better get back to finishing level one then.

DENIED!

Damn man, this happens at the exit ladder? That's the end of the level right there! It's my own fault for being impatient though really, seeing as I should've known the eye was going to do something. I suppose that now I have to start the level from the beginning again.

Nope, I got put back halfway through instead! I guess one of the hoops acts as a checkpoint when I slamdunk it. They've got different effects depending on their backboard, but I've no idea what does what.


HALF A LEVEL LATER.

MJ... Michael Jackson? Oh Jordan, duh.

Seems that all those drink bottles and cereal boxes I've been collecting were actually Gatorade and Wheaties all along; the Doritos and Mountain Dew of the 90s. Max Cranium keeps his dungeon well stocked.

So, uh, where's the password then?


8 MINUTES INTO CELLS: STAGE 2.

Crap, I *knew* this was going to happen. I must be pretty far though stage 2 here, but I've ran into a dead end and a yellow lock, and I don't remember seeing any yellow keys around. Now I've got to go backtracking, looking for any doors or hoops I've missed along the way.

I really hate looking for things in these levels.


1 MINUTE LATER.

AHA! I broke through a weak wall and reached a pair of doors I haven't opened yet. And inside them I found a... secret bonus stage. Shit.

Really wish I could bring up a map showing me where this key is right now. Or even get an arrow up on screen pointing me in the right direction. Maybe even a loud constant beeping sound that speeds up when I get closer... actually no, scrap that idea, that idea sucks.


2 MORE MINUTES OF SEARCHING LATER.

Damn! One missed jump and it's all over. Now I have to replay half the level and I still don't know where this bloody yellow key is. I just hope I can remember where I found the red one or I won't even make it that far.

I'm starting to think that maybe I would be okay with loud irritating proximity beeps after all.


2 MINUTES, 20 SECONDS LATER.

The yellow key was right next to the keyhole behind an unmarked breakable wall! I'm a total idiot.

Plus it turns out that this is basically the final obstacle before the level exit, so that's twice now I've fallen at the last hurdle.


CELLS: STAGE 3.

Seems that there's more than one kind of b-ball spider robots roaming these catacombs. The gold ones are a lot like the silver one I showed earlier, except that they spit acid and explode into these smaller spider robots when they die. These things are a pain in my ass; fortunately I've got the magic balls to deal with them this time, but it sure takes a while sometimes.

My special balls can have a different special effect if I slam them into the ground, as demonstrated above, but most of the time the main effect they have on gameplay is making me cycle through all my ammo back to my basic b-balls every single bloody time I collect one. Until I get sick of it and just fire them all off that is.

I guess no one ever said that being a b-ball wizard would be easy.

Barbarian II (Amiga)

Unless you're this guy from Barbarian II, obviously.

Taste the rebound, regular zombie enemy! You may be trivial to kill with regular ammo, but I'm wasting all my special shots on you anyway.

One thing I appreciate in this, is how attacking enemies stuns them so they can't fight back. In fact I can even shoot their own basketballs out of the sky before they hit me.

The secret origin of the basketball-head zombies is revealed! Turns out it was all just a hilarious accident that accidentally kept happening enough times for Doc Cranium to fill an underground prison with the things. It's basically a sneaky 'In Soviet Russia' joke: to kill a zombie you shoot them in the head, but in Dr Cranium's Dungeon zombies shoot their heads at you.


CELLS: STAGE 4.

Stage 4's looking much the same as stages 1 through 3, except with more robot apes. Not many more mind you, only these two really and I've frozen one of them with my ice balls. My theory is that these are supposed to be a mid-boss, but I can just walk to the left a bit and kill them both from off screen so I'm not feeling overly threatened here.


CELLS: STAGE 5.

Okay, I'm at the final stretch now. I just need to make it through stage 5 without throwing my last handful of lives away and I'll get a boss fight or a change of scenery for my trouble. Either way I should get my bloody password at last.

There's a lot to praise about the controls in this game, but grabbing hold of these handles is a pain in the ass, especially when the current's pulling me along. Getting swept off this platform is instant death by the way.

It was even worse earlier, as there was an robot eel in the water that occasionally electrified the entire underground... river... this is basically a sewer level isn't it? I've just realised that now.

Shit, I told you man! I knew those tiny lifts were going to cause me problem later on. One slip up and I'm back at the start of the level. Well at least I got the green key on the way down! Not that it's going to let me keep it.

Oh crap I just realised... that was my final life. I thought I might have grabbed a 1up in the last bonus room, but it must have actually been a fourth hitpoint orb.

Well... fuck.

There's no continues and the game hasn't given me a password yet, so if I want to keep playing I have to start again from the very beginning and honestly I feel disinclined to do so. In fact I'm feeling pretty grateful for the opportunity to turn it off and do something else.


CONCLUSION

---

Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City is almost certainly the best of the Michael Jordan series and... oh hang on I just checked MobyGames and it turns out there's actually two other Michael Jordan games that I haven't played yet. Well at least I can say that it's perhaps the greatest and only basketball platformer ever made for the Super Nintendo.

The sound and visuals are pretty great for a SNES game I reckon and even the gameplay isn't technically all that bad, but man it got old after a few levels. It doesn't help that five straight stages set in the same semi-submerged mines got a bit repetitive, but hunting for keys and going back to get all the doors open really slowed things down. Plus the enemies all take multiple hits and that doesn't help the pace much either.

Basically the good bit was when I realised I could do well animated slam dunk attacks at the start and it's all been downhill from there. 

---

Sorry that I got lazy with the next game clue this time, I haven't made it all that hard to guess this one. But you can still leave game/website related opinions in that box below if you feel like it. AND YOU SHOULD.