What's "Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden"?

Everybody get up, it's time to slam now! We got a real jam going down, welcome to the Space Jam! It's your chance, do your dance, at the Space Jam! Alright! Come on and Slam! And welcome to the Jam! Come on and Slam! If you wanna Jam!

Sorry, I had to do that. Anyway, "Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden" is a Freeware RPG, released back in the year 2008. The game is a loving homage to the decade of the 1990's. Practically everything in the game screams 90's: Several products such as Duncaroos are mentioned, while others such as Ecto Cooler are integrated into the game play. The game stars Charles Barkley, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, as he fights his way through the forces of the future, led by the legendary Michael Jordan, as he attempts to save his son as well as prove his innocence from a crime he did not commit. In his journey, he will be joined by a ragtag group of heroes, including the great grandson of LeBron James, as well as an extraterrestrial who came beyond the stars to help save our world from an evil organization hell bent on bringing chaos and destruction to the world via acquiring an ancient, powerful artifact from the past...

I want candy! Bubblegum and taffy! Skip to the sweet shop with my sweetheart Sandy!

...I just made the game sound more epic than it really is. Now, make no mistake, the story is great, but it's not an action epic. It's a comedy, through and through. It's an RPG about basketball players who use an artificial juice to heal their wounds while fighting an array of enemies like giant bottles of Gatorade, the ghost of Bill Cosby, and I swear I am not making this up, a clump of sugar called the Diabeasty. Also, the playable characters include Charles Barkley, LeBron Jame's great grandson Balthios (represented in game as LeBron himself with white hair and lighter skin) Cyberdwarf, an alien with skin made of basketballs, and Charles' son Hoopz Barkley. You also temporarily have Vince Carter on your team, only he's a cyborg called the Vinceborg 2050.

The game is short. I beat it in under six hours, and I was in no way doing a speed run of the game. I personally like my RPG's to last at least 30 hours, with great game play, a deep story, and wonderful characters. There are no random encounters, and the highest level I gained in the game was 13.

There are many, many things in this game that are just plain bad. The best looking sprites are the ones that are taken from other games (this is a Freeware RPG, so this is to be expected and forgiven), but there are also many original sprites as well. And these sprites, frankly, suck. One particular sprite, for example, is supposed to represent an evil robot Gatorade bottle. The sprite is, literally, a picture of a bottle of Lime Gatorade.

Hey Hey Hey, it's Deeeaaaaaad Albert!

Yes there are many elements in the game that are awful, but when you put them together, a kind of grandeur manages to sneak into this game, turning it from what should have logically been a mess into an unforgettable experience. Oh, wait, you know what else I forgot to mention? This game is also a fan made sequel to the 1996 Animated movie, Space Jam.

The fact that Michael Jordan helped the Looney Tunes keep their freedom by playing in a basketball tournament against five evil space aliens that stole the basketball talents from the best players in the world is now canon, and you gotta deal with it!

Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is a comedy game done right. It takes itself seriously, but at the same time is not afraid to show its more farcical elements. One minute you're witnessing Charles Barkley reminisce about his dead wife, and literally the next you're fighting off against the head of Bill Cosby pasted onto a cartoon ghost body that looks like a foot. Hoopz gets infected by a life threatening disease courtesy of a syringe thrown by Michael Jordan, and to save his life, you need to take Hoopz to a healing man who lives in the Statue of Liberty. In the early part of the game you explore an underground city of mutants, people who have mutilated their bodies via a medical procedure, but their sprites are literally sixteen bit versions of classic Hannah-Barbera cartoon characters, like Jabberjaw or Huckleberry Hound. There are negative statuses in the game too, but instead of classics like Poison or paralysis, you can get afflicted by Diabetes, Asperger's, or glaucoma. Please note that aside from diabetes, which acts like poison and takes away bits of your health per turn, none of the negative statuses ever do anything. At all. And you can cure Asperger's in this game with alcohol. Seriously.

"I may have glaucoma, diabetes, and Asperger's Syndrome, but I'll be damned if I lose to this boss! Slam, jam, thank you ma'am!"

The game, when you get right down to it, is a parody of not just RPG's, but of 90's nostalgia as well. But it's an affectionate parody, and it shows in every detail. The game may use badly made sprites that sort of clash with the backgrounds, but that's part of the joke. Enemies look silly, but they still provide a challenge. The story is silly, but there's still an emotional honesty to it. Hoopz was born from an egg, but that doesn't take away from the pure love one feels whenever Charles Barkley himself tries his best to protect him. There are bosses, and sequences, in this game that do present a challenge. And if you lose? Well, you get this image:

Well we don't sound

Like Madonna!

Here we are now

We're Nirvana!

Sing distinctly?

We don't wanna!

Buy our album

We're Nirvana!

A garage band

From Seattle!

Well it sure beats

Raising cattle!

Yeah!

-"Smells like Nirvana"

Weird Al Yankovich

The game, however, is simply that: a game. An invitation to have fun, to relax, to let go of yourself for a little while. The game wants to make you laugh while at the same time challenge your skills as a gamer. It's a silly game. It's a deep experience. It's a parody. It's an epic. It's an RPG. It's a pastiche of badness given grandeur. It's a love letter to the 1990's. It's a love letter to the 16 bit era of video games. It's Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. And most of all? It's fun.