Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden

Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden[lower-alpha 1] is a freeware role-playing video game developed by Tales of Game's Studios, jokingly presented as an official sequel to both Barkley Shut Up and Jam! and Space Jam. It features traditional JRPG-styled battles and dungeons.

Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden
Developer(s)Tales of Game's Studios
EngineGame Maker
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
ReleaseJanuary 22, 2008
Genre(s)Role-playing game
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

The player controls ex-NBA player Charles Barkley and a handful of secondary characters.[1] A host of ex- and current NBA players also feature as NPCs.

The game's battle system, dubbed the "B.A.B.B.Y. System," is influenced by many commercial JRPGs.[2] Enemies appear on the game field and may run at the player and attack if the player moves into their line of sight.[3] Once a battle is initiated, each player has a number of attacks and skills they can use. Most attacks require multiple or timed button presses as in the Mario RPG series, and some of the attacks are accuracy-based, dealing more damage for more accurate hits. The characters can also be placed into healing, attack and effect battle roles, depending on their skill set.

Plot

The game starts off in 2041, twelve years prior to the main part of the game, in "post-cyberpocalyptic Neo New York". Charles Barkley performs a powerful "Chaos Dunk" at a basketball game, inadvertently killing most of the people in attendance. As a result, basketball is outlawed and many basketball players are hunted down and killed.[2]

In 2053, another Chaos Dunk is performed in Manhattan, killing millions. Barkley is blamed for the Chaos Dunk and is hunted by the B-Ball Removal Department, led by Michael Jordan.[2][4] Barkley is rescued by another outlaw referred to as the Ultimate Hellbane. Hellbane leads Barkley to the tomb of LeBron James, revealing that Hellbane's real name is Balthios, the mixed race great grandson of James. The ghost of James tells the two to seek the Cyberdwarf, who is hidden in New York's sewers. While searching for the Cyberdwarf, they are joined by a cybernetic Vince Carter, who has lost his memory. Upon finding Cyberdwarf, the four of them rush to a nearby church, where Barkley's son Hoopz is hiding. In the church, Jordan kills Father Larry Bird and holds Hoopz hostage. Cyberdwarf, looking at Hoopz, comments that Hoopz may be “The One”; this comment restores Carter's memory. He was killed along with many other basketball stars, but was rebuilt by the terrorist organization B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. to kill Hoopz. Carter joins with Jordan, but the two are driven off by Barkley and his party.

Cyberdwarf theorizes that B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. used a powerful basketball called the Ultimate B-Ball, the same B-Ball used by the Monstars in Space Jam to steal the powers of basketball players, including Barkley himself, to perform the recent Chaos Dunk, so they travel to the old Spalding building to find a rumored extremely powerful basketball. There, they discover that such a ball had been created, dubbed the Hell B-Ball. This ball was so powerful that a janitor who mishandled it inadvertently performed a Chaos Dunk in the building years ago. With the Hell B-Ball in hand, the party seek out B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S.

They find the B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S. headquarters on the slave ship Necron 5. After freeing Carter from his programming and defeating Jordan in basketball combat, they find the leader of B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S., a shadowy version of Barkley created by the Ultimate B-Ball to destroy all life on Earth with a super-powerful Chaos Dunk, then repopulate the earth with Barkley clones. Shadow Barkley is defeated, but machinery on the ship is set to perform the Chaos Dunk without Shadow Barkley. Barkley stays behind while the rest of the party escapes from the Necron 5. The Monstars attempt to stop the trio from escaping. They are only partially successful; Balthios stays to fight the Monstars while Hoopz and Cyberdwarf successfully leaves Necron 5. Charles Barkley then performs another Chaos Dunk, destroying the ship and saving the earth. The game ends in a cliffhanger, where Hoopz and Cyberdwarf are aboard an escape pod in space without destination and the fate of Barkley and Balthios is never made clear.

Development

Barkley was developed by Tales of Game's Studios, a group of several members from an amateur game development forum.[2] The team was inspired after reading an awkward phrase on Michael Jordan's Wikipedia page about the fan debate over whether or not the movie Space Jam was canon without it specifying whether it was talking about the Looney Tunes series proper or Michael Jordan's life in general.[5] Key members Chef Boyardee, bort, GZ, and quackgyver all had a hand in the development of the game, with other, more minor contributions being made by several others. The game was first developed on the RPG Maker 2003 game engine, but was later ported to Game Maker 6.1. Originally the game was planned to be released in both formats, but eventually the latter was chosen due to its increased power and flexibility.[2]

At the 2014 Awesome Games Done Quick event, the developers have stated they had never played the original Shut Up and Jam game and created it after brainstorming ideas for an RPG that made them laugh.

Sequel

On November 28, 2012 Tales of Game's announced the game's sequel, The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa, with a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.com[6] to help fund it. The campaign for funding TMRoTnnEfN7RoCTOGotMC2otHBS ended on December 28, 2012, and raised $120,335.

While the sequel was to retain the original's self-aware tone, all of the artwork was being created from scratch to avoid copyright issues. It was revealed that the majority of developers have left the project and that development is moving slowly with two people left on the project working on it part time by developer Hiratio on June 2, 2019 due to some members of the original team disappearing from or leaving the project, alongside poor management.[7][8]

Notes
  1. The full title for the game is Tales of Game's Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa.

References
  1. Parrish, Peter (2008-03-05). "Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden". Eurogamer. Retrieved 2008-08-26.
  2. "Gaming World BSUaJ:G Topic". Retrieved February 7, 2008.
  3. Yu, Derek (2008-01-22). "Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 Released!". TIGSource. Archived from the original on 17 May 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-29.
  4. Carless, Simon (2008-01-26). "Indie Spotlight: Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden (Tales of Game's Studios)". Game Set Watch. Retrieved 2008-08-26.
  5. Fredner, Erik. "HOW TALES OF GAME'S INVENTED THE MASSIVE HOOPZ BARKLEY SAGA". Killscreen. Archived from the original on 7 June 2018. Retrieved 7 March 2016.
  6. TMRoTnnEfN7RoCTOGotMC2otHBS Kickstarter campaign
  7. Tarason, Dominic (3 June 2019). "Barkley 2 is approximately 85% dead after developer schism". Retrieved 2019-08-16.
  8. "With Barkley 2, Another Kickstarter Falls Apart Before Completion". pastemagazine.com. 4 June 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-16.
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