Raw Thrills’ NBA Superstars is one of the highest profile arcade releases of 2024. Already having been given a limited release to Dave & Busters, I can confirm today that the game is now available in North America. Read on for more.
What Is NBA Superstars?
As a quick primer in case you missed the news about this game back in the Spring, NBA Superstars is a spiritual successor to Midway’s smash 1993 hit, NBA Jam. Not only do many members at Raw Thrills (and Play Mechanix, who developed Superstars) hail from Midway, they also got the voice of NBA Jam, Tim Kitzrow, on-board to do voice overs.
As we had reported and many of you have seen with your own eyes, the game has been at Dave & Busters locations since June. They had the game first as a kind of timed exclusive, but that exclusivity has ended and now the rest of the market can get their hands on it.
NBA Superstars Shipping
I have confirmed with Raw Thrills that the game is actively being produced at the factory and being shipped out as of right now. As we’ve been finding out from a few social media posts, a couple of locations out there, including one in Canada, have already received their units. If you are interested in this one, then I imagine you might have already placed an order; it may take some time for them to get through all of the orders on the production run though.
One thing that has been asked on the Arcade Heroes Discord is: What about the connected Superstars website & player accounts? I checked and that will be launching “later this year,” although no date was provided. Still, it is in development, so when that rolls out, we’ll be sure to discuss it here.
And what about Europe? We have many readers in Europe, but this is always a tougher question to answer. We have not seen these popping up at any location there as of this time, however, the game is listed on Bandai Namco Amusement Europe’s website (they are the official Raw Thrills distributor for Europe). It should be available to order, but it may still be a wait for the units to ship to them, then to buyers.
There is also the factor that it’s ultimately up to locations themselves to make the investment – I’ve seen people complain about one certain game that they want to see in their area there, but if they don’t, distributors can’t force operators to buy anything.
If you’ve had a chance to play it, what are your thoughts? Do you think NBA Superstars is a worthy successor to NBA Jam?
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About the author: arcadehero View all posts by arcadehero
I’m a lifelong fan of video games and I have been operating my own arcade, Arcade Galactic in West Valley City, Utah since 2008. Soft spots in my heart for Atari, Sega, and Nintendo.