Make sure you don't hurt nobody. Let's Play Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden!

Hey kids!



Y'all ready to jam?



You know it.



Let's Play Tales of Game's Studios Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa!

In case that mouthful of an intro isn't indication enough, this is going to be quite an insane LP. Shut Up and Jam is a classical RPG set in the style of all those terrible basketball-themed games of the 90's. Remember Shaq Fu? This is like that, except an RPG, and it takes itself VERY seriously at times.



For example. (Ignore the switching screenshot size, I was trying different tools out to find one that worked well. I succeeded!)

Shut Up and Jam is weird even among games of this style, though. Half of it seems to be written in the same borderline blaxploitation style of games like Shaq Fu, while the other half appears to have been written by someone extremely fascinated, if not enamored, with classic JRPGs. It's a weird juxtaposition. Anyway, the canon warning isn't just for show: this game takes place roughly after the events of that movie Space Jam. Y'know, where a bunch of basketball players teamed up with the Looney Tunes to fight aliens? Yeah. In fact, it uses a remix of that movie's theme song for this game's theme.



The game isn't going to be lighthearted for a good while though.



It opens with Barkley telling his story, how he is one of the few basketball stars left alive, due to an event that the game will tell us about in short order. He currently lives in the city of Neo New York, with his 12 year old son Hoopz. Yes, he named his son Hoopz. Did you expect anything else?



There he is. Note that Hoopz's portrait has the backwards cap on his head, but his overworld sprite is sporting one of those flat-top haircuts.



Hoopz shows off the basketball moves he's learned by changing into an extremely goofy sprite and moving around the room erratically.



Balthios, Barkley's friend, speaks up and compliments Hoopz on his skillz. According to Barkley, Balthios is the great octaroon grandson of Lebron James. I'm not sure why he looks older than Barkley if that's the case, but this game tends to go by whatever rules it wants to at a given point.



When Barkley doesn't speak up, Hoopz asks him if he's okay. Barkley, clearly distracted, tries to dismiss him with a compliment, but Hoopz just asks if he's thinking about b-ball.



I can't really add much to the dialogue like this for a while. I'm thinking it might be easier to just have IRC-style transcripts of the dialogue, with screenshots for when especially dramatic or hilarious moments occur.



Hoopz leaves, thanking Balthios.



Balthios then turns to Barkley and gets to the heart of the matter: he was thinking about his wife Maureen, who is deceased in this game.



Barkley confides that he misses his wife, and sees her in Hoopz in every waking moment. This is part of what I'm talking about here: at times, the game is deadly serious, and at other times it's got some really goofy things going on.

Whatever caused her death, it was apparently Barkley's fault.



Barkley, heart heavy with remorse, says that the world will never suffer another Chaos Dunk again. We don't know what a Chaos Dunk is at this point, but it's apparently powerful enough to kill.



The game fades back into exposition mode, while Barkley tells us all about the wonderful tourist trap that is Neo New York.



It's apparently a shadow of its former self, rife with crime and desolation, where the strong bully the weak for what few neo-shekels they have. Yes, they use stars of David as a currency in Neo New York. Barkley would love nothing more than for Hoopz to have a safe life in a place far from here.



Back inside, the TV shows a news report about the Ultimate Hellbane, a masked criminal, believed to be connected to the terrorist group B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S, who murders people with zaubers. I think that's German for saber, but don't quote me on that.

Shut Up and Jam loves to do weird things with the dialogue here. For example, throwing in German words, putting apostrophe's where they don't belong, using "slay" instead of "kill", and swapping out r's for l's. I think it's trying to emulate the weird Engrishy translations of older RPGs, but since the rest of the game's dialogue is actually pretty decent, it comes off as (deliberately) weird.



Back on topic, Barkley forbids Hoopz from going outside while the Ultimate Hellbane is on the loose.



Balthios, clearly shaken, takes his leave of the family. On the way out, though, he crosses paths with someone else...



Barkley seems none too pleased to see Michael Jordan here.



Jordan makes a comment about hearing some dribbling. The ominous pause serves to anger Barkley and confuse the hell out of the player.



Barkley still refuses to entertain Jordan.



Jordan calls him on it, though. According to the B-Ball Confiscation Act, Jordan has every right to search Barkley's house without a warrant, if he suspects that Barkley has been playing basketball. Just what power does the Chaos Dunk wield?



Barkley is still not impressed.



Jordan excuses himself, but first addresses Hoopz.



Man, Michael Jordan is a dick in this game.



After a tense silence, Barkley excuses himself, on the grounds that he's going to get some medicine. Hoopz asks if he's going to be okay, and Barkley confirms that he'll eventually be fine.

Holy Cheibriados we can play now!

Barkley's controls on the overworld are pretty much the same as in every JRPG. He can move around, talk to and/or examine things, and sprint about.



Here's the stat screen. Barkley is currently the only member of our party, but he's probably the best in the game. He serves the role of frontline fighter, having a number of powerful offensive techs and a lot of durability. His current skill, Doubleteam, is a decently powerful single-target attack, and can be relied on from beginning to end.



When Barkley is sprinting, that little shoe gauge in the corner shows up. I have no idea what brand of shoe that is supposed to be, but I will give whoever pins it down first a basketball-patterned rune of Zot.



Barkley lives in the most illustrious of Neo New York homes: a two-apartment building.



Barkley takes some time to talk with the sympathetic janitor, Gus, about the kind of man Jordan used to be.



Don't get too used to this, by the by. Basketball isn't looked upon very kindly in the city. Barkley makes an aside about "maybe I'm the monster" but Gus doesn't catch it.



Out in the city, the bum that was robbed during the opening cutscene begs for some neo-shekels.



This part comes with a voice clip of this song. Again, abrupt switching between serious (well, for this game) and goofy. Kind of like Metal Gear Solid 4, only it actually fits.



Oh good, it's this thing.

See, whenever you save your game, you have to use these truck pumps. Fair enough, right? Problem is, they like to run their mouths (or mechanical equivalent) quite a bit. Now, that's not a big deal if we're talking about the right character (Cranky Kong 4eva) but... well, see for yourself.

Blaugh. And this happens every time you want to save the game. And you get a whole new diatribe each time. Apparently, they came from actual forum posts. Needless to say, I will be transcribing each one for your perusal.

Next Time: Press X to Slam also my favorite vidcon is iji

I stopped reading here. I'm finally convinced that I need to play this game myself.

Is this the part when you're woken up to go fight for the honor of Okamoto?

And then you go outside and talk to tiny half-naked flying women flying around in the streets?

Kishi, you are the best of people and let nobody tell you otherwise. This lp is gonna be great.

Amusing how this looks like an RPG Maker game. Which it probably will turn out it is. As if the stolen character-defining quote attributed to Zidane from FF9 at the bottom of the title screen wasn't a dead giveaway of that. (The RPG Maker community at large may as well be called the RPG Plagiarism community, if you didn't know.) Still, this should be insane yet entertaining.

I didn't show a screenshot of it, but the options menu has two language settings: English and Al Bhed.

I dunno if it's an RPG Maker game though. The battle system seems a bit more complex than what you'd get from RPG Maker. I could be wrong though!

It's a joke, though. I think you're expected to recognize it.

I'd much rather see someone LPing the actual Shut up and Jam.

oh balls now I have to change the title

I find the fact that they stuck in an Al Bhed translation highly amusing for some reason.

The other thing the RPG Maker community is known for is refusing to accept the default limits of the engines. The game looks to me like it's either running RPG Maker XP or RPG Maker VX, both of which support custom scripting by default (and thus are much more popular with the limit-hating RPG Maker community).

EDIT: I was somewhat right. Going by Wikipedia, it started life as an RPG Maker 2003 game (which would explain the visuals being 320x240 blown up to 640x480), and later ported to Game Studio 6.1.

Oh my god, this game.

This game.

It is the best. The best EVERYTHING. Every single line is MSTable!

Actually, I think the game was first developed in RPG Maker, but then switched to Game Maker while retaining the graphics from the original. Which would explain quite a bit.

Yes you do, because it's amazing.

"Zauber" is German for "magic" or "spell." A Zauberer is a sorcerer.

That's much funnier in the aftermath of Flavour of Love

Like Bill said, zauber means spell. It's a piss take on the stupid vocabulary of JRPGs. Junction your guardian force!

This game is so good. Kudos for doing the LP, the game deserves it.

While you're working on this, could I trouble you to whip together an animated GIF of the save point?

I'll give you these shoulder pads. Wait, wrong subgenre.

Sorry man, but I do not the GIF creation. I'm sure there are people here who would be willing and able to do so, but I am not!

When I started reading I thought this would be akin to Metal Wolf Chaos in craziness. Then I found out it's an entirely different kind of awesome.

I'd say go with transcribing the dialogue and not making a comment for every single image. Sometimes there's not much to say about a screenshot, and that's okay! Save the comments for when there's something funny/interesting to say.

Anyway, looks interesting. I've never gotten around to playing this myself, though I always meant to.

Every time I see this thread, I get the theme song stuck in my head. Come on and slam, if you wanna jam!

Well, I've already got the next update all written, and it keeps the old style. Updates beyond this point, however, will be all transcript-o-matic.

Speaking of!



Now that we've saved our game, let's go see what Neo New York has to offer.



This helpful lady tells us all about what exactly the Chaos Dunk is.

As should only be expected in this sort of game, basketball carries an immense power behind it, such that experienced players may perform incredible jams and slams that transcend the limits of the human body. Charles Barkley is one of the best there is, but unfortunately he didn't know just how good he was.



The woman continues, apparently wholly unaware just who she is talking to.



Barkley does not take it well.



To the south, past the cybertech armed guard (it is the future after all) is an alleyway full of street pushers who will sell assorted things at you.



Don't buy the Ecto Coolers though. (okay, they're still good because they heal Baller Points, but there's way better items for that)



Apparently, this parking lot here used to be a common place for games of b-ball.



Barkley gets caught up in the past for a moment...



But this is a grim future he lives in, and it's all his doing.

Y'know, I'm willing to bet that this same plot has been done elsewhere, only with teens with massive swords instead of basketball.



The people who don't try to sell things at you will complain about their situation. This guy begs for some chicken fries (which are the strongest healing items in the game). One of them claims that he was a Square-Enix-Goya employee (that company will be namedropped a few more times). In this day and age, the company's apparently branched out a bit to become a weapons dealing organization.



Back on the main road, Barkley runs into a kid who refuses to say a word.



After a while, it becomes clear that the kid is orphaned. Barkley considers giving him a neo-shekel.

One thing very few people know about Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is that it has an alignment system, albeit a very rudimentary one. There are four or five points in the game at which Barkley can either do something charitable or refuse to do so. However, there's no reward for playing a "good" Barkley, and the reward for playing an "evil" Barkley is fairly well-hidden. I didn't even know about it until I looked up a guide for something later on.



I'll be playing it evil, since I want to see the hidden fun stuff as much as you do.



Next to him, Barkley finds a shivering bum who refuses to go inside the church for warmth. Even in as hellish a place as Neo New York, people still have pride in their actions.



This is a church to... Clispaeth? Okay, whatever.

Whoever the priest is, they seem to know Barkley.



Barkley recognizes the priest as Larry Bird right away.



Bird is an apologist (dohohohoh).



Barkley doesn't care for Bird's pity. He fully blames himself for the situation they're now in.

This cutscene is freakin' LOADED with long awkward pauses in between dialogue boxes, where nothing can happen. The characters don't move or anything, and the only indication you have that the cutscene isn't over is that you can't do anything.



Bird defends himself by saying that he only made the most of the situation to keep himself from a living hell.



This does not help matters. Bird tells him to keep his voice down, but Barkley rages on anyway for a little while. After another awkward silence...



Good question. Why did I go here, anyway?



Haha, nice job of explaining away protagonist aimless wandering there.



She was? What kind of god is Clispaeth, anyway? Are we talking "peace and goodwill" or "blood and souls"?



I believe the technical term here is "Crystal Dragon Jesus" but I don't frequent TVTropes that much so I may be mistaken.



After some parting words, Bird warns Barkley to be safe and keep his wits about him. Yeah fat chance buddy, this is an RPG here.



Barkley heads back towards his home, grumbling about Bird.



He reminisces about the times gone by.



Complete with quick flashbacks to a brighter, happier, more earthbound time.



Seriously, if you managed to destroy your world through your badass skills at, oh say, Symphony of the Night, and caused video games (vidcons, whatever) to be more villified than Hitler, you'd be this depressed too.

Oh hey there's the medicine store. I wonder what kind of stuff Chin used to sell?



Barkley flashes back one last, lengthy time.



Yeah, probably a good idea. Flashbacks have been known to have a side effect of destroying hometowns, and I really don't think we need to see this place any worse off.



The store is pretty run-down, but it still works just fine.



This is Chin, one of the few people who remains sympathetic to Barkley. He's considerably more down-to-earth than Bird.



Chin talks about the Ultimate Hellbane for a while.



Barkley makes with the small talk and asks for a bit more info on the Ultimate Hellbane.



I'd hate to see just what that gun can do. If those crazy gunblade models actually made it functionally into the real world, oh man we are screwed.



In any case, Chin's out of medicine, but he's got the next best thing: Ecto Coolers that are still fresh.



You too, Chin. Clispaeth bless your stereotypical soul.



Huzzah!

(We also get 3 steroids and 2 tobaccos. Ecto Coolers heal you, Steroids can revive a character, and Tobacco cures all status effects. Not a bad haul.)



Barkley gets back to the apartment.



He decides to click on the TV and see what's going on.



Looks like the Ultimate Hellbane is still on the loose.



Can't say I blame you. Not sure where you can go with your situation, but you should sure as hell try.

Oh, right, that whole pesky fatigue nonsense. Damn you, physiology. You've won this battle, but not the war!



Uh-oh.



OH THIS IS BAD



Barkley wakes up to hear voices shouting.



Jordan's back, and he brought some friends.



Barkley, although initially confused, protests that he swore to never do a Chaos Dunk again for as long as he lived.



Jordan remains unconvinced, and orders his execution.



But not without another low blow.



QUICK TIME EVENTS!

You can't see it here, but there's an arrow pointing to the left. You get two screwups to pressing the flashing button on-screen, and if you miss both, it's curtains for you.

-

Barkley dodges the first guard without any trouble, but the second one zaps him with a close-range weapon. Barkley busts free and runs for it.



After vaulting right over the guardrail to the bottom floor, he runs outside, only to find more guards. Through clever footwork, he causes them to zap each other, and bolts for the intersection.



However, against these guards...



I screwed up my dodge. Whoops!



Here is the decidedly surreal game over screen. Fortunately, we can retry the quick time events from just before they begin.



After successfully evading the other guards (and running headfirst into that fence because I am a pro), Barkley is unfortunately cut off!

Jordan arrives on the scene to close the trap.



Barkley is horrified at the idea of Hoopz coming to harm...



But before he can submit...



An unseen voice calls out!



Whoa! Fire has saved the day!



Barkley follows the shadowy figure who came with the fire into a hidden passage, while Jordan shakes his fist and swears vengeance.



Inside this new underground area, Barkley, confused as anything, demands to know just what is going on.



The masked figure offers to help Barkley out of this situation.



Barkley refuses, threatening his saviour/captor.



Hey, Barkley, give the guy some credit. He did just save you from certain death and all.



Okay, fair counterpoint.



This is a surprise to no one.



This only causes Barkley to freak out even more.



The Ultimate Hellbane clarifies that he's not working with B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S, but that still doesn't calm Barkley down.



So he pulls out the ace in the hole: Hoopz's safety.

This news causes Barkley to calm down significantly.



The Ultimate Hellbane offers his assistance one last time.



Barkley, convinced that he and Hoopz are both in good hands, finally relents.



The Ultimate Hellbane gets right to business: the pair are going to hurry through the B-Ball Catacombs to meet with his contact. The Catacombs are a sacred resting place that ceased usage once the Purge went into full steam. We can safely assume that the Purge was meant to cleanse the earth of basketball, a bloody B-Ballnacht that saw the lives of countless ballers lost.



The Ultimate Hellbane hands over some tutorial items which I will be ignoring in favor of telling you how the game works myself.



And he joins the party proper!

The Ultimate Hellbane serves as a caster character (or a "zaubermancer"), having plenty of BP and a number of powerful techs as well. Right now, he's got the Fire Zauber to lower the attack power of enemies, and the Ice Zauber for potent single-target damage. Ultimate Hellbane is fast as well, but unfortunately he's on the fragile side. Still a pretty useful character, though.



Okay, let's do this, you monstrosity.

These only get better (or worse, depending on who you ask) as time goes on.

Next Time: The Legendary Ballers of Old