NBA Jam: On Fire Edition

The Road Trip campaign consists of 121 games, throughout the divisions in the Eastern and the Western conference. It’s by far the hardest trophy in the game, and it's also a time consuming experience, that could get a bit tiresome and frustrating, especially during the last Platinum medal matches, but ultimately it boils down to practice makes perfect.

The 121 games are divided into Bronze Medal games, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and the last one is a special event, a showdown with the Beastie Boys.

The Bronze medal matches are all classic 2v2 jam, and are the easiest, so feel free to experiment with different teams. You can hit in the team selection screen, to randomize your pick, which will net you extra XP.

The silver medal matches, are basically on normal difficulty, and here you’ll be introduced with some new game rules, which will make the matches even more interesting and diversified. Besides the classic 2v2 jam, you’ll play “Fire UP: 1 shot to go on fire, never expires”, “Mod air: Dunks and Alley oops are worth 4” … and other.

In the Gold Medal Matches you’ll find the same rules, more or less, like in the Bronze and Silver ones, just the difficulty has been amped up a bit.

After completing all of the Bronze, Silver and Gold matches, you’ll face you’re biggest hurdle in the game, The Platinum mirror matches, featuring the super-enhanced, and much annoying Jambots (AI designed specifically for the hardcore fans). The Jambots are basically a mirror image of your players of choice, only on steroids. My one-two punch against all of them, were Larry Bird and Kevin Garnett. The Platinum matches count 30 in total, and are played in the classic 2v2 jam format.

Now, I’m not advocating a certain style of play, but I found that Larry’s flawless ranged game, in combination with Garnett’s shoving and alley-oop capabilities can save you a lot of headaches (so I suggest you pick your team along this pattern).

You can use the following strategy: After passing the half-court, utilize the button (call for shove), and have your teammate clear the way for an open shot, if he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to, immediately press and go for an alley-oop. Jambots do have a weak spot for alley oops. On defense, I found that Jambots have a relatively low ball security, so having a teammate with high steal ability, would really help.

The last 121th game is against the Beastie Boys, and thankfully it’s a breeze, and shouldn’t cause any problems at all.