Tag: Boss Fight Books

Reyan Ali’s “NBA Jam” to Become a Feature-Length Documentary

Variety is reporting that Reyan Ali’s NBA Jam, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of one of the greatest sports games of all time, will soon be adapted into a feature-length documentary.

BestCrosses Studios will produce the film alongside veteran documentarian Sean Menard, who previously directed 2016’s Fight Mom and 2017’s The Carter Effect.

As part of the announcement, Menard shared a few words about what NBA Jam meant to him as a basketball fan back in the early 90s:

“When ‘NBA Jam’ hit the arcade, I was barely tall enough to reach the joystick and view the screen at the same time,” says Menard. “But while literally standing on my toes, I was completely immersed in a game that allowed me the creative freedom to perform out-of-this world feats of athleticism. This was during a tipping point for the NBA as the league was bursting with excitement and culture that was appealing to a younger fan base.

“Our film is more than just an original story about the most successful sports game of all time. There are various sub-plots that detail how gaming was transitioning from arcades to home entertainment and how it would eventually lead to the demise of Midway,” adds Menard.

Reyan Ali’s NBA Jam was originally published by Boss Fight Books in 2019 and features interviews with many of the game’s developers (including Mark Turmell and Sal DiVita), announcer Tim Kitzrow, and NBA greats such as Shaquille O’Neal. In a perfect world, all of these larger-than-life personalities should get a call to appear in the documentary.

It’s unknown when (or where) we’ll be able to see the film, but I know my anticipation for its debut is certainly heating up.

Boss Fight Books Will Republish “Pilgrim in the Microworld” in 2020

David Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld sought to examine the inner workings of Atari’s Breakout (and the people who obsessively played it) when it was first published in 1983. Out of print for decades, Sudnow’s quest to unlock “the essence of video skill” will finally be republished in 2020 by Boss Fight Books.

The indie publisher has turned to Kickstarter to help fund this new printing of Pilgrim in the Microworld (now titled Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld), and they’ve already smashed their campaign goal, receiving pledges from more than 150 backers as of this writing:

Originally released under the title Pilgrim in the Microworld, Sudnow’s groundbreaking longform criticism of a single game predates the rise of game studies by decades. While its earliest critics often scorned the idea of a serious book about an object of play, the book’s modern readers remain fascinated by an obsessive, brilliant, and often hilarious quest to learn to play Breakout just as one would learn the piano.

Featuring a new foreword and freshly edited text, Breakout makes a perfect addition to Boss Fight’s lineup of critical, historical, and personal looks at single video games. We’re proud to restore this classic to print and share with new audiences Sudnow’s wild pilgrimage into the limitless microworld of play.

Pilgrim in the Microworld was one of the first books to focus on a single game, and it’ll be released in a “sleek new paperback” edition and as a DRM-free ebook in January 2020.