A trip down NBA Jam graphics pipeline
Summary
Around the same time "Universal Soldier" got released, "Midway Games" had developed a technology allowing to manipulate large digitized photo-realist sprites and preserve the likeness of real actors. They had used the technology with great success for the popular shooter game "Terminator 2: Judgment Day"[2] but were unable to secure a license for "Universal Soldier" (JCVD financial conditions were deemed unacceptable[3]). When negotiation collapsed, Midway "pivoted" to build a combat game in the spirit of Capcoms 1991 mega-hit named "Street Fighter II: The World Warrior". Featuring a lot of blood on screen and insanely gore "fatalities", the game became an instant worldwide hit gathering close to 1 billion dollar within one year[5]. All chips (System RAM, GFX EPROMs, Palette SDRAM, Code, Video Banks) are mapped into the same 32-bit memory address space and are connected to the same bus.