Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City (SNES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Electronic Arts' 1994 license-based action game for the Super Nintendo, Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City. Played on the pro difficulty level with all of the captives rescued for the best ending. Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City was the third and final game from Electronic Arts to star His Airness, and it was the last video game to have his name in the title. Remember how many strange sports-adjacent games carrying celebrity endorsements there were in the 90s? Chaos in the Windy City isn't particularly famous among them, but it does stand out for being one of the better ones, and one of the weirdest. MJ's teammates for an upcoming all-star charity game have been kidnapped by Dr. Max Cranium, an evil scientist with a Napoleon complex, who wants to clone the players to create the ultimate basketball team for dubious reasons. As Jordan, it's your job to rescue them and take down the mad doctor. And to eat Wheaties and drink Gatorade. This is an EA title, after all. Chaos in the Windy City is a semi-linear, basketball-themed action-platformer. You run around a collection of mazes (set in an underground dungeon, a laboratory, a factory, and a theme park) fighting waves of mutated zombies and robot sentries, all the while searching for keys and freeing your teammates from their cells. After clearing a level and defeating the boss, you'll hop on the train and attack paparazzi and gangsters in a scramble to stock up on items for the next area. To defend himself, Jordan pelts the baddies with basketballs, and there are two ways to attack. He can throw the ball straight ahead, or he can leap into a dunk animation to hurl the ball at the ground. He has an unlimited supply of regular balls, and he can grab limited-use super balls that each come with unique effects. The purple ball, for example, can be ricocheted to whack enemies and switches in hard-to-reach spots, while the blue ball can freeze enemies (who can then be shattered on impact or used as steps to higher ledges) or be spiked downward to freeze the floor and slow their movements. It's a fun system to play around with, and there are plenty of minor puzzles that'll require you to swap between balls, but the controls are a little unwieldy. The game generally plays well - running and jumping feel fine - but the dunk attack is difficult to aim (especially when you're trying to kill something that's attacking your feet), and having the regular jump and the dunk leap mapped to different buttons is awkward. It's also incredibly annoying that picking up a super ball immediately equips it. This not only makes it too easy to accidentally waste ammo, but it forces you to constantly mash the R button to cycle through your shot types to re-equip the attack you were trying to use in the first place. You learn to deal with the quirks with time, but the friction they introduce never stops being a source of irritation. The presentation is a similarly mixed bag. The enemy designs are imaginative, the animation is smooth, the backgrounds are well detailed, and I dig the eerie electronic vibe of the music. It would be a good-looking game if not for the unrelentingly drab environments. For a game based on such a bizarre premise, I was surprised by the lack of variety, color, and creativity in the settings. Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City isn't a superstar game, but I don't think it deserved a place on the infamous "10 Worst Games of All-Time" list in Nintendo Power's hundredth issue, nor to be published by Ocean in Europe. It's an above-average collect-a-thon platformer with a goofy sense of humor, and I enjoyed my time with it. (Totally random side note: this is the only SNES game that I know of that shipped on a ten megabit cartridge. I wonder why they went with such an odd size. Do any of you guys know of any others?) _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!