The original arcade game featured Charles Barkley on the Phoenix Suns and Shaquille O'Neal on the Orlando Magic. When NBA Jam was ported to home consoles, O'Neal's rights could not be obtained because he had bought his own likeness from the NBA and instead Nick Anderson appears in his place. While Barkley appeared in the initial home ports on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, a few cartridges from later in production replaced him with Dan Majerle. Neither O'Neal nor Barkley appeared in the Sega CD version.
Charles Barkley was in some early versions of NBA Jam but was later removed when he opted to remove himself from the NBA's licensing agreement and instead decided to star in a solo game, Barkley Shut Up and Jam! (1994), a street basketball game developed and published by Accolade that has similar gameplay to NBA Jam.
On the arcade machines, an attract screen would play, showing the game play, then show a still picture of 2 cheerleaders with a sign saying "winners don't do drugs". The blonde cheerleader is Kerri Hoskins, who would later be known for capturing the sprites used for Sonya Blade in the Mortal Kombat series. Both Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam were created by Midway and Acclaim games.
In early 1994, the Amusement & Music Operators Association reported that NBA Jam had become the highest-earning arcade game of all time, creating revenue of $1 billion.
NBA Jam became such a sensation that even NBA players bragged about being in the game. However the games developer where approached by Michael Jordan and Gary Payton and asked why they where not in the game. Turmwell explained they both had a different licensing contract to the standard NBA players, and they just figured it would cost too much if they asked. Both Jordan and Payton shook their heads and said they would have been happy to be in the game at not licensing fee costs. Midway then made 50 limited edition NBA arcade machines that had both Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls and Gary Payton on the Seattle Supersonics. Michael and Gary where presented an arcade of the game each, and are said to be the only 2 known in existence today. The other 48 machines are nowhere to be found and have never come up for auction, suspected to either be in private collectors hands or owned by someone in or knew members of the games creators and programmers.