RoboDunk

Written by Jason Dailey on 1/21/2025 for PS5  

It is hard to believe that more than three decades have passed since NBA Jam was dominating arcades across America. It was so successful, in fact, that it was 1993’s highest-grossing arcade cabinet, and made more money than the first Jurassic Park film, which also released that year. As such, I would venture to guess that I’m not the only person who hails it as their favorite arcade cabinet. So, when I stumbled across RoboDunk, essentially NBA Jam with robots, my eyes lit up like it was the 1990s again. RoboDunk channels NBA Jam just enough while still bringing its own ideas to the table, creating a surprisingly awesome iteration of the Jam-like.

While RoboDunk brings the tried-and-true gameplay formula of NBA Jam forward from decades past, it throws in a dash of roguelite mechanics as well. Ironically, it reminded me of 1993’s second-highest grossing arcade cabinet – Mortal Kombat – in how you progress through increasingly challenging matches against teams of CPU opponents in the campaign mode. Each match is 2v2, regardless of game mode, and you can play either solo with an AI teammate or with a human partner in local co-op. Despite being a roguelite, there are three difficulties to choose from – easy, normal, and hard. I played on normal, which I found to be a completely fair challenge, despite a more drastic difficulty spike at level 10 than previous levels. The goal is simple – win the tournament or lose and start over. After each match you will earn cash that can be used to buy new robots, upgrades, or teleporters which let you start at a higher level on subsequent runs.

Fans of NBA Jam or its successors (spiritual or otherwise) will feel right at home with RoboDunk, which is to say the gameplay is excellent, but still a bit unique. Naturally, you can only score by dunking the ball, though you can dunk from higher and higher in the air if you charge your dunk enough. Holding the Cross button (not X, thank you very much) on PlayStation starts the charging process, with a meter rising from one to four bars the longer you hold the button – the more bars, the more points you will score if successfully pulling off that dunk. Once in the air, you will have to press Cross again at the correct time to complete the dunk, or land flat on your face if you miss the timing window. Successfully charging up a level four dunk will launch your robot into outer space, spinning and flipping gracefully on its way back down for a BOOMSHAKALAKA dunk. Okay, wait, it's not actually called that in RoboDunk, but you get my point – it’s the most spectacular of all the dunks.

Blasting off into space requires some skill and coordination, as your opponents will ram you to the ground, block your dunk, or use their special abilities in an all-out effort to keep you off the scoreboard. Of course, you can reciprocate those defensive maneuvers, leading to some chaotic matches. And if that’s not enough, some matches have modifiers and hazards such as low gravity or rolling logs that sweep back and forth that you must navigate around. In other words, it will take your entire bag of tricks, and proper team building, to go deep into the tournament.

Between matches, you can add mods to your robots which grant buffs and skills. So, for instance, you can add the “fast feet” mod to a big lumbering robot to boost their speed, or “ball magnet” to your nimble robot to have the ball suction to them when no one possesses it. Mods vary from temporary to semi-permanent during each run, but you can also purchase fully permanent upgrades and mods that persist across runs. Additional robots can be purchased as well for $100 a pop, of which there is a nice variety to choose from. Each robot has its own stat ratings across four categories – speed, strength, jump, and ammo – as well as a special ability. There is a brutish type with a spinning cyclone attack that clears out opponents at the rim, a samurai type with double-sword attack, or my personal favorite – Techie – which is awesome for my fast-break style of gameplay thanks to its high speed and turret ability which provides covering fire while I make a run for the goal. Experimenting to find your best combination of robots is key and allows you to tailor a playstyle that works for you.

If you’re looking for a break from the campaign, there are two other modes on offer – endless and versus. Endless is exactly what it sounds like, placing you in match after match where everything is random and seeing how far you can climb the global leaderboards. I ran into another weird difficulty spike when hitting level 10 in this mode as well, so my gut tells me that a general difficulty balancing pass is needed. Versus is your exhibition mode, essentially, which lets you play single matches against the CPU or your friends. There are also season and tournament functions within the versus mode which are not available at the time of review, though they do sound fun. One small feature I greatly appreciate is that both the campaign and endless mode save your progress between matches, allowing you to pick up where you left off between play sessions. But I have to say – the fact that RoboDunk has no online multiplayer functionality is a huge bummer. I would kill to be able to host an online tournament with pals, but I know that’s a big ask for a small developer, especially if the game’s popularity skyrockets, pardon the pun.

I’ve written nearly a thousand words about RoboDunk and failed to mention its gorgeous stop-motion art style. Consider it mentioned, and consider it absolutely beautiful. Each robot looks like a toy model or Lego kit, which is neat because the robots were modeled with what appears to be Legos, based on lore-drop loading screens between matches. The animation is stunning, but also helps differentiate RoboDunk from NBA Jam aesthetically. Seriously, at least watch a trailer for this game.

It's not 1993, but RoboDunk sure makes it feel that way. We don’t get a lot of attempts at re-creating the magic of NBA Jam nowadays, but RoboDunk is the best NBA Jam-like since NBA Jam. The core gameplay will be instantly familiar to longtime fans, but there are enough new ideas included to make it stand out and feel like its own game. So, just as life, uh, life finds a way, so too does the spirit of NBA Jam all these years later, and thankfully, it’s a slam dunk.