My tier list of Slam Jams — songs mashed up with the Space Jam theme. Slamming was popular on the internet for a while (usually mashing up music from 90's TV shows or games), and I remain a fan of the art form even though many slams are flat-out bad.
This is all personal preference, so the rankings are pretty much made up. A good slam usually needs to a) be a good idea, b) sound good, and c) have a funny photoshop of Charles Barkley's face.
Slam with the best. S-tier jams are the highest expression of this art form.
It's an actually good mashup of a catchy tune, and it's got a wallpaper-resolution shop of Charles Barkley as Tychus Findlay. Slamcraft has it all.
Another banger from comeonandslam. The Game Boy's Tetris (Type A) music goes well with many mashups, and there's a lot of fun details in the shoop.
BotanicSage is a master of the art. There are some very smooth cuts in here — "everybody / here's your chance, do your dance at the space jam" — and Spore Spawn gets turned into a basketball hoop.
An obsessively thorough parody of "Marisa Stole The Precious Thing", including animation, plus some great use of samples from NBA JAM.
Another BotanicSage special, and once again we've got some great voice splicing ("shake it, quake it, SONIC BOOM"). Guile's theme goes with everything, the Space Jam theme goes with everything, what more do you need? Smooth McGroove brings it all home in the back half of the mix.
Great JJBA edit for the image, a lot of great voice splicing. Some simultaneous voices, but they don't fight each other so it's fine. Excellent slam. Wan Chun-Sun used to have an incredible slam of Dio's Holy Diver, but it fell to a copyright claim. Another priceless cultural artefact ground underneath the heel of a media corporation :(
This is what Space Jamilton wanted to be: 26 tracks over 45 minutes, blending not just the Space Jam theme, but the movie soundtrack, movie samples, and custom singing to retell the story of Space Jam through Hamilton songs. It's remarkably good. Don't believe me? Ask Lin-Manuel Miranda: "I didn't understand that the reason it took me six years to write Hamilton was to one day be the soundtrack to Slamilton [...] kudos to the genius who made that".
A-tier slams still jam, but lack that special something to move them up to the S-tier.
This is a fifteen-track album of slam jams, and most of it ranges between "good" and "glorious". There are great transitions between tracks, so it's worth listenting end-to-end at least once. Highlights include:
Don't believe me? Even Christopher Tin, composer of Baba Yetu, agrees. (Facebook broke the direct link to the post. Facebook was a mistake.)
This simply has no right to work as well as it does, and I dig the flaming basketballs raining from the heavens.
BotanicSage delivers, yet again. Great use of game samples as well as the two songs, and a 4-for-1 deal on silly shoops.
A really really solid slam, and the "no Barkley" Ghostbusters logo is cute, but it feels like it was a bit too easy, so I think it would be unfair to give it the S.
Great song, and although the vocals overlap in parts they don't fight each other too much. Optimus Barkley looks so funny holding the Autoball Matrix of Leadership. I have a couple of friends who are fans of the OG Transformers, and I can't help but smile when I think of the torment this slam caused them. Easy A.
I spent a lot of time playing the first Metroid Prime. Following the guides on samus.co.uk and M2K2, I learned how to do most of the major sequence breaks, climb outside the level geometry and generally do things the designers didn't expect. This slam brings back fond memories, and it's not as overwhelming as many of the others.
One of the first slams I found, and still one of my favourites. I love Dire Straits and while some might say mixing in the Space Jam theme is ruining something great, I still can't hate it. The shoop of an abandoned basketball court is understated and classy, but cuts the lady off at her knees. Gotta take points off for that, I'm afraid.
BotanicSage always delivers the goods. The only thing missing is Charles Barkley's face in the shoop.
You need to know the ABC of the great slammers: Asian_Glow, BotanicSage [BS], and comeonandslam. The Flying Battery Zone has a killer soundtrack to begin with, so it would be hard to mess this one up.
Samplejammer has slammed a lot of older games, and Dam Slam is a great example of his work. It's a fun, high-energy track and Barkley replaces Bronson on the classic Goldeneye box art.
Another fine Samplejammer slam. The slower tempo works really well here.
Blast Corps was an niche game even during the N64's heyday, and for a long time it didn't emulate well. (Maybe it's better now?). It's a cult classic with a great soundtrack and Samplejammer does a great job mixing in the Space Jam. Time to get slamming!
This slam is criminally underappreciated, probably because the original doesn't seem to be that well-known. pigdevil2010 does same great work cutting up the Space Jam theme, playing with playback speed to match the moves of the print head.
It's completely unsurprising to see the SilvaGunner community slamming with the best. The Final Fantasy series passed me by when I was growing up, but even though I'm unfamiliar with the music I know good work when I see it.
As a man of impeccable taste, it was inevitable that Samplejammer would apply his gifts to Spaceballs. The fusion of two cash grabs (one real, one fictional) works really well, and it's got a great shoop, too.
Some Christmas cheer from Asian_Glow, and the first (and best) slam in a set of four.
I didn't play Age of Empires growing up, since my friends and I were more into Total Annihilation and StarCraft. But it turns out that it had good music, and now I want to raise an army and build a basketball nation.
Great work on the shoop, and it's clearly taken a lot of effort to sync the Space Jam theme with the breaks of the song. Excellent slam.
Some madman remixed the entire soundtrack of Sonic 2 for the Sega Mega Drive. Most of it is quite good (especially Emerald Hill Zone, Mystic Cave Zone, Metropolis Zone and Robotnik's theme), but R0cketsauce did a better job on Chemical Plant Zone.
A rare slam with a more relaxed tempo. It's strangely soothing, and Chrono Trigger's music is so good that it's hard to ruin.
Good dumb fun. A bit manic, but so is the base track.
It was inevitable that someone was going to slam Bad Apple!!, but it didn't have to be this good. All the singing has been replaced with lyrics from the Space Jam Theme, and there's some pretty good pitch shifts and key changes.
B-tier slams are pretty good. Expect occasional rough patches in the music.
Another slam jam album from R0CKET SAUCE!!!, this time with thirteen tracks. It's a bit weaker than the previous release, but you've still got to respect the effort. Highlights include:
The scope of the project still earns it a solid B.
This is hilarious and great, and the shoop is marvellous. But the Space Jam theme song really shouldn't go quite that fast. It's just not quite holding together.
comeonandslam mashes a meme with a meme and the result is darn good. "Welcome to the / Gagnam Style" is a great bit of vocal splicing, and there are a lot of fun photoshops throughout. The vocal tracks fight with each other too much for this to be A-tier, but it's a strong B.
The beats go well together, but vocal infighting holds it back in parts. Another fine slam from Asian_Glow.
A strangely relaxing slam by Samplejammer. I've mentioned my love of Metroid Prime elsewhere, and this slam also brings back fond memories. I would've loved to see the Varia Suit shoulder boulders turned into basketballs; that was a real missed opportunity in the shoop.
"All Your Base Are Belong To Us" was one of my favourite memories from the good old days of the WWW, before memes were even called memes. comeonandslam mixes two of my favourite dumb things and the result is quite solid. The Space Jam theme sounds a little weird for some reason, perhaps because it's been sped up more than it can handle?
The third Christmas slam from Asian_Glow, and easily the most experimental. The Space Jam theme is aggressively cut to fit the music, which constantly trips the listener up. I'm putting it in the B-tier because it's a clever idea, but it is rough.
Short and silly. Good fun.
Since the DOOM soundtrack is basically Bobby Prince ripping off every good metal song from the 80s, it's only fair to mash it up with more stolen music.
There's some good editing, but the song just isn't that exciting and there's no Charles Barkley in the picture.
C-tier slams are decent enough listening, maybe with a couple of high points.
As the description says: "WELCOME TO THE SPACE JAM. HAVE YOUR PAPERS READY. ENTRY IS NOT GUARANTEED." The shoop is S+-tier and it's worth clicking through just to check it out, but the Space Jam theme strains under the speed shifting. I still love this slam (and the shoop is my lock scren), but it's an acquired taste.
Slow songs often don't slam well, because the Space Jam theme gets too distorted. Samplejammer makes it work pretty well here because the original song already stretches things out.
Very funny little slam. I love the "na-nanana-nah Inspector Gadget HEY-AY-AY-OOO", but the two sets of vocals mostly get in each other's way.
Fun, but flawed. There's some great moments where the Space Jam theme cuts in and out, but it's let down by long stretches where both sets of lyrics fight each other.
The speed-shifting makes the Space Jam theme sound a bit weird, but this is a fine slam for the collection.
SilvaGunner brings another good three-way mashup, but the base song doesn't really do it for me.
The second track in the Asian_Glow Christmas suite. It's decent, but a bit uninspiring; the original song isn't exciting enough.
I missed Yu-Gi-Oh! growing up, so nostalgia doesn't shape my enjoyment of this slam. It's decent enough and has a good shoop, but finishes abruptly.
D-tier slams have a cool idea or a clever passage in the song, but don't really hang together as a whole.
The vocals fight each other all through the song, but hold out to the end for "And me? I'm the damn fool who shot him SO SHOOT BABY SHOOT BABY".
"Barkley, get on the court." It's an okay slam, I guess. It goes on for too long, and the mashing isn't interesting enough to justify all that time.
The fourth Christmas slam from Asian_Glow is easily the weakest. The lyrics fight each other for most of the song.
I'm not sure I'll ever list many things something here, because I don't plan on cataloguing every Slam Jam in this world.
You can't mash a song up with itself!