In the 2010s, Activision's long-running first-person shooter series Call of Duty was king, as seven of its games were among the top 10 most commercially successful games of the decade. Yet even if the series' most recent title Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was not as high on the list, that hasn't stopped fans from crossing the game over with older, less relevant titles like 1993's NBA Jam.
On Sunday, January 12, Reddit user Jeeshish posted a video to the r/modernwarfare subreddit of their player character using throwable weapons like C4 and molotov cocktails as surrogate basketballs in the Passage section of the Crash map. As simple as this sounds, Jeeshish elevates his Call of Duty: Modern Warfare video by adding sound clips from NBA Jam's announcer Tim Kitzrow.
The pinnacle of the video has Jeeshish managing to get around an imposing defensive tree on the court and throwing an impressive trick shot with a molotov that soon engulfs a soldier as Kitzrow excitedly proclaims, "he caught on fire playing basketball!"
Kitzrow has become well-known for his voiceover work on NBA Jam — which was recently made into an arcade cabinet — as well as other sports games, and has been riding that popularity as "Mr. Boomshakalaka" on his website where people can access a service he runs recording custom messages for $50 a pop.
Kitzrow's inclusion as a pre-order bonus cheat code in id Software and Bethesda's Rage 2 from 2019 was even a trailer-worthy selling point for the game.
Crash is a popular map in the first-person shooter series that was introduced in 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and later brought into 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfarewith some alterations. Using it to play basketball against a tree might not be the first inclination for most players, but for Jeeshish it made for some great content.
In the post's comment section, Jeeshish says it took anywhere between 50 and 75 attempts to successfully complete the molotov trick — partially because of the bodies piling up in front of the court, some of which can be seen in the final video.
It's easy to appreciate the amount of time put in (particularly given Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's glitches, like invisible players) for what, on the surface, sounds like a ridiculous crossover between a 2010's first-person shooter and a 1990's basketball game. But Jeeshish's video also makes a great argument for the power of selective editing, as the string of sound clips he chose are truly on fire.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
