Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame career was synonymous with greatness. Six NBA championships, six NBA Finals MVPs, five league MVPs and 14 All-Star Game selections will tell you that.
In fact, the greatness fans speak of when they mention Jordan's name often comes in the form of being widely-regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time.
Off the court, MJ's portfolio is arguably even more stunning, as he is the current owner of the Charlotte Hornets and made $100 million from his ties to Jordan Brand in 2014 alone, with that number being more than the $94 million he made over his 15-year NBA career.
When you think about Jordan's life, "greatness" is the first word that comes to mind. However, as much as he dominated the basketball court and continues to ball-hog the boardroom, there is a space that Michael Jeffrey Jordan has been patchy in at best — video games — and none are worse than Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City.
The November 1994 Super Nintendo title hit stores in the United States just less than four months before Jordan made his first comeback, ending his retirement to return to the game of basketball and rejoining his Chicago Bulls.
Electronic Arts should be thankful that he did return to the NBA, because it might have taken away some spotlight from the weird game it developed starring him. OK ... "weird" might be an understatement. Perhaps downright zany and out of its element is a better way of describing the title that had Jordan on a hare-brained mission to rescue fellow players — who have been kidnapped by mad scientist Maximus Cranium — so that they could appear in an All-Star charity game.
To do that, Jordan must navigate his way through Chi-town, battling goons and strange one-eyed creatures. His weapon of choice to defeat them? Basketballs, of course. How original. We're not talking Spalding official NBA basketballs, though. Oh, no.
Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City had MJ equipped with basketballs that could freeze and even ones that could blow up enemies. Jordan could also dunk the basketballs as second form of an offensive attack in the game. Don't believe us? Just watch this old gameplay video footage we dug up on YouTube.
Gamers had to get Jordan to pinpoint keys on the levels, and those were used to unlock doors and free kidnapped teammates. One cannot make this stuff up.
Even though the title starred Michael Jordan, arming him with an arsenal of potent basketballs and having him rescue trapped hoop stars ... the game was a complete non-sports video game — a non-sports video game starring arguably the greatest basketball player who ever lived.
In the subsequent years that followed this game, Jordan led the Bulls to a second three-peat of NBA titles and went on to appear in better video games, such as the NBA Live and NBA 2K series, making Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City a mere blip in the radar — a really, really weird blip in the radar.
Chaos in the Windy City was just chaos, period; utterly-strange chaos with Michael Jordan's name attached.
