You may not know his name, but you know Tim Kitzrow. If you spent hours as a kid playing NBA Jam, MLB Slugfest, NFL Blitz, or a myriad of other games, the soundtrack was provided by Kitzrow, whose voice has become as iconic as the number of catchphrases that originated from those games.
Next up for Mr. Boomshakalaka is providing commentary for Mutant League Football, a reboot of the 1993 game. We spoke to Kitzrow about his newest video game voice over role and how being trained in improv has helped him in his career. Oh, and of course, we asked him about NBA Jam, and got him to put his own spin on things that have occurred in the NBA this season.
UPROXX: So you have done voiceovers for a whole bunch of different games; which one was your favorite to do?
Tim Kitzrow: Well I’ve been telling people this a lot, and they always think it’s going to be NBA Jam — which I absolutely love. But it was actually Slugfest, because the fun of doing commentary for a baseball game, where there are longer segments to really create more dialogue, and it was one of the first games where we were able to stitch dialogue together that, if a play happened, you could come back and pick up the dialogue.
We did 30- to 60-second comedy kind of improvs at the beginning of the game while the game is loading, and since I went to Second City and knew this great talent here in Chicago, Kevin Matthews, who was a radio icon for 17 years in Chicago — he came up on the stand up circuit with Seinfeld and all those guys, so he’s a real talent. I was always just in awe of him, and when I got to the point of doing the game, they said “Who do you wanna work with?” Which was a great thing, they’re asking me who I wanna work with and I brought him in. Are you familiar with Slugfest at all?
Yes, I am.
So he had this great alter ego, Jimmy Short. “I just wanna beat you over the head with a folding chair, you get me so aggravated, Tim, I wanna take a dirt nap right here in the booth.” We were able to play and basically, it felt more like I was writing a comedy series, a sitcom or something, rather than just barking out one liners.
But other than that, the EA version of NBA Jam was my favorite because they gave me free reign to write the script and, instead of it just being the one liners, the superlatives from the first one. There was a lot more meat and a lot more fun to develop more crazy one-liners, like “Rummaging through your girlfriend’s top dresser drawer, he finds nothing but nylon, kaboom!” and “Like your momma wearing latex pants, that dunk was tight!” It gave me some more range and was more like being the SportsCenter highlights guy, as opposed to just a video arcade carnival barker.
You’re mentioning your past with Second City; how did doing improv help you for what I think a lot of people would imagine is 100 percent scripted material?
In the early days it was [completely scripted], and the most frequent is “How much was improvised of the first game?” If you listen to the first game, it was really basically what you heard on TV on Sunday. John Hey wrote the script, and all the lines that you heard from Marv Albert back then are basically there. Boomshakala was really one of the only lines that wasn’t a known line in the basketball vernacular at the time, so we were pretty much playing it straight, it was just the delivery, and I’m sure there were a few other fun lines I might have forgotten.
My real improv started before NBA Jam, 15 improv titles that I did. We would improvise, I would sometimes do multiple characters on games — my most famous one was Twilight Zone. I did [games for] Elvira, Popeye, Gilligan’s Island. I was really having fun doing that, so I think that’s where they really got to know me and trust me.
So when it came to NBA Jam, I don’t know that anyone else was ever really considered and I’ve never really asked Marc that, but I was offered that and of course grabbed it. But then later when they gave me NFL Blitz, they said “Why don’t you write the script?” and I wrote it along with Dan Vorden. Slugfest — I was basically the full-time writer for that, so that’s where it really started growing. Of course, with NBA Jam, I would get in the booth for the EA Sports one and rip a lot of stuff off on the spot or in between takes or on a coffee break … just write down new ideas that kept popping into my head.
Recently I was out in LA for an NBA Jam-themed day with the Clippers, and I went on Fox Sports Live with their pregame crew, Corey Maggette and Don McLean. They had three clips lined up for me, which I hadn’t seen until about a minute before the broadcast that I got to watch once. It was fun, in the moment calling it instead of being a broadcaster or doing the traditional calls during the game, I had to do my thing, and it’s fun the way Second City prepared me to just think on my feet and be comfortable and not nervous in any live situation.
Usually when someone recognizes a person it’s by their face. Do you ever have people hear your voice and then go “Are you the NBA Jam guy”?
I am such a fan of voice over people, and it’s rare that you can do that, like Dan Castellaneta as Homer Simpson, Hank Azaria. You listen to them on a talk show and then because you know it’s them you go “Oh, I hear it.” Kind of the same thing — if someone knows, then they’ll go “I hear it, I hear that voice,” or “I hear a sportscaster voice,” or “You’ve got a good voice.” But no, no one’s ever just picked up “You gotta be the Boomshakala dude.”
What’s the story behind “Boomshakalaka”?
In the earlier years when I was asked that, I just didn’t have any recollection at all. The Sports Illustrated article that came out in the last year, a thorough article, they interviewed everybody. And apparently one of the sound guys down the hall from the recording studio was listening to Sly and the Family Stone a lot. There’s this song, “I Wanna Take You Higher,” and of course Sly is saying “Boo shaka laka laka, boo shaka laka.” He doesn’t say “boom,” he says “boo shaka laka.” He thought he was saying “Boomshakalaka,” and he thought “that’s kind of a fun expression.”
He yells out the door “Hey John, tell Tim to say ‘boomshakala.’” John goes, “Tim, say ‘boomshakalaka,’” and I remember saying “What the hell’s that?” He says “I don’t know, say it,” and I say “BOOMSHAKALAKA,” and went “huh, I like it.” You couldn’t imagine a weirder story to how that came into being, but that’s it, and thank god I did say it.
Is it still surreal to hear phrases from the game — Boomshakalaka is the most notable one, but other ones like “nothing but nylon” and “he’s on fire” — still used in the NBA universe?
It’s a funny thing, because it’s gotten into the culture of the broadcasters and the players and all of the NBA culture where you hear those things — and I said some of them were kind of Marv things, the “downtown, he’s heating up.”
But a lot of times when I watch TNT and Inside the NBA, people will often say — Shaq, who’s one of the biggest NBA Jam fans, who had arcade cabinets put in his hotel room when he traveled often, and played all night. He’ll go, like, “That’s like some old school NBA Jam boomshakalaka,” “That’s some old school he’s on fire.” When Nate Robinson went on a tear when he was with Chicago, he had like 23 points in the fourth quarter, he came out and did an interview and went “I felt like I was in NBA Jam, the video game with ‘he’s heating up, he’s on fire,’ I felt like I couldn’t miss.”
I see it referenced by players, by sportscasters a lot, and it’s neat the way it’s got a life of its own now.
You have the nice, smooth baritone. Who are some of your favorite people in basketball right now to listen to call a game?
Well it’s always been Marv Albert, and I can’t believe — because he must be 120 years old because I’m at least 80 years old — that he can still deliver the goods. I’m a huge Marv fan, Kevin Harlan, and my absolute favorite, being a hometown Bulls fan, is Stacey King because he gives the humor and catchphrases. Next to me, he’s the best out there at coming up with unique stuff.
So I want to hear your NBA Jam-style calls for a few things. Let’s go one by one and hear what you’d say:
1. LeBron James scoring his 30,000th career point
2. Steph Curry hitting his third three in the span of a minute.
3. Russell Westbrook dunking on someone.
4. Joel Embiid blocking a shot into the stands.
5. Giannis Antetokounmpo takes off from the free throw line and dunks during a game.
Next up for you is Mutant League Football. Obviously you did NFL Blitz back in the day, is there a different challenge in doing a football game compared to a basketball game compared to a baseball game, etc.?
The challenge is always the same of keeping maximum hype and energy, and with arcade style, it’s fast, it’s furious, it’s frenetic. When you know that that quarter in NBA Jam is going to be over so soon, you’ve got to pump that next quarter in when you’re getting towards the end to keep the game going. You just have to keep pumping quarters. There’s a certain addiction, and a certain tone and frenzy that I have to create to keep the action rolling, which I just love.
Mutant League Football is just the best, because NFL Blitz was fun in its day, it was a groundbreaker, but it had to get watered down for the last version with EA Sports because the NFL was cracking down on the late hits and the violence. [The NFL] didn’t realize it was a game, it was a cartoon, it wasn’t real, so let the digitized version of these guys kill each other. But they weren’t going to have anything to do with it. Mutant League Football lets us go so far, so extreme, that we have all this great parody names — the Nuke London Hatriots, the Deadlanta Vultures, the Killadelphia Evils. Every player has a great parody name, like Bomb Shady.
When you’re in that cartoon world — think Family Guy, Futurama, The Simpsons, Adult Swim — it’s in such a crazy universe, this post-apocalyptic universe where EvilSN is the big sports network, these big corporate parody names. So I can have the fun of creating that whole crazy comedy world and futuristic world, and I actually gave voice for all the mutant zombies and orcs and gibberish speech. Great challenge, great fun, and the great thing about this is there’s really no other competition and the fun that you can have doing this explosive, more energetic and fun style for the NFL, you’ve got Madden and you’ve got your traditional ones that you can set up and play for hours and it’s [like] watching a real game, which is fine and is a whole different experience.
But the original intention of video games and arcade games was to have a game to have something that got you laughing and crazy and all pumped up. You can jump in and out and play three minutes and be done, you pass the controller to your buddy, you have a dorm party with a keg of beer. It’s the fast and furious nature of arcade sports that I think this game is gonna create the audience that once fell in love with the arcades years ago but will introduce it to a new generation, and of course the hardcore people who loved the original Mutant League Football, which was a series back in ’93 that had a cartoon show, we’re doing collectibles, trading cars, all kinds of fun stuff. If you like MAD Magazine, you’ll love this. If you like Family Guy and Adult Swim, you’ll love the crazy humor that we have in there. It’s a little more R-rated, and X-rated in places.
Any calls you made in this game that you hope will have the same lasting effect as Boomshakalaka?
This is more like Slugfest where it’s the setups and being Seth McFarland, the dialogue between the characters. I don’t think there’s any one-liners or superlatives that’ll really pop out, but it’ll be that fun like when you watch Mystery Science Theater 3000, what are those guys gonna say next? It’s that fun, a lot of references, you get some of them, you don’t, there’s musical references, pop culture references. It’s just a little bit more cerebral than the one-liners that I think that I’m known for.
