This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at my Sacramento Kings Franchise in NBA Live 2002 for the PlayStation 2.
It recently occurred to me that while I have mentioned my NBA Live 2002 Franchise with the Sacramento Kings in previous articles – including a re-creation of it for our 20th Anniversary of NBA Live content – I’ve never actually profiled it for Wayback Wednesday. Writing about it as an example of a failed basketball gaming idea, and in a handful of other features, had me thinking that I’d already covered it in detail. That really isn’t the case though, and since I’ve reflected on my other memorable season, franchise, and career mode games, it’s only fair that it gets a proper retrospective, too!
On top of that, on a recent dig through my archives, I unearthed some screenshots and an article from my “coverage” of that NBA Live 2002 Kings Franchise, similar to the story topics in our Forum. Not only is it a blast from the past to see those again after all this time, but for the purposes of a retrospective like this, they also allow me to recall some details that have slipped my mind over the years. What I haven’t forgotten though is how much fun that NBA Live 2002 Kings Franchise was, at a time when I definitely sought distractions…even when I probably shouldn’t have been! Let’s take a look back…way back…
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a defense of single player experiences.
There are many different ways of playing basketball video games. There’s exhibition play, which I believe has become underappreciated. You can play a single season in the NBA, or guide a team through multiple seasons in a franchise mode. The card collecting/team building modes are great for gamers who like to build fantasy squads. The career modes allow us to step into the shoes of an NBA player, or take an avatar online for competitive team play. Single player, local and online multiplayer…the best games facilitate all ways to play, and make them a lot of fun.
To that point, there’s no wrong way, or for that matter right way, to play basketball video games. You are no less of a basketball gamer for preferring one mode or style of play over another. I realise that tribalistic factions exist within almost all fanbases, and hey, if people are going to judge each other over their choice in preferred camera setting, there’ll be gatekeeping over modes as well! Over the years however, I’ve noticed more and more disdain for offline and single player experiences. I don’t expect to put an end to that chatter or change everyone’s mind, but I’m compelled to advocate for single player experiences, and explain why many enjoy and prefer them.
Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee4Three! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, or hit up Dee on Twitter.
When it comes to spectacular basketball plays, the crazy and the lucky are just as fun to watch as the skilful! This week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays includes an entertaining reminder of that, as a well-known animation glitch in NBA 2K16 leads to a wild finish at the rim. And, as always, the countdown includes an assortment of poster dunks, ankle breaking moves, crafty passes, and clutch shots. Eight different games are featured this week, from Konami’s Run and Gun 2 all the way up to NBA 2K24. Let’s get to the action!
What was your favourite highlight this week? Sound off in the comments below, and once again, get in on the fun by sending us your best plays! Remember, as long as it’s a basketball game, it’s eligible for the countdown. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube for more basketball gaming videos.
Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five recalls five times that I encountered real life moves being made by CPU-controlled teams in my games.
One of the oldest Wishlist requests when it comes to franchise modes is that they feature realistic player movement. This is actually an interesting concept, because many of the moves that we see in real life would probably be considered unrealistic if they occurred in a franchise or career mode game! Teams frequently don’t get equal value when they trade big name players, as the circumstances that result in superstar for superstar swaps are generally rare. Familiar faces end up in strange places, there are unexpected reunions, and loyalty between teams and players is often eroded.
With that in mind, with so many deals that once seemed so unlikely, who’s to say what constitutes realistic player movement in a video game? In fact, I’ve encountered moves made by CPU-controlled teams that, if they hadn’t happened in real life, would probably strike me as unrealistic. Indeed, playing through five seasons and counting in NBA 2K14 PS4’s MyCAREER has resulted in a number of such moves! They may differ in terms of the exact players involved and when they occurred, but the game’s trade and free agency logic still made moves that it couldn’t have known were coming when it was released. Here are five examples of my games imitating real life moves.
This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at some famous jersey numbers that were worn by players who weren’t so famous, and the video games where you’ll find them.
There was a commemorative magazine published not long after the Chicago Bulls won their fifth NBA championship. As an avid fan, I read it cover to cover until it was no longer pristine. On top of recapping the championship season, the magazine delved into the history of the Bulls. I was fascinated to learn that although Michael Jordan became the last and most famous Bull to wear number 23, he was the seventh player in club history to don it. You have to remember that in 1997, such information wasn’t readily available and accessible in less than a minute!
That tidbit of Bulls and MJ trivia has stuck with me. The longer I’ve been a basketball fan, and the more players that I’ve seen come and go, the more I’ve seen other stars end up sharing their number with far less distinguished NBA alumni. Like so much other historical trivia, these examples frequently present themselves whenever I’m revisiting an old video game, and see players in the rosters that I haven’t thought about in years. While they may not have reached the same level of fame and success as the stars who donned those jerseys, there’s still that connection to their famous peers and their iconic numbers. Let’s take a look back…way back…
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on how we might be reaching the end of the road as far as NBA 2K coming out on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Although I don’t support Next Gen Elitism any more than other forms of gatekeeping, there is a valid point when you sift through the snobbery. At some point, support does have to end for older hardware and software alike. It’s the same reason that, as much I dislike the timeframe and impact of NBA 2K’s server shutdowns, I do understand the practice. I can even relate it back to my time creating roster updates for NBA Live. As more and more gamers moved on to playing NBA 2K on PC, it was increasingly hard to justify the time and effort needed to mod games that were no longer as popular.
That’s just for mods that cost nothing to produce, and are freely available. Once the majority of gamers have moved on to the latest generation of consoles, it makes sense – technically and financially – for developers to leave the previous one behind. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the reality of the situation. With an annual release like NBA 2K, there’s always the question of how long the previous generation will still be supported. While I don’t have any official word about this – this is absolutely just me speculating – the series’ history and the handling of NBA 2K24’s preview season and post-release support subtly hint at this being the end of the road for PS4 and X1.
Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee4Three! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, or hit up Dee on Twitter.
You know that we enjoy poster dunks in the NLSC Top 10 Plays – and we know that you love them, too – so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they remain a featured attraction in this week’s countdown! However, we’ve also got a couple of cold-blooded gamewinners, some fancy passing, and timely defensive stops. We’re also big fans of variety and the classics as you’re probably well aware by now, and to that end, eight different games are featured this week, including one from Konami that I’m overdue to cover in Wayback Wednesday. Let’s get to the action!
What was your favourite highlight this week? Sound off in the comments below, and once again, get in on the fun by sending us your best plays! Remember, as long as it’s a basketball game, it’s eligible for the countdown. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube for more basketball gaming videos.
Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is Part 18 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.
In Part 17, I covered three big names that only appeared on certain teams in video games: Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, and DeMarcus Cousins. The five players that I’m covering today didn’t reach the same heights – not even close in fact – but there are at least two names that I’m confident everyone will recognise, as they had long and fairly successful careers. Indeed, number five on the list was very popular, despite never being an All-Star. If you were into the NBA around 2008, there’s a good chance that you’ll remember the story behind his phantom stint.
There are some interesting stories with the other four players on the list as well. The first player is the most recent example of a player who ended up with a phantom stint. The second player’s phantom stint came about due to an acrimonious departure from the NBA. The third player is frequently in the shadow of his far more famous and successful college teammates. The fourth player is a journeyman who played for eight different teams during his career. Can you guess the five players based on those hints? I’m sure some of you have picked up on a couple of them already, so let’s get to the list! Once again, a huge thanks to David L for his help in finding several examples.
This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at my season in NBA Live 96 PC, playing with a 1998 roster update.
I’ll readily admit that sometimes it’s difficult to get my head around the fact that it’s been over 25 years since The Last Dance came to an end. To put it into perspective, in 1998, that would’ve been the equivalent of looking back at the New York Knicks’ 1973 championship season! It doesn’t feel like such ancient history when your own nostalgia is involved, and as a Chicago Bulls fan, the 1998 season is naturally quite memorable for me. Those memories also involve the virtual hardwood, as it was during the 1998 season that I made my first roster updates for NBA Live 96 PC.
It was also one of the first seasons that I tried to play along with in a video game. Not in NBA Live 98, mind you. Unfortunately, our family’s aging PC couldn’t handle that game, as I found out firsthand when I tried running the demo! Instead, I used NBA Live 96 PC and my aforementioned 1998 season roster update. Although it was ultimately another season that I didn’t complete, it’s nevertheless one of my favourite basketball gaming experiences, thanks to all of the effort that I put into it beyond simply playing the games. Let’s take a look back…way back…
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a response to the ironic use of “new game bad, old game good” that shills are using to shout down criticism.
It’s undoubtedly obvious from both my articles and commentary on the NLSC Podcast that I greatly dislike thought-terminating clichés. One that I’m seeing pop up rather frequently these days is a derisively sarcastic “new game bad, old game good”; an ironic echo intended to mock and dismiss a preference for a previous release. It’s being trotted out a lot in the Mortal Kombat subreddit in the wake of criticism of Mortal Kombat 1, and we’ve certainly seen it (or words to that effect) in the basketball gaming community. And yes, since I’m writing about it, it obviously grinds my gears!
That isn’t to say that there’s no credibility to the sentiment. It’s a phenomenon that I’ve discussed before, and as I acknowledged at the time, it is true that pretty much every NBA 2K game – at least over the past decade or so – has been labelled by some people as being the worst in the series when it was new, only to be effusively praised later. Of course, the key words here are “some people”. There are others who are far too quick to call every new game the best ever, so it goes both ways. The point is that there’s nuance and context that’s ignored when we defend games by dismissing valid criticism with “new game bad, old game good” sneering. It’s an oversimplification.
Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee4Three! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, or hit up Dee on Twitter.
The top spot in this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays was taken by a most unlikely highlight – unless you’re familiar with MyTEAM shenanigans, of course – but that’s often what makes basketball gaming so fun! Variety is another thing that makes the virtual hardwood incredibly enjoyable, and once again we have plenty of that, with eight different games on display. Wild shots, unlikely putbacks, poster dunks, and historical players doing their thing…this stuff never gets old, especially when the community keeps coming through with such fantastic plays. Let’s get to the action!
What was your favourite highlight this week? Sound off in the comments below, and once again, get in on the fun by sending us your best plays! Remember, as long as it’s a basketball game, it’s eligible for the countdown. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube for more basketball gaming videos.
Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of the five best shout outs that basketball games have made to previous entries in their series.
Who doesn’t appreciate a good callback? Whether it’s an Easter egg/fleeting reference or something more prominent, continuity never goes astray. This applies to video games as much as books, films, and television shows, especially as the medium has strived to improve its storytelling across various genres. Whether it’s a cameo like Harold’s appearance in Fallout 3, a peek at an era from a previous game as in the Monkey Island series, or the Elder Scrolls’ running gag about stolen sweetrolls, they’re an enjoyable part of video game lore and exploration.
Needless to say, basketball video games and other annual sports titles are a little different. By their very concept, they have numerous sequels and there are several similarities between games, right down to the players as long as they’re active or on a classic team. In other words, the ubiquitous aspects of the genre don’t count as shout outs to previous games. However, various basketball video games have found ways to celebrate their lineage, or feature a unique nod to their predecessors. These shout outs to previous games may be minor and we wouldn’t necessarily miss them if they weren’t there, but oftentimes they’re the fun details that make a game feel special.
This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at keyboard controls in basketball video games.
Believe it or not, keyboard controls are still supported as of NBA 2K24 PC! If you take a look at the system requirements, you’ll see that a dual analog gamepad is only “highly recommended” to play the game. Of course, this is probably underselling the importance of such a peripheral in modern releases. Gameplay is unquestionably designed around the use of a dual analog gamepad, and has been since NBA Live introduced Freestyle Control. On top of that, based on a couple of Forum posts, NBA 2K24 has some issues with configuring its limited keyboard controls.
There was a time when keyboard controls were more than sufficient for PC basketball gaming; even in titles that recommended a gamepad. As a long-time PC gamer, I’m no stranger to using keyboard controls in a variety of titles, including basketball games. There have even been times when I’ve opted for the keyboard on the virtual hardwood despite having a gamepad, including retro gaming sessions nowadays. They have had their advantages, but also their share of drawbacks, even long before hoops games were designed for a controller with dual joysticks. Let’s take a look back…way back…
We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off by once again advocating for retro basketball gaming, as I believe old favourites deserve love…and also mods.
Retro gaming is hardly an obscure interest, no matter what the genre. Of course, the newest and most popular titles will always get the most attention, and annual sports releases are often left in the past by a majority of the fanbase. As such, there’s always risk in producing content based around old favourites, at least as far as getting more eyes on what you’re doing. Nevertheless, it’s something that I’ve had an interest in doing, going right back to when I joined the community and created the NBA Live Domain. As I’ve said before, I’ve realised that I was born to be a retro gamer!
That’s why I’ll always advocate for dusting off old favourites, if only every now and again. The clips and highlight reels of older basketball games that Dee and I have shared over the past few years have clearly resonated with the community. To that point, we’ve had comments along the lines of “I wish I could still play this”. Here’s the thing: there’s no reason you can’t! As long as you still have the games and hardware to run them, let nothing stop you from hooking up a console! Furthermore, as far as PC releases are concerned, recent ones readily work, while older titles can still run with minimal fuss. With that in mind, why shouldn’t we look to mod old favourites?
Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee4Three! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, or hit up Dee on Twitter.
From NBA Live 10 to NBA 2K24 to the recently-released Hoop Land, this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays covers a variety of titles. That’s how the countdown usually goes, but as always, the highlights themselves are anything but ordinary! Ambitious halfcourt lobs and self-alley-oops, putbacks and other poster dunks, playmakers deftly doing their thing in traffic, circus shots, full court threes…if you like any of these things – and I’m sure that you do – then you’ll find something to get hyped about in this week’s Top 10. Let’s get to the action!
What was your favourite highlight this week? Sound off in the comments below, and once again, get in on the fun by sending us your best plays! Remember, as long as it’s a basketball game, it’s eligible for the countdown. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube for more basketball gaming videos.
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