Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five recalls fives times that basketball video games featured moments that weren’t completely family friendly.
Generally speaking, basketball games don’t push the envelope with controversial content. It’s not something the NBA is keen to sign off on, and it’s not really the genre for content that isn’t exactly family friendly. There’s no risqué material, or violence beyond hard fouls in sim titles and shoving in arcade games like NBA Jam. It’s simply not the right genre for that. If I want a more adult-themed game with combat, I’ll play a Fallout title. If it’s bawdy humour I’m after, I might dust off a game in the Leisure Suit Larry series. If I’m after something gorier, there’s always Mortal Kombat.
We play basketball games for the sport they represent, whether it’s a realistic or more cartoonish depiction of hoops. With that being said, there are a handful of times that basketball games have surprised us with content that pushed the boundaries of their family friendly rating. It’s seldom been in poor taste, and never anything close to the violence, profanity, and lewdness of some of the aforementioned games. At the same time, it’s not something you’d expect to see or hear in a game that’s aimed at all ages. I should note that this isn’t meant to be a stuffy pearl-clutching article, but rather a light-hearted reflection on unexpected content in otherwise family friendly games.