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Wayback Wednesday: NLSC Art from the Archives

NBA Live Series Center Header

Welcome to Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! This is a feature where we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content.

As you may have seen, we’re currently celebrating the 20th Anniversary of NBA Live – a little past the date, but we want to finish what we’ve started – in a series of features that include retrospectives, in-depth articles, and even some patch releases. More of that content will be on the way shortly, with a retrospective of NBA Live 2001 being the next feature up. However, the NLSC itself has an anniversary coming up in the not too distant future. As of August, we’ll have been around for twenty years ourselves, in one form or another.

I expect that we’ll have some kind of celebrations, with some special content to mark the occasion. We might also look to spruce up our design a bit, as it’s been a few years since our last major renovation. The idea of freshening up our look prompted me to look back through the archives, both for ideas that will allow us to pay homage to our heritage in any new designs, as well as to simply take a stroll down memory lane.

Care to join me? If so, let’s take a look back…way back…

…and in some cases, I’m talking way back. As long-time visitors know, we were originally founded by Tim, Lutz, and Brien as the NBA Live Series Center, or NLSC for short. In August 2011 – around our fifteenth anniversary, and my tenth anniversary running the site – we officially re-branded ourselves as simply the NLSC, to better reflect our expansion into covering NBA 2K and other basketball video games. The NBA Live Series Center name will always be a part of our history, but like ESPN and KFC, we’re simply going by the initials these days.

The logos and artwork that I’m sharing here today incorporate both the NLSC initials, and the full NBA Live Series Center moniker. Enjoy!

NLSC Logos

Let’s start out with our logo. The current NLSC logo is an updated version of our previous two designs, created in 2005 and 2008 respectively. Former team member Finnboy created the original logo, and since then, Andreas, Conrad, Lean, and Arcane have all re-worked it at some point.

NLSC Headers

The layout of the NLSC has changed a few times over the years. Way back in the day, we even used frames! We’ve almost always had a header logo or banner though, and here are a few that long-time visitors might remember.

NLSC Section Headers

Speaking of headers, the sections for each game from NBA Live 95 through NBA Live 2003 had their own images. The logo for NBA Live 2003 was only used very briefly however, as we revamped our design in late 2002. We also had headers for NBA content, and the EA Graphics Editor.

NLSC Forum Header

These days, the NLSC Forum uses the same banner header as the main site. For our original black and blue boards, which ran on the Discus software, we used this image at the top of the page.

Old NLSC Forum Header

NLSC Wallpapers

Here are a couple of wallpapers that I found in the archives. Incidentally, if you’d like a modern, high resolution NLSC wallpaper, Conrad whipped up a fantastic one that you can download here. As you might expect, it’s the wallpaper that I’m using on my PC, as well as my phone.

Unused NLSC Logos

I don’t believe that I’ve ever shared these before, but here are two early versions of Finnboy’s designs for a new logo back in 2005, before we settled on the one posted above. As you can see, it’s a similar concept with a silhouetted player and our initials.

And finally…

This is certainly a bit corny, but it’s definitely a fun note to end on. These days, we’re running with the tagline of “Your source for basketball video games”, but we’d like to think that the NLSC is still where it’s at, too.

The NLSC Is Where It's At!

As I said before, as we look to freshen up our design moving forward, we might just look to pay homage to some of these designs. Modern twists on classic logos certainly seem to be in vogue when NBA teams change their branding these days. A few retro flourishes of our own may be in order, here and there.

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BadLuckLuke
BadLuckLuke
April 21, 2016 10:23 pm

\m/