NLSC Your source for basketball video games.

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 five milestones that I’ve passed as an elder millennial basketball gamer.

Today, I turn 42; a number with notable pop cultural significance, owing to the fact that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy infamously cites it as the meaning of life. Iconic comedic science fiction aside, it’s not a milestone birthday, but nevertheless I am marking another trip around the sun. Candidly, it’s been a rather difficult year, especially with the sudden and unexpected loss of my Mum back in August. To state the obvious, that was not one of life’s milestones that I was relishing, nor was I at all prepared to experience it this year. It still doesn’t feel real.

It’s even more difficult because tomorrow would’ve been Mum’s birthday, so that’s a couple of firsts since her passing hitting me back-to-back. That’s life, of course. We encounter so many milestones, good and bad. Before I get too philosophical or indeed existential, let’s bring it back to basketball gaming. As Dee and I recently discussed on the podcast, there should be no shame or stigma against gaming as an adult, and it’s an activity that we’ll continue to enjoy. With that being said, as an elder millennial who’s been hitting the virtual hardwood for over 30 years now, milestones like these five have reminded me of the passage of time, and shifts in the games’ core audience.

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It’s good to see new mod releases for NBA 2K27 in our Downloads section, and to that end, walkemdown has uploaded a lighting update for the Jordan Era Chicago Bulls. Check it out at the link below!

walkemdown
Jordan Era Chicago Bulls Lighting

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

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 how our community made do with NBA Live 2001 PC for two years.

A new NBA season is less than a week away. It’ll be interesting to see if that inspires more enthusiasm for NBA 2K27, though following the recently-released Patch 2.0, many gamers aren’t exactly happy with the current state of the game. With that being said, NBA 2K27 isn’t universally disliked, and I expect that the excitement of a new season will encourage gamers to jump into MyNBA and perhaps MyCAREER. For those who have been holding off starting a MyNBA game until the opening night roster update comes through, the wait is almost over.

Of course, you don’t necessarily need to play the most recent basketball video game in order to enjoy current season rosters. Over the years, basketball gamers have stuck with a number of classic titles, thanks to modders dutifully keeping them up to date far beyond their original release. It’s a great option to have, since we’re not always satisfied with the newest game. Mind you, when it came to NBA Live 2001 and the PC basketball gamers in our community 25 years ago, there weren’t many other options! Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #651 of the NLSC Podcast!

The big patch for NBA 2K27 is out now in preparation for the launch of Season 2, featuring a long list of gameplay changes and technical fixes. Suffice it to say that so far, many gamers are dissatisfied with the update! This week we join the community in reacting to Patch 2.0 for NBA 2K27 with some hands-on impressions, as well as thoughts on the complete lack of goodwill that comes with ruining MyPLAYER builds. To that end, we discuss how NBA 2K and other games have come to rely much too heavily on post-release updates, and how those patches far too often change things for the worse. On a brighter note, we also recap a recent game of NBA 2K9 that has us keen to continue our Chicago Bulls Association.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 58:55 — 40.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

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 my recent habit of playing with NBA Legends in NCAA Basketball 09.

When my friend Tim gifted me his old PlayStation 3 some years ago, I was excited at the prospect of finally adding some NCAA titles to my collection. As you may know, college basketball games weren’t released outside of North America due to restrictions in their licensing, so I couldn’t get my hands on them here in Australia. I also wasn’t in a position to import them, since they wouldn’t work on my PAL consoles unless I got them modded; something I wasn’t too keen to do. The PS3 is region-free though, so at long last, that was no longer a barrier.

It took some time and patience as those titles are usually extremely expensive on the second-hand market, but eventually I was able to snag a handful of NCAA Basketball and College Hoops 2K games. It was a blast finally getting to play them, and novel to recognise some familiar aspects that were borrowed from their NBA counterparts, albeit with a distinctly collegiate flavour. With that being said, one of the great things about college basketball games is that despite sharing mechanics and tech, they don’t just feel like re-skinned NBA titles, but instead are their own experience. It’s therefore ironic that whenever I play NCAA Basketball 09, I’m playing with NBA Legends!

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Patch 2.0 – aka the big Season 2 update – is now available for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of NBA 2K27. The PC and Switch 2 patches are set to drop next Friday October 16th, in time for the new Season. As always, the update should come through automatically. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console or Steam client, or checking for updates manually.

In addition to preparing NBA 2K27 for Season 2 in MyTEAM and MyCAREER, Patch 2.0 is the game’s first major bug fix and gameplay update. It features several changes to gameplay, including tuned shooting, removal of “ghost contests”, improved passing and catching, and better-matched steal animations. Issues and exploits with dribbling have also been addressed.

There are also several major fixes and updates to modes and features. MyCAREER Eras will now transition across eras, allowing for a full 25-year career. Several issues with online games in The City have been addressed, along with progression bugs and other problems in MyCAREER and its story. MyTEAM has received some quality of life enhancements in addition to bug fixes, and issues have also been resolved in MyNBA. Updates to uniforms, arenas, and player likenesses have also come through, and will be applied with the next roster update. The PC and Switch 2 patches will also contain some platform-specific technical fixes.

You can find the full release notes for Patch 2.0 for NBA 2K27 below. Those details have also been added to the NBA 2K27 update history in our Wiki. We’ll be discussing Patch 2.0 for NBA 2K27 and the controversy surrounding it on the next NLSC Podcast, but in the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, as well as join in the discussion here in the Forum.

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Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee! 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, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.

As always, this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays is a spectacular cross-section of what makes basketball gaming so fun. There are vicious poster dunks, of course. There’s a hustle play that looks organic and rewards tenacity on the sticks. There are clutch shots, which also happen to involve classic teams and retro rosters. On top of all that, there are some wild moves and animations you may not see very often, making them all the more satisfying to pull off. It’s why our countdown is a perfect start to a weekend on the virtual hardwood, so 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 five major problems in various basketball video games that were never fixed.

The first major patch for NBA 2K27 came through this week, and unsurprisingly, it’s drawing mixed reactions at best. A contingent of gamers feel that the new update has ruined NBA 2K27, or at the very least, failed to address their concerns with it. I can’t comment on the changes myself as I continue to hold off buying the game until it goes on sale, but I can certainly sympathise with anyone who feels that their experience has been ruined by the patch. There have definitely been a couple of games over the years that I’ve lost my enthusiasm for following an official update.

To that end, I completely understand why many people groan whenever a new patch is announced, or they see one waiting to be downloaded. On top of spoiling a game you were enjoying, the ease of pushing through day one patches and other subsequent updates has led to many releases that feel unfinished. With that being said, patches are still ultimately desirable. When we look back at the days where video games received minimal patches or couldn’t be patched, today’s updates are arguably the lesser of two evils. Of course, patches don’t always fix everything, which is just as frustrating. Here are five major problems in various basketball games that unfortunately went unfixed.

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Though some of the hype has dwindled along with the audience on PC, NBA The Run continues to receive patches as Play By Play Studios remains committed to the game. To that point, two patches have come through for NBA The Run recently: one in September as the game’s first season got underway, and another just on Tuesday. As always, the latest update will be downloaded automatically as long as you’re online. If it doesn’t, try restarting your console or Steam client, or checking for updates manually.

The September update is a significant one, adding five legends to the game: Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett, Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, and Dirk Nowitzki. All of them must be unlocked in the Shop, at a cost of 5000 CRED each. There are also now championship belts to be won in the tournaments, an evolving trophy system, two new camera angles, two new courts, and more dunks and taunts that are available for purchase. Meanwhile, the October update is much smaller, but still important as it fixes some bugs and tweaks the effectiveness of shoves and steals, and also slightly reduces the speed of players.

Details on both of the most recent patches for NBA The Run can be found below. Additionally, a complete update history for NBA The Run with releases notes for all of the patches can be found here in our Wiki. Feel free to share any impressions in the comments below!

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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 reflecting on it being 30 years since I first played Microsoft’s NBA Full Court Press.

With this year marking 30 years since I became a true fan of basketball and also got into basketball gaming, I’ve been reminiscing about some memorable milestones that solidified my love of hoops, both real and virtual. Just as I fire up old games in order to discuss them accurately and in detail, I’ve been referring to a primary source for these reflections: my 1996 diary! Not only has it preserved thoughts that I had in the moment and thus jogged my memory of certain events, but it’s allowed me to confirm a timeline that’d become somewhat jumbled over the course of three decades.

To that end, I was surprised to discover that tomorrow – October 8th – marks 30 years since I first played NBA Full Court Press. The reason that I found this so surprising was that for a long time, I’d confidently recalled playing NBA Live 96 PC first. As I’ll discuss in early November, that wasn’t actually the case! I wouldn’t pick up my copy of NBA Full Court Press until a couple of years later, but suffice it to say that the game made an immediate impression on me. With the help of my old diary entry, let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #650 of the NLSC Podcast!

There have been some exciting developments over the past week or so with the revival of online features in NBA 2K15, NBA 2K16, and NBA 2K17 via community-maintained servers. Unfortunately, those efforts hit a snag following a DMCA takedown, though the project relaunched with the aim of complying with 2K, including dropping the approach of it being a paid service. One thing’s for sure, though: people are interested in revisiting old favourites, in large part due to dissatisfaction with NBA 2K27 and other recent releases. To that point, this week we join the community in reacting to those server revival projects, and the Save The Game movement that’s currently gaining traction with NBA 2K gamers.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 59:44 — 41.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

A couple of weeks ago, I described some of the ways that I’d love to mod the PC version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition; something I’ve dreamed of doing since I picked it up 30 years ago! Daex, who has been diligently creating some great modding tools in recent weeks, was keen to lend a hand in making those dreams a reality. To that end, we now have a utility to edit NBA Jam TE for PC: Sigil Jam TE.

Sigil Jam TE allows us to edit player names, replace player heads and portraits with a pixel painter tool, change audio assignments, and move players between teams. In short, basically all of the ideas that I outlined in my Friday Five article are possible with this modding tool! Therefore, you can expect to see some mods for the PC version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition – minimalist and more comprehensive – in the not-too-distant future. It might be a while before those projects rival the depth and scope of the ROM hacks for the Super Nintendo and original arcade releases, but it’s definitely going to be fun to finally tinker with a classic after three decades.

The tool has also led to some interesting discoveries after digging into the game’s files. As such, I’ll most likely be revisiting NBA Jam TE in another Wayback Wednesday feature to discuss them. That’s one of the fun things about so many old favourites. As the situation with Kevin Edwards in NBA Jam TE demonstrates, there are interesting things to discover and talk about, even after all these years!

In the meantime, download Sigil Jam TE here! A big thanks once again to Daex for running with the idea and developing an excellent modding tool that’s not only powerful, but also has character in its design. For those who are unaware, Daex is also doing some fantastic work with other tools that are aiding modders tinker with NBA 2K14 and NBA 2K27, so shout out to him for those efforts as well (and for making those utilities freely available). As always, we appreciate everyone who continues to uphold the values that our community was founded upon while making valuable contributions to the modding scene.

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 2K has been swinging the ban hammer with NBA 2K27.

Back on September 24th, 2K announced that they were following up on a pledge they made to NBA 2K27 gamers back in August to curb cheating. In an effort to protect the online scene from gamers using cheats and scripts to gain an unfair advantage, 2K issued what they described as the “first wave of permanent bans”. To that end, while some cheaters may have escaped action being taken against their account this time, 2K isn’t done swinging the ban hammer. Their announcement warns that they’ll stay on top of the situation, and that their detection methods are constantly improving.

For the most part, this news has been welcomed by the community, and rightfully so. Cheaters and hackers ruin the fun for everyone that desires fair competition, which I’d suggest is most people who play NBA 2K. Even the online elitists who favour a style that doesn’t resemble real basketball generally still want to perform those moves and strategies legitimately. With that being said, there have been issues. While the bans have clearly been effective in shutting down cheaters, it appears that at least some innocent gamers have been caught in the crossfire. There’s also the potential for 2K to swing the ban hammer maliciously, undermining a normally justified course of action.

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We don’t see too many people going back and releasing mods and tools for NBA 2K18 these days, as it was a divisive game to say the least! With that being said, the interest is still there, and to that end, Spree#8 has recently released a Hook tool for NBA 2K18.

For those who are unaware, a Hook tool is a .dll plugin that expands modding functionality, such as being able to assign cyberfaces and other files with custom ID numbers. The NBA 2K18 Hook can also be used to force player portraits even after players switch teams, and unlock retired numbers and shoe brands.

If you’re still keen on playing and tinkering with NBA 2K18, check out the tool at the link below! Thanks to Spree#8 for developing this Hook and releasing it free of charge. As always, we appreciate the people who are supporting the values that our community was built upon, and are keen to help their fellow gamers enhance their virtual hardwood experience in a variety of titles.

Spree#8
NBA 2K18 Hook

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee! 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, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.

As is often the case, this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays features an assortment of rim-rattling dunks in old favourites and recent releases alike. East Bay is well-represented, with more than one player going between the legs before throwing it down. A variety of mods are also on display, including great throwback rosters for NBA 2K14, classic teams in NCAA Basketball 09, and a familiar roster update for NBA Live 06. No matter which basketball video game you’re planning on playing this weekend, our Top 10 is ready to get you hyped to jump on the sticks. 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.