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 basketball games that you may not be aware that we can mod.
When we were founded as the NBA Live Series Center all the way back in 1996, the focus of our modding community was naturally the NBA Live releases on PC. When NBA Live went console-only and NBA 2K came to PC, we turned our focus to that series. Basically, we’ve primarily focused on the brand leader that’s releasing on PC, but we’ve long been open to supporting mods for other games as well. There haven’t been as many of those releases – at least not around these parts – but modders have branched out into other titles, such as johnz1’s efforts for NBA Jam: On Fire Edition.
To that point though, there have been some other hoops titles over the years that can be modded. A focus on NBA Live and NBA 2K, and the general lack of popularity of these games, are the main reasons we haven’t seen fit to mod them. Nevertheless, they can be tinkered with to some extent, even if it’s simply renaming players. With more and more enthusiasm for retro basketball gaming and modding nowadays, there might be niche interest in furnishing them with a simple mod or two. Even if there isn’t quite enough interest to warrant any major public releases, the knowledge that we can mod these overlooked games could always spice up our retro basketball gaming sessions!
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 pondering another historical What If; that being, what if Michael Jordan didn’t retire in 1993?
Yesterday marks thirty years since Michael Jordan announced his return to the NBA following his retirement to play baseball in 1993. If you know your NBA history, you’re well aware of what happened next. After falling to the Orlando Magic in the second round, the Chicago Bulls bolstered their roster with Dennis Rodman, and His Airness led the team to a second threepeat before retiring for the second (but as it turned out, not final) time. Even with the interruption – even with the controversial Wizards stint – Michael Jordan had a tremendous career to put it mildly.
Of course, even with all of his accomplishments that still lead many pundits and fans alike to declare him the Greatest of All-Time – and I’m among them – MJ’s career does invite a couple of What Ifs. The most obvious one that would’ve changed the course of the mid 90s, and further added to his legacy, is if Michael Jordan didn’t retire in 1993. Now, as I acknowledged when I discussed the What If regarding Karl Malone becoming the all-time leading scorer, hypothetical scenarios don’t prove anything. They’re fun to consider though, so 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 planning classic team rosters.
When I discovered the NLSC way back in 1997, and the work that our founders and others in the community were doing, it wasn’t long before I was hooked on modding (or patching, as we called it back then). I’d already been tinkering with the rosters in NBA Live 96 PC, trying to update them for the new season as best I could with what could be done in-game. By the end of the year, I was working on a 1998 season roster. That tipped off a long tenure of updating rosters for NBA Live, and although it was a fun time in our community, I did eventually get burned out on modding.
Of course, the lure of modding is strong, so I’ve remained reluctant to close the door on being more involved in the scene. I’ve dabbled here and there, and as I noted last year, I want to be judicious when choosing projects to work on. That way, they stand a much better chance of being completed. However, even as I’ve taken a step back from modding, ideas for new rosters have frequently come to mind and subsequently joined a long list of projects to consider. Some of those ideas include retro season and classic team rosters for my all-time favourite games. I’m particularly keen on the latter at the moment, but to that end, classic team rosters definitely require some planning.
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.
When it comes to the NLSC Top 10 Plays, the Ides of March is nothing to fear; not if you’re after incredible basketball gaming highlights, anyway! Wild buzzer-beaters, cold-blooded game-winners, jaw-dropping poster dunks, and timely defensive stops make up this week’s spectacular countdown. Not only that, but ten different games are on display from NBA Live 95 through to NBA 2K25, once again demonstrating how much our community loves to mix the classics in with more recent releases. But that’s enough talk: 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 modding projects that I unfortunately had to abandon before they were finished.
When I was reading Felicia Day’s first book several years ago, she offered up the advice to never throw away anything you’ve written. By all means start over or try to re-work what you’ve drafted, but don’t just delete the original file. After all, you may want to return to it as a starting point, or at least salvage a part of it. I’ve kept that in mind when writing articles since then. Whether it’s keeping the first draft while I take another run at a topic, or saving what I’ve written when I remove an example from a Friday Five list so that it can potentially be used elsewhere, I’m hesitant to scrap work.
The same goes for modding projects. Even an abandoned roster potentially has some data or art assets that can be recycled in another mod, so there’s value in holding onto both. Furthermore, while projects can hit a brick wall, there’s always a chance that you can persevere, perhaps by changing direction or scaling down the project. With that being said, there comes a time where you need to cut your losses rather than falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy. I’ve certainly done that with a few modding projects over the years! It’s never a good feeling, but it’s far wiser than wasting time on an ultimately doomed idea. Here are five of my modding projects that fell through.
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 Bulls vs. Blazers and the NBA Playoffs.
As I’ve mentioned in previous Wayback Wednesday retrospectives and other articles, my introduction to basketball gaming was through NBA Jam Tournament Edition, NBA Live 95, and NBA Live 96. To that end, I don’t have the same nostalgia for the NBA Playoffs series – EA’s forerunner to NBA Live – as people who got into hoops and the virtual hardwood earlier than I did. The massive jump that took place with NBA Live 95 made it difficult to truly appreciate its predecessors at first, but as I’ve collected them and given them a proper chance, they’ve definitely grown on me.
I’ve jumped around a little as I’ve covered these classics for Wayback Wednesday. I tipped things off with the Olympic spinoff Team USA Basketball, went back to the beginning with Lakers vs. Celtics, and then most recently profiled NBA Showdown. Since chronological order is already out the window and a retrospective is overdue anyway, I figured I wouldn’t waste any more time getting to Bulls vs. Blazers! The final game to bear the “NBA Playoffs” branding may have been surpassed by its successors, but it’s still a classic release. 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 frank thoughts on the issue of having an obsession with mods.
Mods have been a huge part of what we do here at the NLSC since we were founded way back in 1996, so it’s no surprise that there’s an obsession with them. For the most part, it’s just enthusiasm, and for good reason. Mods have allowed the community to add missing content, enhance the existing content, unofficially fix bugs and other problems, and even convert games into something that was never intended. We’ll always support the modding community however we can, and acknowledge all of the hard work that goes into mods, past, present, and future.
However, there are times when our enthusiasm for mods – our obsession with them – isn’t healthy, or beneficial to basketball gaming. Making them the focus of the games we play to the exclusion of other factors and topics impacts our ability to enjoy and critique titles. It also stifles or at least derails any conversations that aren’t concerned with modding. Again, modding is and always will be a staple of our community, and I have no desire to discourage that. That’s not what this is about. It’s about recognising that an obsession with mods leads to a one-track mindset that devalues vanilla games, and often turns modding into a crutch for enjoying our time on the virtual hardwood.
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.
You can always depend on the NLSC Top 10 Plays for fantastic high-flying basketball gaming highlights, but we’re not just about dunks! For example, like all hardcore hoop heads, we also love trick shots and buzzer beaters. To the end, this week’s countdown includes a great hustle play, as well as one of the most incredible gamewinning shots ever featured in our Top 10! There’s also the great variety that you’ve come to expect from our countdown, as nine different games are in the spotlight this week, from NBA Live 96 all the way through to NBA 2K25. 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 basketball video games that I wish we could mod.
It’s important that we don’t dismiss modding ideas too readily, such as the possibility of tinkering with specific games. We wouldn’t have all of the amazing projects that our community has created if we gave up too easily! At the same time, we do need to be realistic. If nothing else, it’s fine to acknowledge that something isn’t possible by any means that we currently know of, and that figuring out how to mod a particular game is proving to be exceptionally difficult. Some ideas are pipe dreams, and it’s far less likely that we’ll be able to mod certain games.
Of course, as unlikely as it may be, we can still dream! Whether it’s a great game that could be made even better with mods, or a mediocre release that might be a bit more fun with some custom content, there are titles that I wish we could mess around with. Indeed, there’s a part of me holding out hope that someone might develop ways to mod the games that I’ll be discussing here today; especially the ones that are all-time favourites. Considering what johnz1 has done with the PlayStation 3 version of NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, we shouldn’t completely rule out mods for a couple of these games. For now though, I wish we could mod these games more in-depth, or at all.
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 reminiscing about my experiences updating NBA Live 96 PC before discovering the NLSC, and subsequent entry into modding.
There are a few reasons why NBA Live 96 PC remains one of my all-time favourite basketball video games after almost three decades. It was the newest NBA Live as I was really getting into basketball, set in the memorable 1996 season. Along with the PC version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition, it’s one of the very first basketball video games that I owned; indeed, I still have my original copies of both titles! It was also the game that ultimately led me to discover the NLSC when I finally had access to the internet, and thus was my introduction to modding, then called patching.
Of course, even before I learned about the modding/patching scene, I’d developed an interest in updating NBA Live 96 PC. I’d suggest that whenever a basketball game has roster editing functionality, at some point most of us get the idea to update it. Whether it’s making moves from the current year, or updating it for a new season, there’s an interest in playing a game we like with the latest rosters. There was only so much that we could change in NBA Live 96 PC’s rosters within the game itself though, which is what made modding such an exciting discovery! 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 reflections on whether to create 1996, 1997, or 1998 season rosters, as I consider future modding projects.
As I’ve said before, in order to stand the best chance of completing any major roster projects that I attempt moving forward, I need to pick an idea that I’m invested in, for a game that I want to play. When it comes to the games that I’d most like to play and mod, NBA Live 06 PC is definitely one of the frontrunners. As far as roster projects, I’d prefer something nostalgic over a current season update. This includes an Ultimate Jordan roster, various classic team rosters, and if I can assemble the appropriate assets and viable placeholders, at least one complete retro season mod.
To that end, I have a few seasons in mind. My work with NBA 2K6 for Xbox 360 has demonstrated how 2006 season games can be effectively rolled back a few years, and such projects can be made even better on PC with all of the modding capabilities. I’ll always be drawn to the idea of bringing the 90s into a 21st century favourite though, but that raises the question of which year. Being a 90s kid and Chicago Bulls fan, the 1996, 1997, and 1998 seasons are all prime candidates when mulling the possibilities for retro rosters. However, even if I were to create all of them for NBA Live 06 PC or another game, I’d still need to pick one to start with. So: 1996, 1997, or 1998 rosters?
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.
The NLSC Top 10 Plays is starting both a new month and the weekend off with a bang, with fantastic highlights spanning three decades of basketball gaming! From a midair lob in NBA Live 96 to thunderous dunks and a clutch play in NBA 2K25, the community showed out once again this week. With this year’s March Modness tipping off, an outstanding modding project is appropriately also on display. As always, our countdown will get you hyped for another weekend of basketball gaming, 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 pet peeves I have when it comes to NBA branding.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from changing up the design and layout of the NLSC from time to time in the twenty three years that I’ve been running the site, it’s that you can’t please everyone. No matter what improvements there might be, there’ll always be a couple of comments demanding that we change it back. As frustrating as that is to read, I get it. After all, aversion to change is common, and I’m as guilty of it as anyone else! New aesthetics can be jarring and may take time to get used to, no matter how nice they are, or how much a fresh look was needed.
This is something to keep in mind whenever NBA teams introduce new branding. Of course, sometimes those new designs leave us wondering what the people responsible were thinking! We also tend to get attached to certain logos and jerseys – especially the ones that were in use when we first got into the NBA – so personal preference will lead us to balk at certain branding. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re right or wrong, but we are all entitled to our opinions on the looks that teams sport. To that point, I definitely have some pet peeves when it comes to NBA branding past and present. These are the five that spring to mind as the ones that I find the most irritating.
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 the rosters in the 16-bit version of NBA Live 96, which were affected by the 1995 lockout.
There have been four lockouts in the history of the NBA. We all remember the two big ones that happened in 1998 through early 1999 and in 2011, because they actually resulted in games being cancelled. Conversely, I’d suggest that fewer fans recall the lockouts of 1995 and 1996, as the former was resolved in time for the season to begin on schedule, while the latter lasted all of two hours before the league and the Players Association came to an agreement. As such, those stoppages ultimately weren’t as impactful or controversial.
Basketball gamers are well aware of the effects that lockouts had on the 1999 and 2012 season titles. However, the 1995 lockout impacted a few video games as well, including Konami’s NBA in the Zone, and NBA Live 96. The PC and PlayStation versions of NBA Live 96 were released late enough to include offseason moves and the new rookie crop, but the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive versions were released during the lockout, sticking them with outdated 1995 season rosters. As such, they capture an interesting moment in time. 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 reflections on how the NBA 2K12 intro makes me wistful nowadays.
To celebrate World Basketball Day – which has indeed been declared an official day of observance – I’ve taken to posting the intro from NBA 2K12 on the NLSC’s socials every December 21st. It tends to get some traction with shares, likes, and comments, because it’s one of the very best intros that we’ve seen in a basketball video game. Accompanied by Kurtis Blow’s iconic hit “Basketball” and re-creating some of the best moments in the history of the sport in a way that blends past and present, it truly is a love letter to hoops.
Thanks to the way that Facebook’s algorithms work, the post on our page is the one that achieved the furthest reach out of all our socials, and it’s still being watched and getting regular reactions as of writing. Many of the comments are praising it for being such an incredible intro to a basketball video game, and also calling NBA 2K12 the best game in the series. I’m more inclined to agree with the former sentiment rather than the latter, but nevertheless, I’m glad that I’m not alone in my enjoyment of the NBA 2K12 intro. At the same time, seeing those comments and watching the intro again has left me feeling wistful about changes in basketball and gaming since then.
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