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 players that have been difficult to rate over the years.
Since they became visible attributes, Overall Ratings have been the subject of much contention and debate. They aren’t nearly as important to realistic performance as individual ratings and other tendency data, yet they’re not completely irrelevant either. If a player’s Overall Rating seems too high or too low, it’s usually an indication that some (or many) of their individual ratings are off. Also, because they’re factored into rotation logic and trade value in franchise modes, it’s important that a player’s Overall Rating generally reflects their ranking amongst their peers.
It’s why in official and unofficial rosters alike, it’s necessary to pay some attention to Overall Ratings. Attributes such as “Intangibles” – found in certain NBA 2K titles – have been helpful in artificially adjusting Overall Ratings. Otherwise, it’s usually a matter of fudging a few ratings here or there so that the Overall Rating feels more accurate, without compromising realism in player skill and performance. Even so, there are some players that have been historically difficult to rate, especially without the aid of an Intangibles attribute. Looking back, these players are among the most likely to end up being overrated or underrated, at least according to their Overall.
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 noteworthy and recurring inaccuracies that we’ve found in basketball video games over the years.
Licensed sports titles are judged differently to other genres of video games. Because they’re aiming to depict a real sport played by real athletes, we expect accuracy. Even in arcade games with all of their breaks from reality, there’s an expectation that the players will resemble their real life counterparts, and that their ratings will reflect their strengths, weaknesses, and overall style of play. The bar is set much higher in sim titles, especially as technological improvements have led to increasingly realistic graphics and gameplay. Above all, we expect attention to detail.
Of course, none of us are infallible, and thus human error is inevitable. As anyone who’s ever worked on a roster mod can attest, it’s all too easy to overlook a jersey number, neglect a needed ratings update, or forget to double-check the spelling of a newly-added player’s name. That’s not even getting into leaving a necessary file out of the update, or any other technical mistakes! Still, it’s interesting to discover some of the inaccuracies that made it into the default rosters, especially before official roster updates were commonplace. 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 my thoughts on whether or not 2K can fix the toxicity of its online scene.
When you produce content or any form of entertainment, I firmly believe that you get the audience that you cultivate. This isn’t to say that periphery demographics aren’t a thing, or that popular works don’t end up attracting toxic people for the same reasons they appeal to more pleasant fans. However, some works establish or openly welcome problematic attitudes within their core audience. This includes elitist gatekeeping, and open disdain and hostility towards differing preferences, as well as other genres and interests. They may champion pseudo-intellectualism, and in extreme cases, bigotry.
I’ve spoken at length on many occasions about the toxicity in NBA 2K’s online scene. One might argue that I’m being melodramatic or overly sensitive, but if so, I’m not alone in my views. Just about everywhere that you’ll find discussion of NBA 2K and its online modes, you’ll see complaints about the toxicity, including assertions that it’s the worst in gaming. Now, that may or may not be hyperbole, as many of the issues with toxicity in NBA 2K’s online scene aren’t exclusive to the series. Nevertheless, the scene in other games has been described more favourably. This leads me to ask just how much of the problem is under 2K’s control, and what they can do at this point.
Welcome to another instalment of The Sunday Substitute! After another lengthy hiatus, I’m coming back and continuing with my series within a series, The MyPLAYER Transaction Report. For anyone new here, it’s a series where I document the teams I’ve played for across the NBA 2K and Live titles.
This edition includes the two latest titles – NBA 2K22 and NBA 2K23 – with a detour in between. Indeed, this is the beginning of me getting a taste for the older titles. I’m noticing many of them are holding up better than I expected, even without their online features.
Perhaps it’s out of me longing for a time when MyCAREER wasn’t a gigantic cutscene with some basketball attached. Or maybe I just like going back and seeing the names that are no longer in the league. Shoutout to Gary Forbes, Toney Douglas, and Justin Harper – they were all my teammates at some stage in NBA 2K13. In any case, expect to see some older titles in future entries of this series.
For now, we start Part 5 with a familiar scenario: an alternate build. This time, I find myself north of the border, backing up a rising star in Pascal Siakam.
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.
While we never get any complaints about dunks in the NLSC Top 10 Plays – I mean, why would we? – this week’s countdown does change things up with some acrobatic layups, beginning with Dr. J doing his thing in NBA 2K14. These finesse finishes are set up by some crafty moves, demonstrating that there’s plenty of ways to finish with style on the virtual hardwood! To that point of course, there’s still an exciting array of spectacular dunks, including posters, alley-oops, and putbacks. Once again, the variety also extends to the featured games, as six different titles are on display this week. 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 player stints that never officially appeared in any basketball video games.
One of the reasons that I enjoy retro basketball gaming, and covering old titles for Wayback Wednesday, is the interactive almanac aspect. As I’ve said so many times, firing up old games is like consulting an almanac or encyclopedia. You’ll see all the familiar faces in strange places, and back in familiar places. The memorable teams of yesteryear are there to browse, and of course, play with. For so many of us, video games complemented our NBA fandom, and were part of following along with the league that year. Not to overuse a phrase, but they capture a snapshot of the season.
Well…for the most part! As I’ve demonstrated through various articles, there are aspects of basketball video games that prevent them from being completely accurate interactive almanacs. We’ve seen phantom stints; the players that only appeared on certain teams in games, as they didn’t ever suit up for that club in an official NBA contest. There are comebacks that were over before they began, and players who made it into the rosters of video games without ever tallying a single minute in the league. And then, there are the players who had stints that never appeared in the official rosters of a game. Here are five of the most memorable unaccounted for stints.
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 approach of having separate shoot buttons in NBA Live.
If you asked me which basketball video game has had perfect controls and gameplay mechanics, I’d have to say we’re yet to see it! Obviously perfection is an unrealistic goal in general, but even if we amend the definition to mean near-perfect and without any major criticisms, I don’t believe any title truly qualifies. Even the best basketball games that come extremely close in that regard have had at least one quirk with their controls and mechanics. It may not render them unplayable or unenjoyable, but there’s still something about the concept that’s flawed.
That’s basically how I feel about the separate shoot buttons in older NBA Live games. It initially worked and was a good solution as far as deepening shooting controls, but then was taken to the extreme in NBA Live 07, exposing its flaws. It’s an interesting situation though, especially when compared to similar attempts to expand the passing controls. 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 accusations of being “broke” are justifying predatory practices in gaming.
It’s time once again for me to attempt the impossible task of shutting down an ad hominem that’s become far too popular in basketball gaming discourse (and gaming discourse in general). Spend enough time talking about microtransactions, pay-to-win (or pay-to-enjoy) mechanics, and tedious grinding, and someone will accuse you of being “broke”. For you see, the only reason not to want to pay above and beyond the cost of a game is – apparently – because you can’t afford it. Conversely, being willing to dump disposable (or not-so-disposable) income into a game is somehow virtuous.
There are so, so many problems with that line of thinking. Sadly, however, shills continue to trot out that argument to shut down any criticism of recurrent revenue mechanics. “Broke” has become a buzzword along the lines of “cartoonish“, only it’s far worse because of how judgmental it is towards your fellow gamers. Obviously, there are hobbies that are expensive, and given the cost of hardware alone, video games do arguably qualify as such a hobby to some extent. There are still reasonable and unreasonable costs though, and focusing on personal wealth overlooks that the problems with recurrent revenue mechanics have nothing to do with being broke.
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.
It’s great to see regulars in the NLSC Top 10 Plays, and as Dee noted over on YouTube, it’s fair to say that the frequent contributors have their own signature styles! This week, we’ve got another jaw-dropping putback by LookyDaGamer, Kenny fires away with another full court buzzer-beater, and TeddyBearTheGamer has a dazzling dunk using college rosters. Dee and I are throwing it back with retro kicks, namely the original NBA ShootOut, and NBA Live 18 Ultimate Team. Six different games are featured this week, along with current stars, Legends, and MyPLAYERs. 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 14 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.
As I’ve said before, when I started this series of articles on players who only appeared on certain teams in games, it seemed as though I’d found some unique examples. The more I went back and combed through rosters however, the more players I ended up discovering! I thought that I’d exhausted all of the players worth mentioning, but not long after I posted Part 7, it became apparent that there were several that I missed. Thanks to the research of David L, I’ve been able to go back and cover them. It’s certainly been a fun trip down memory lane, looking into all of those names!
However, now that we’re up to the fourteenth instalment, many of the most prominent players who only appeared on certain teams in games have already been mentioned. A majority of the players I’m covering today had fairly short careers – indeed, only the very last player truly became an NBA veteran – and none of them were ever All-Stars. Three of them did become key role players though, and long-time NBA enthusiasts and basketball gamers will likely recognise the other two. There’s also some fun trivia here concerning their real life careers and the virtual hardwood, so let’s once again take a look at some phantom stints that were captured in video games over the years.
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 Dream Team in NBA 2K17.
They’ve often been cited as the greatest basketball team ever assembled. They swept their way to the gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, famously winning by an average of 44 points per game while never calling timeout. Eleven of its players are enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame for their individual accomplishments, and the team itself was collectively inducted in 2009. Eight years later, the team would also be inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. Simply put, the Dream Team was a squad for the ages.
As far as the virtual hardwood is concerned, the Dream Team has made a handful of official appearances in video games. They were the cover stars of EA Sports’ Team USA Basketball, and were included in NBA 2K13; appearances that I’ve previously covered here in Wayback Wednesday. The most recent game to officially feature the Dream Team was NBA 2K17, an appearance that stands out as somewhat different – and indeed slightly controversial – compared to previous releases. 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 making a case for releasing basketball video game demos.
It’s strange how when I think of basketball video game demos, they feel like such an antiquated concept. That may be because video game demos in general have fallen out of vogue – much as shareware did – but it hasn’t actually been that long since we had a demo for an upcoming hoops title. The last NBA Live demo came in 2018, while we had a small preview of NBA 2K21 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Now, that is indeed going back a few years at this point, but for some reason those demos don’t immediately come to mind. Instead, demos seem like a relic of the 90s and 2000s.
Of course, one could very well argue that that’s when basketball game demos were far more relevant. There was legitimate competition between NBA Live and NBA 2K right through to the end of the decade. The preview season for both games began around June, and there was a steady stream of information as they competed for attention and pre-orders. There was value in both companies dropping a demo a few weeks before the full version was released, to show off a few key improvements and possibly change some minds. Even with NBA 2K’s virtual monopoly over basketball gaming, however, I maintain that there’s still value in providing a pre-release demo.
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.
On top of the usual assortment of poster dunks, the theme of this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays is variety and Legends. From throwback rosters in NBA 2K23’s MyNBA Eras to squads of Legends in NBA Live 06 Dynasty and NBA Live 18 Ultimate Team, many of us are enjoying taking to the virtual hardwood with players of yesteryear! This week’s countdown also answers a very important question. Who is the true GOAT: Michael Jordan, M. Guard, or Roster Player? Konami’s NBA in the Zone 2 offers up a compelling argument! As for variety, nine different games are represented this week, which is awesome to see. 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 console-only basketball games that we really missed having on PC.
Although we’ve come to cover all basketball games across a variety of platforms, we certainly do have a reputation as a PC-oriented site. This goes back to our roots as the NBA Live Series Center, when we were strictly an NBA Live fansite and the home of many tools and mods (then referred to as patches) for the PC releases. Even as we’ve widened our scope, we’ve continued to support and advocate for the PC as a platform. As we’ve previously discussed on the NLSC Podcast, even though PC users are the smallest group of basketball gamers, it’s a passionate and enthusiastic demographic.
There was a time when the PC release of NBA Live was the definitive version, as even the average home computer far outstripped consoles in power and storage capacity. Around the time of the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox, the PC began to receive ports of the console version of NBA Live. Of course, it was one of the few basketball games that were being ported to PC, as there were far more console-only releases than PC exclusives. Putting aside emulation and the Xbox App in recent years, this means that we’ve missed out on having some landmark basketball games on PC. Here are five in particular we would’ve loved to have had on the platform.
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 weird stints can enhance the retro basketball gaming experience.
A topic that I’ve managed to get a ton of mileage out of for Wayback Wednesday is the phenomenon of familiar faces in strange places. It even spawned a companion series: familiar faces back in familiar places! Both are part of the interactive almanac aspect of basketball video games that I’ve frequently touted. It’s what makes revisiting old games and combing through the rosters so much fun, especially when there are weird stints that you’ve forgotten about. Together, they’re a great way for me to indulge my interest in NBA history and basketball video games alike.
However, these weird stints aren’t just fodder for creating content. Seeing them in games and reminiscing about them in articles makes me want to spend more time with those titles whenever I’m looking for something to play. That may seem odd, since the players usually aren’t in their prime and playing for the team that we mostly associate them with. Needless to say, I enjoy revisiting classic games that capture famous stints too, as they involve historically significant matchups. There are some rather intriguing scenarios involving those weird stints though, so let’s take a look back…way back…
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