
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 re-playing the 1995 season in NBA Live 95 PC, a few years after it had concluded.
As I’ve said, I was born to be a retro gamer. My introduction to gaming was through a console that was already outdated, and even in the late 90s I was sticking with and going back to old favourites. The family’s aging 486 PC and the Nintendo 64 being the console I owned were also factors, especially when it came to basketball gaming. I didn’t have much choice without the hardware to play the newest NBA Live, nor could I convince my folks that I needed yet another basketball video game (“you’ve already got plenty!”). Nevertheless, my collection began when I was a teenager.
One of the most exciting pickups was NBA Live 95 PC. The Super Nintendo version of NBA Live 95 had been my introduction to 5v5 sim basketball games, but it was a frequent video store rental. NBA Live 96 was the first game I owned on PC, and also one of the first basketball video games that I actually owned, period. It was by chance that I happened across a copy of NBA Live 95 PC one school holidays, and as soon as I had it, it entered the rotation of games that my cousin Clinton and I played as often as we could. We eventually decided to re-play the 1995 season, and it became one of my all-time favourite hoops gaming experiences. Let’s take a look back…way back…