Wayback Wednesday

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 Stretch and the rest of the OG NBA Street ballers.

With a spiritual successor in NBA The Run set to launch next month, NBA Street has definitely been on our minds as of late. As it happens, next month also marks 25 years since the original NBA Street was released. For basketball gamers of a certain age, that first NBA Street was the arcade basketball video game, held in higher regard than any of the NBA Jam titles. It certainly makes sense as it was a tremendous game that still holds up. Furthermore, by the early 2000s, the NBA Jam name had sadly come to be associated with some subpar releases.

I’ll be diving deeper into that with a retrospective next month. For now though, I’m reminiscing about Stretch and the other OG NBA Street ballers. In addition to placing NBA players on the blacktop, NBA Street introduced us to some memorable original characters. These ballers were basically the bosses of the City Circuit, standing in between us and the next location. Once we beat them, we could benefit from their streetball skill as they joined our squad. Stretch and the rest of the OG NBA Street ballers are undoubtedly legends, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 taking a look back at the time that Stephen Curry was briefly rated 99 Overall in NBA 2K16.

Sunday marked ten years since Stephen Curry was named the first unanimous Most Valuable Player in NBA history. We can certainly debate as to whether he should’ve been the first, as there’s been some questionable MVP voting over the years; even when the “correct” player won the award. However, I’d suggest that even if Curry shouldn’t have been the first, he was nevertheless absolutely deserving of the honour. He had a tremendous season, with both he and the Golden State Warriors breaking records. Of course, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers spoiled the ending!

A month before the Cavaliers’ 3-1 comeback became the story that defined the 2016 season however, Curry and the Warriors were obviously the talk of the league. Their impressive campaign and Curry’s individual brilliance naturally inspired debate about ratings and rankings, which also carried over to the virtual hardwood. In the wake of taking home a second-straight MVP and in unanimous fashion, Stephen Curry was boosted to 99 Overall in the official rosters for NBA 2K16, in an update that came through ten years ago yesterday. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 taking a look back at the In the Zone mechanic in the Xbox 360 version of NBA Live 07.

As you may know, NBA The Run will feature a mechanic called In the Zone. For more on that, be sure to tune in to the latest episode of the NLSC Podcast, where Dee provides his in-depth impressions of the upcoming game! Unsurprisingly, it’s not the first time that a basketball video game has used that well-travelled term for being locked in and performing at a high level. It was the name of Konami’s sim-arcade hybrid games, and it’s the title of an extremely catchy track from Midway’s NBA Hangtime. And of course, In the Zone was a mechanic in NBA Live 07 for Xbox 360.

Although NBA Live 07’s mechanic sprang to my mind when I first heard that NBA The Run would be using the name for its power-up, at this point, I think it’s safe to lay claim to the moniker. Not only is it a common term, but the Xbox 360 version of NBA Live 07 was a terrible release that few gamers would care to revisit, so its take on being In the Zone is largely forgotten. With that being said, Wayback Wednesday is as much about digging into the forgotten history of the virtual hardwood as it is celebrating our most nostalgic memories, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 taking a look back at NBA ShootOut ’97, aka Total NBA ’97 in PAL regions.

The first NBA ShootOut was an admirable effort by a brand new studio to provide an alternative to EA Sports’ established series of basketball games. However, as I noted in my retrospective of that game, it ultimately fell short of NBA Live 96 PC, which remains my pick for the best 1996 NBA sim title. Having recently spent more time with the PlayStation version of NBA Live 96, I’d also have to say that EA beat Sony on its own platform! Nevertheless, it was nice to have options; something that many of us greatly miss in light of NBA 2K’s virtual monopoly over the virtual hardwood.

To that end, when we had more developers throwing their hat into the ring with basketball video games back in the day, a few of them didn’t just stop at one. They made an effort to establish their own NBA series with annual releases to compete with NBA Live. Obviously it was ultimately NBA 2K that succeeded in dethroning EA’s game, but there were other commendable attempts along the way. That brings us to NBA ShootOut ’97, aka Total NBA ’97. Did Sony Computer Entertainment’s second hoops title improve upon the first NBA ShootOut? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 saluting former NBA player Gary Grant, who celebrated his 61st birthday yesterday.

One telltale sign of a long-time hardcore NBA fan is the ability to recall some of the most obscure players from decades ago. Obviously it’s easy to remember the all-time greats that younger fans who weren’t even born yet have still heard of, and many of the other prominent players from yesteryear also stick in our minds. However, when you grow up obsessed with hoops – watching games, playing video games, collecting trading cards, reading magazines – you also remember the journeymen, deep bench reserves, and that one player who had a six-game stint with your favourite team!

That brings me to Gary Grant. Although I remember dozens of players from the 90s, I’m not inclined to profile all of them in Wayback Wednesday. To that end, Grant is definitely a special case! In addition to popping up in games I watched and becoming a very familiar face in packs of trading cards, he’s also been involved in some of my fondest basketball gaming memories. He also stuck around for more than a decade, which is no minor feat. It’s time to give Gary Grant his due on the real and virtual hardwood alike, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 taking a look back at roster editing in NBA Live 18.

Roster editing is a feature that’s very easy to take for granted. It’s been a staple of basketball video games since the mid 90s, and even earlier titles such as TV Sports Basketball allowed us to modify the names and ratings of its generic players. With that being said, we couldn’t always count on games to provide us with roster editing functionality. A number of games in the 90s and even early 2000s also bungled the basics of roster customisation, making it needlessly difficult to trade players or alter a team’s rotation.

During its heyday, NBA Live was the gold standard in many aspects of sim basketball games, including roster editing. To that end, many of the best NBA Live games also feature deep and robust roster customisation functionality. In fact, the quality of NBA Live’s roster editing features remained fairly consistent even as the series faltered on the virtual hardwood. By the eighth generation however, the customisation options had become as disappointing as the gameplay. Fortunately, NBA Live 18 saw a big turnaround in both areas. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver/Memphis Grizzlies being in the NBA – and video games – for 30 years.

It’s funny how even though the Toronto Raptors and Memphis Grizzlies have been in the NBA for 30 years now, a part of me still thinks of them as “new” teams. After all, the Charlotte Bobcats came along in 2004. Of course, now that they’re the Hornets again and have reclaimed their history from 1988 to 2002, the New Orleans Pelicans have retroactively become the league’s newest team. Furthermore, 1996 was the year I became a hardcore hoop head. As such, the Raptors and Grizzlies were in the league when my interest in basketball really took off.

However, I was a casual fan before then, so I was aware that they were new. My first basketball video game – NBA Jam Tournament Edition – is set before they entered the league, and thus doesn’t include them. It wasn’t until I picked up NBA Live 96 that I played a game that featured the two expansion teams. As the youngest clubs during the early days of my fandom, they continued to feel new for years afterwards. All this is to say that it’s now been 30 years since the Raptors and Grizzlies were newcomers to the league and video games! Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 taking a look back at Bart vs. the Space Mutants.

In order to plan out future features, I’ve devised lists of potential ideas. For Wayback Wednesday, that naturally includes game retrospectives, but also topics related to modding and our community, specific features and content found in basketball video games, and NBA history. After all, there’s a finite number of old games to discuss, and certainly a finite number of them that I can get actually my hands on. At some point, I’ll have covered all of the games in my collection. With that being said, there are still many game retrospectives left on my To Do list.

That brings us to Bart vs. the Space Mutants. I’ve often mentioned it in passing, but now I’m finally covering it in detail. It’s undoubtedly flawed, which isn’t surprising for the time that it was released, though other games of its vintage have avoided similar pitfalls. Nevertheless, it’s a nostalgic favourite despite its flaws; or indeed, in some ways because of them. I’m committed to covering both good and bad games, so as always this overdue retrospective will attempt to look beyond my nostalgia, while simultaneously celebrating it. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 taking a look back at a handful of minor inaccuracies – some of which involve Harold Miner – in NBA Jam TE for PC.

The PC version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition is one of my all-time favourite basketball video games. It’s actually the first basketball video game that I owned, and I still have my original copy thirty years later. To that end, along with trading cards, it played a part in teaching me about NBA teams and players during the early days of my basketball fandom. Of course, being an arcade title that took liberties with ratings and indeed the importance of certain players, it wasn’t the most accurate introduction across the board!

Obviously I had other, more accurate resources as well, from magazines and books to watching every game and episode of NBA Action that I could. It soon allowed me to identify the inaccuracies in NBA Jam TE PC, though it didn’t diminish my love of the game. In fact, as the years have gone by and I’ve also learned more about video game development, it’s been fascinating to dust off the game and analyse those inaccuracies; especially the ones that appear to be intentional design choices. There are a few that I’d like to discuss today, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 taking a look back at the classic teams in the College Hoops series.

It’s well-known that EA Sports included a variety of classic teams in their college basketball video games, in no small part because they ended up being the catalyst for Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the NCAA. Their infamy arguably overshadows the inclusion of classic teams in the College Hoops series, but 2K’s games did indeed feature a complement of historical squads as well. Considering my current preference for indulging my nostalgia and passion for basketball history, they’re an incentive to consider spending more time with the two College Hoops titles that I own!

Time will tell if those games will crack my rotation. As far as their NBA counterparts are concerned, I do enjoy NBA 2K7, but I’m not a fan of NBA 2K8. For now though, let’s talk about the historical content in the College Hoops games. As you may expect, there’s a generous selection of retro squads spanning decades of college basketball history, though the array of teams did change slightly every year. So, what were the classic teams in College Hoops like, and why didn’t they lead to the same controversy that befell EA’s NCAA titles? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 taking a look back at Fast Break, a PC basketball game developed by Accolade

Over the years, thousands of classic video games have been made available to buy digitally. Game preservation is important, and it’s fantastic that GOG (and to some extent, Steam) are keeping retro favourites alive. Of course, securing the rights to certain games is tricky when the studios that made them cease operations, or they’re bought out by other companies. When it comes to sports games, licensing makes it even more difficult. These two factors are why we don’t see too many old basketball games being re-released on digital platforms; especially those that are NBA-licensed.

However, there is one “ancient” basketball game that – as of writing – is available to purchase on GOG and Steam: Fast Break. Developed and published by Accolade for MS-DOS and Commodore 64 in 1988, and Amiga, Apple IIGS, and Mac in 1989, it’s a contemporary of Electronic Arts’ Lakers vs. Celtics and Jordan vs. Bird. The rights to Fast Break and other Accolade titles ended up with Ziggurat Interactive, who re-released it in 2021. So, what is Fast Break like, and how does it compare to other pioneering basketball video games? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 pondering another historical NBA What If, specifically what if Wilt Chamberlain made a comeback in the 80s?

Monday marked 64 years since Wilt Chamberlain scored a record 100 points as his Philadelphia Warriors defeated the New York Knicks 169-147. As a young basketball fan in the 90s eager to learn about the history of the game, that iconic performance seemed so long ago. After all, it happened 22 years before I was even born! To that point of course, now that I’ve witnessed and am nostalgic for events in NBA history that happened upwards of 30 years ago, it’s certainly changed my perspective of time. Nevertheless, to me Wilt Chamberlain will always be from a bygone era.

However, Wilt Chamberlain playing in the NBA came very close to feeling like more of a modern event from the perspective of a 90s kid. Even though many stars of the 80s had retired before I got into basketball, their careers intersected with the all-time greats that I grew up watching, such as Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, and so on. They were frequently spotlighted in the NBA home videos that I watched, so in a way they still felt contemporary. The same could’ve been true of Wilt Chamberlain, had he made a comeback in the 80s. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 revisiting NBA Live 19 with an updated retrospective, in light of the game re-entering my rotation last year.

Last year, after I made a post that mentioned NBA Live 18 on the NLSC’s socials, I received a response asserting that NBA Live 19 was “ten times better”. As someone who never really warmed up to the game, that was certainly an intriguing claim! I was sceptical, but I wasn’t about to stubbornly dismiss it out of hand. After all, a second look at NBA Live 18 made me realise that I enjoyed it even more than I remembered. Furthermore, a dedicated contingent of gamers continued to play NBA Live 19 for many years after its release, suggesting that there was a fun experience on offer.

And so, I decided to give NBA Live 19 another try. Considering that it became my basketball game of choice from August last year right through to its server shutdown back in January, it’s safe to say that I have a far more positive view of it now! There are still aspects that I don’t like, or believe could and should have been better, but at the very least I’ve developed more of an appreciation for it. Is it ten times better than NBA Live 18? Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s a respectable release that should’ve been a stepping stone to an even better game. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 pondering another historical NBA What If, specifically what if Charles Barkley was traded to the Lakers in 1992?

When I think of Charles Barkley, I generally picture him in the Phoenix Suns’ iconic sunburst uniforms of the 90s. After all, that’s where he was playing when I started taking a keener interest in basketball. Hoop heads who have been watching longer than I have may well picture him on the Philadelphia 76ers instead, and indeed that stint accounts for half of his career. With that being said, it wouldn’t surprise me if the MVP and NBA Finals appearance in 1993 has led to those fans likewise coming to associate Chuck with the Suns more than the 76ers (or the Houston Rockets).

Of course, had a proposed trade gone through in 1992, it seems a safe bet to say that we’d have never seen Sir Charles in a Suns or Rockets uniform. For a brief moment, Charles Barkley was set to join the Los Angeles Lakers, before the deal went up in smoke. As with any What If involving legendary players, it’s fascinating trying to imagine an alternate history and all of the possible ripple effects. It’s all speculation at the end of the day, but Charles Barkley going to the Lakers is undoubtedly a huge What If, in real life and on the virtual hardwood. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 how my attitude towards the Courtside Comedy cutscenes in NBA Live 2003 has changed over the years.

When I wrote about NBA Live 2003’s Courtside Comedy cutscenes almost ten years ago, my perspective was definitely still influenced by the disappointment I felt back in 2002. Although I noted that they were undoubtedly nostalgic in a weird kind of way, I reiterated that the tone wasn’t ideal for a sim game. Indeed, I still feel that way! As such, I believe that dropping the silly hi-jinks in NBA Live 2004 was the right move. After all, while video games are meant to be fun and not everything has to be super serious, atmosphere is important, and unwanted silliness can easily ruin the vibe.

However, as the years have gone by, I’ve developed more of an appreciation for the Courtside Comedy cutscenes. That’s not to say that I wish they’d continued to appear in future NBA Live games – again, I do stand by my criticism of them – but they were a bold experiment that, for better or worse, were undeniably memorable. Besides, it’s not as though they were universally disliked! On top of respecting differing opinions on the Courtside Comedy cutscenes, I’ll admit to enjoying them on some level myself. Why the change of heart? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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