NBA Live 1995 (PC) talk

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NBA Live 1995 (PC) talk

Postby Leander on Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:11 am

What are your memories of Live 1995?

I had my first holiday job back then and bought my first computer for the game. The game arrived two weeks before my computer and I spent quite some time looking at the box art and reading the manual.
When I finally received my computer, I inserted the disc...and the game did not run. I always got a strange error message and still do not know why it did not work. The company where I bought the company created a custom cfg file that fixed the problem.

Of course I started playing as my fav team, the New York Knicks...then moved on to other teams. I only played in normal resolution mode as everything was too small in high-res mode. I even recorded the music on a tape recorder so I could listen to it in my walkman. :)

I also played with a friend with one custom team each (Stealers, Jammers, Slammers etc.) and drafted our players one by one.

I don't know if the game was too easy or I became too good after playing it for months, but I won every game 130-40 on the highest difficulty setting. What I disliked was my strife for perfection. I wanted to get realistic results and did not have fun actually playing the game and accumulating stats, but every player had to score as many points, grab as many rebounds, dish out as many assists as his real-life counterpart...which was more stressful than relaxed and fun.

One year later I bought Live 96 and only played it for an hour before returning it. My computer was not good enough and I would have to set the graphics to low...without the stadium, audience etc.
My next game was Live 99, then 00, 03, 04, 05, 06...before I moved to NBA 2K09.

I knew every players' details (name, position, number, college, some stats) by heart...even many years later...now I only remember most of the jersey numbers. Looking at screenshots still gives me nostaliga and I am creating a 94/95 mod for 2K20 now.

What players were missing in NBA Live 1995? Jordan, David Robinson, Charles Barkley? Also some not that good players...
And why has Charlie Ward a 3PT rating below 70? :D
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Re: NBA Live 1995 (PC) talk

Postby Andrew on Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:37 pm

So I'll begin by cheaply and shamelessly plugging two of my articles from our 25th Anniversary of NBA Live celebrations:

NBA Live 95 Retrospective
Fond NBA Live 95 Memories

I actually bought NBA Live 95 PC after I already owned NBA Live 96 PC - I first played NBA Live 95 on Super Nintendo - but even though it was a retro purchase of sorts, I played it a lot and really enjoyed it. My cousin and I used it to replay the 1995 season with the Houston Rockets, though in hindsight, we should've simulated more or just played through the Playoffs in order to get through it quicker. Nevertheless, every school holidays we chipped away at that season save, reliving the 1995 campaign. We also got a bit silly with it at times, modding Larry Bird into the game (overwriting Zan Tabak) so that he could make a comeback with the Rockets!

The 12-man rosters meant that a handful of journeymen were missing, but the major names were Michael Jordan, David Robinson, and Charles Barkley. Interestingly, although they were inactive for the entire season, Brad Daugherty and Gerald Wilkins were on the Cavaliers' roster, albeit as the 11th and 12th players in the rotation. Clyde Drexler was also the sixth man for the Rockets by default with Vernon Maxwell starting, which literally only happened in his Rockets debut. It provides an insight into when the rosters were finalised before the game went gold. I'm guessing Ward's low three-point rating is the result of the small sample size that came from the 10 games he played as a rookie, where he was 1/10 from distance in just 10 games. In fact, that lone three didn't come until after NBA Live 95 was already released.

To this day, the most frustrating aspect of NBA Live 95, 96, and 97 on PC is that there's no steal button. You just have to position the defender close enough and they'll start attempting steals automatically, which does result in a lot of cheap fouls (or at least, failed steal attempts). It's weird because PC gamepads and obviously the keyboard had enough buttons/keys to accommodate a steal control. I have a feeling it was like that in the Genesis version and the PC version might've been ported from that, hence the lack of a steal button on PC as well. One of those weird things from the early days of NBA Live on PC.

I love the atmosphere of the game, I still enjoy revisiting it, and even modding it from time to time, like when I made the Definitive NBA Live 95 mod. There's probably a bit more I could do with that actually, and I might give that a try sometime.
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