NLSC Your source for basketball video games.

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 Jam 2010 by EA Sports, with a video retrospective.

Since April 2023 marks the 30th Anniversary of NBA Jam, I was intending to post this feature last week, rather than my look back at the golden presentation of NBA Live 96 PC. However, due to a couple of things getting in the way, it took a bit longer to produce. Of course, I was already well overdue to profile NBA Jam 2010 here in Wayback Wednesday! It’s a game that’s surrounded by some controversy owing to its connections to NBA Elite 11, which is tremendously unfortunate as EA’s NBA Jam was a fantastic reboot of the series. Let’s take a look back…way back…

As you can probably guess, this mini-celebration of the 30th Anniversary of NBA Jam will be going into overtime, as next week – barring any unforseen circumstances – I’ll be profiling NBA Jam: On Fire Edition! In the meantime, I hope that you enjoyed this video retrospective. Don’t forget to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel for more great basketball gaming content!

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #474 of the NLSC Podcast!

This week, we’re joined by one of our favourite streamers and content creators in the basketball gaming community, KingJMASE! Mase shares the story of founding the Elite Street League for NBA 2K, and the inspiration behind his commentary style. We also discuss the challenges of content creation, including time management and tempering expectations, as well as the importance of authenticity and originality. Mase also recalls his history with basketball games and basketball, and recounts one of his most impressive performances on the virtual hardwood. Finally, we wrap up a fun conversation by putting him in the hot seat to answer five rapid fire questions about real and virtual hoops alike.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:48:26 — 74.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

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 ensuring that the journey is worth the time and effort in basketball video games.

In recent years, there’s been a puzzling acceptance of the notion that we should have to work to have fun with the basketball video games we play. I’m not talking about the time and effort it takes to master strategies and stick skills, complete challenges, and level up accordingly. A game that’s over too quickly is generally unsatisfying, unless you’re attempting a speedrun. The best rewards and whatever counts as being 100% completion in a game shouldn’t be quick and easy to attain. For most people, it isn’t fun to be handed absolutely everything.

These are uncontroversial statements that I’m sure we can all agree upon. However, the sentiment has mutated into a bad faith argument about gamers wanting everything right away. That may be true of a scant minority of less patient basketball gamers, but most of us just want a rate of progression that’s fair and enjoyable, with rewards that make the journey feel worthwhile. Again, the key to that bad faith argument is in the wording: “you don’t want to put in the work“. A video game should not have to be treated like an occupation in order to be enjoyed, or feel like a rewarding journey. It’s therefore vital that any rewards system makes us feel like it was time well spent.

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Last month, johnz1 unveiled the NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition mod for the PlayStation 3 version of NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. More than a couple of gamers expressed interest in seeing a current season update for the game, and johnz1 has delivered just that with NBA Jam: On Fire Edition 2023!

The mod updates 21 teams for the 2023 season, complete with new player heads, team uniforms, courts, crowd signs, and more. All players and teams are unlocked, with the exception of the final “boss team” in Road Trip, which is exclusive to the mode. The nine teams that haven’t been added/updated for 2023 are still present in Road Trip, but are utilising replacement heads in lieu of new faces.

Download NBA Jam: On Fire Edition 2023 here! Please note that the mod is playable on both the RPCS3 emulator, and a jailbroken PlayStation 3; full installation instructions can be found in the release and support topic in the Forum. johnz1 will also be releasing documentation and tools to aid in modding NBA Jam: On Fire Edition in the future, so stay tuned for those resources! He also joined Dee and I for a chat in Episode #471 of the NLSC Podcast, so if you haven’t already, give it a listen to get the inside story on modding NBA Jam: OFE, and johnz1’s background in tinkering with various video games.

As you may know, the Season 6 patch for NBA 2K23 PC ended up interfering with looyh’s NBA2K_Hook, and its Player Editor plugin. This is due to the new anti-cheat measures which flagged those modding utilities with a false positive, owing to technical similarities to software such as Cheat Engine.

Fortunately, looyh has been able to update both tools for use with the Season 6 patch! As such, mods can once again be enabled, and rosters edited more deeply, without encountering crashes due to the anti-cheat measures. The new version of NBA2K_Hook also includes an option whether or not to initialise mods and plugins when booting up NBA 2K23. This is obviously excellent news for modders and mod users alike, so a big shout out as always to looyh for the outstanding efforts and contributions to our modding community!

You can download the new version of the hook here, while the updated Player Editor plugin can be found here. Make sure that you grab both in order to avoid the random crashes that were caused by conflicts with the new anti-cheat measures. For more information and support, please see this topic in the NBA 2K23 Modding section of the Forum.

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 always special when a lesser-known/seldom seen title makes it into the NLSC Top 10 Plays! In this week’s countdown, that’s Sony’s NBA 07, featuring a devastating dunk delivered by LeBron James. The other six featured games are likewise serving up a slew of slams, from backboard-shattering jams to emphatic finishes on two-way plays. Custom rosters are also on display, including NCAA teams in NBA 2K23, fantasy draft rosters in NBA 2K19, and updated 2023 season rosters in NBA Live 19. Once again, it’s clear that the community has been enjoying some fun times on the virtual hardwood this past 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 annoyances in basketball video games that ended up becoming novelties.

I’m still a sim gamer at heart. When I play franchise games, I prefer to start with real rosters, and allow the alternate reality to develop “organically”, rather than hold a fantasy draft or create fictional scenarios. I want to see sim games strive for a realistic depiction of the sport and its players, with acceptable deviations such as the precise number of dunks. To that point though, I’m not so inflexible that “realistic” means everything is accurate and true to life, down to the last detail. I’ve had fun attempting to play as realistically as possible, but I’ve also enjoyed a looser approach.

With that in mind, there are some things in basketball video games that were once annoyances for me, but now I don’t take them so seriously. Indeed, some of them are now novelties, and nostalgic in their own way. That’s not to say that I’m necessarily walking back on my criticism of them, but my stance has changed from “Ugh, this is awful” to “Actually, this is kind of fun”. It definitely helps that basketball games have improved in many ways throughout the years, with the best ones achieving things that once seemed impossible. When I do go back to some of the older games though, I will see novelties where once I had gripes and annoyances, such as these five examples.

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Today’s NBA Live 2005 mod releases feature another frontend update, specifically a 2023 season loading screen. Download it at the link below!

mrjea99
2023 Loading Screen Logos

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

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 presentation in NBA Live 96 PC.

While the Super Nintendo version of NBA Live 95 was the first game in the NBA Live series that I ever played – and one of my first basketball video games, period – NBA Live 96 PC was the first hoops title that I actually owned. I remember the day I got it. It had been featured in an ad that showcased EA Sports’ 1996 season lineup, presented as the “EA Sports Countdown”. My basketball fandom was now in full swing, and I wanted to be able to hit the virtual hardwood without relying on a weekly video store rental, where my Season save files were constantly at risk of deletion.

It may have taken a boot disk to run it properly on a rapidly aging 486, and at one point I needed to use a scratch repair kit on the CD to get it working again (it’s never failed me since). However, from playing to modding, I’ve spent countless hours with NBA Live 96 PC, solidifying it as one of my all-time favourite games. Obviously I’m partial to it because of the sentimentality of it being one of the first basketball games that I owned, but I still appreciate the game itself: the on-court experience, the season it’s set in, and of course, that golden presentation. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #473 of the NLSC Podcast!

There can be no doubt that we’re passionate about basketball video games, but we do have interests outside of the virtual hardwood, too. This week, we’re discussing some of the other titles that have been in our rotations as of late, as well as reflecting on other games that we’ve spent countless hours with over the years. Not surprisingly, we have some similar gaming habits, no matter the genre! After sharing our memories, we open up the mailbag to see what else the community enjoys playing. There’s also a mod teaser to share, a thrilling game of NBA Live 95 PC to recap, and the latest results from our NCAA Basketball 10 Tournament.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:52:54 — 77.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

Today’s mod releases for NBA 2K17 feature an update from Botytec that converts the offline Skill Points in MyCAREER to an offline version of Virtual Currency. Check it out at the link below!

Botytec
VC Mod

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

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 anti-cheat measures in NBA 2K23 PC, and their effect on the modding scene.

The Season 6 patch for NBA 2K23 introduced some unexpected complications for the PC version. Specifically, it includes anti-cheat measures that interfere with looyh’s Hook tool, which as modders and mod users are all too aware, is an essential utility for modding. Naturally, this led to some understandable frustration. To state the obvious, modding is a big part of what we do in this community, and these anti-cheat measures resulted in a new barrier to creating and enjoying mods. Considering that the PC version is already a lower priority release, it’s a disappointing development.

Of course, ever since the PC began receiving ports of the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version of NBA 2K, official patches have presented a challenge to modding. The changes to the executable require utilities and Cheat Engine tables to be updated accordingly; something that wasn’t necessary when we were editing the roster files directly. It’s something that other modding communities have had to deal with for a long time, and we have ultimately been able to adapt. The addition of anti-cheat measures makes things tricky, which is obviously unfortunate. It also spotlights the needs of the online scene being at odds with the needs of the modding community.

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As Dee noted in last week’s NLSC Podcast, we’re consistently uploading basketball gaming videos to the NLSC YouTube channel. It’s an initiative that Dee has been spearheading, and he’s definitely been far more active in uploading than I have recently, in part due to being under the weather. For similar reasons, I’m once again behind in sharing those videos here on the site.

To that end, it’s time for another NLSC YouTube round-up! Over the past few weeks, a variety of gameplay videos have gone up, including demonstrations of the awesome NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition mod for NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. There are highlights from Parsec sessions, including games of NBA Live 2003 and NBA Playgrounds. NBA Live 2000 and NBA Action ’95 also make an appearance along with NBA Live 95 PC, and an alley-oop reel from my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER.

You can also find highlights from our NCAA Basketball 10 Tournament that Dee is hosting. I’ll be posting the latest videos in a separate bulletin along with an update following the conclusion of the Final Four, but for now, you can find them all in this playlist. There’s also the weekly Top 10 Plays curated by Dee, the NLSC Podcast, and plenty more, so be sure to subscribe to our channel! As always, please feel free to suggest any basketball games that you’d like to see us play. In the meantime, enjoy our latest uploads!

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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.

As you can tell from the thumbnail, a modded-in Super Mario appears in this week’s NLSC Top 10 plays; only appropriate, given that the new film is out! johnz1’s NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition is another mod that’s on display, with Michael Jordan throwing down a signature slam. There’s a highlight from our NCAA Basketball 10 Tournament – also hosted by Dee – and of course, another dazzling array of devastating dunks to enjoy. A total of nine different games are featured this week, and it’s always fun to see such variety in the countdown. 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 lists five intriguing ideas that are sadly unlikely to work in practice.

If you glance back at Wishlists over the years, it’s fair to say that we’ve all had some great ideas for the basketball games we enjoy. I don’t want to sell the developers short either, as many of them are likewise creative and passionate basketball fans with an eye for detail, and they’ve come up with ideas that we’ve never thought of. Not all ideas are feasible of course, but imagination has allowed the genre to continually innovate and expand far beyond the earliest classics. It pays to think big, and then work out what is and isn’t possible, and how the possible can be implemented.

Of course, some ideas are technically possible, but nevertheless impractical. They’re great concepts and potentially useful features, but implementing them simply wouldn’t be a good move. There might be a major drawback that would make an idea divisive, and detract from the experience if it’s not optional. An idea may seem like a great solution on paper, but would be too reliant on goodwill and the honour system in order to work effectively. That’s not to say that all of these ideas absolutely couldn’t ever work, but sadly I don’t think they would without closing a bunch of loopholes and detoxifying the userbase, particularly online. They’re intriguing, but unfeasible.

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