Tag Archives: Cutscenes

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 freeze-frame player introductions in seventh gen NBA Live 07 and NBA Live 08.

For all the talk about how as we grow older we also grow more close-minded, I have to say that when it comes to basketball video games, I’ve had the opposite experience. When I was a younger basketball gamer, I was very particular about certain aspects of the virtual hardwood. Not only did I struggle to enjoy sim titles that felt different to NBA Live, but I had some rather strict criteria and a few petty gripes when it came to critiquing my favourite hoops series. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with having strong preferences, but I definitely took some things way too seriously!

To that end, while I do stand by some of my criticisms all these years later, I have lightened up about other things that used to bother me. An obvious example is the comedic cutscenes in NBA Live 2003. While I still think they went a little overboard with them and they’re not the tone I’d prefer in a sim game, I can find the humour in them nowadays, and appreciate how they gave the game character. The freeze-frame player introductions in NBA Live 07 and NBA Live 08 are another example of a stylistic choice that I’ve warmed up to. 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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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 manipulating cutscenes in basketball video games.

Cutscenes have been in basketball video games for decades. In early titles such as Double Dribble, the rotoscoped dunks spiced up the action in a game that otherwise had very limited animation. Tecmo Super NBA Basketball also added further detail through the use of cutscenes, though some gamers felt they interrupted the flow of the gameplay. That’s certainly a common criticism of Arch Rivals, which displayed a cutaway after every basket. In more recent games, there have been options to cut to a different angle on wide open dunks, or a three-pointer made with a Green Release.

The Courtside Comedy of NBA Live 2003 produced rather infamous cutscenes! And of course, the MyCAREER stories rely heavily on cutscenes to tell their tales. Those types of cutscenes tend to be more divisive compared to starting lineup introductions, instant replays, and championship celebrations, which are considered an essential ingredient in achieving authentic presentation. Over the years, we’ve found ways of manipulating cutscenes to portray specific scenarios, whether it’s for greater accuracy or simply for the sake of humour. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 presentation design choices in basketball video games that are rather frustrating.

I’m not the harshest critic when it comes to presentation and visuals. That’s not to say that I don’t have any standards, or that I don’t recognise inaccuracies and other issues when I see them. If I’m enjoying the on-court experience and am hooked on a mode however, that’ll factor more heavily into my overall opinion than a face that looks off, or a lack of bells and whistles in the presentation. As long as the game has that NBA vibe and TV-style presentation that mimics a real broadcast to some extent, that’s all I need. I certainly appreciate more detail, but it isn’t necessary for me to enjoy a game.

What I am bothered by are design choices with presentation that ruin the vibe, or interfere with the gameplay. There have definitely been basketball video games that have erred in this way over the years! In the best case scenario, it’s an annoyance that you can ultimately overlook, though it’s still quite apparent. In other cases however, those presentation design choices have a major impact on the gameplay, rendering a game virtually impossible to enjoy despite its positive attributes. If the presentation is lacking authentic TV branding or interviews with real player voices, I don’t mind that. These five frustrating presentation design choices, on the other hand, are problematic!

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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 concepts that must never return in future basketball games.

One of the benefits of revisiting older basketball games is rediscovering features that have since disappeared, and would make a welcome return in new releases. Over the years, we’ve seen a number of features and mechanics brought back due to popular demand, which has always been a cause for celebration. To that end, I’m sure we all have further suggestions for aspects we’d like to see again. Of course, there’s no guarantee that all of those concepts will return at some point. Some of them just aren’t feasible, while others are outdated ideas and no longer relevant to modern design.

And then, you have the concepts that must never return in a future basketball game. These are the bewildering ideas and design choices that didn’t just fail to make their games better, but in many cases made them actively worse. Even if those concepts didn’t entirely ruin a game, they unquestionably impacted the fun, or displayed a complete lack of goodwill. Some of the concepts that I’m discussing here do seem unlikely to return, but we can never be completely sure of that, as some games have revisited undesirable ideas that we hoped were gone for good. You may disagree with one of the below examples, but for the most part, I think we’ll all be on the same page.

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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 my very first Friday Five, published ten years ago today.

As I always note in my introduction for Wayback Wednesday, one of the intended purposes of this weekly feature is to republish old articles, usually with some added commentary. Funnily enough, that was actually the subject of the very first Wayback Wednesday, as I posted an article that was no longer available on the site due to us switching content management systems. However, much like Jerry West winning the first NBA Finals MVP despite losing the series, this didn’t set a precedent! I’ve mostly opted for retrospectives and other game-oriented features over republishing articles.

Honestly, I do think that’s the right call, as it’s the optimal use of a weekly feature such as Wayback Wednesday. It’s handy to leave the door open to republishing lost articles and generally digging into our own archives, but I believe that basketball video games should always be the star of the show, so to speak. With that being said, since it is ten years to the day that I posted my first edition of The Friday Five, I’m reflecting on the beginning of my longest-running NLSC feature, as well as the topic that it covered. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 ways that basketball gamers unnecessarily shame one another, and why it’s absurd.

No community is ever going to get along 100% of the time. There will always be disagreements, and things can get heated in the thick of competitive play. With that being said, general etiquette and decorum goes a long way, and avoids embodying the most unflattering gamer stereotypes. It’s not particularly complicated. Don’t be the jerk that sends threatening messages, or jumps on the mic to be abusive and throw out bigoted slurs. Don’t ruin the online scene on PC with your hacked, super-powered player. And of course, don’t foster a toxic atmosphere through elitist gatekeeping.

It’s bewildering that gamers shame each other over a hobby that’s meant to be fun. Obviously the competitive scene carries certain bragging rights, and if you claim to be an elite player, you’ll be fairly challenged to prove your mettle. Beyond that though, there are people in the basketball gaming community that indulge in gatekeeping over the pettiest of things. In games that offer a variety of modes and options to tailor the experience to maximise your enjoyment, there’s no wrong way to play basketball video games; at least outside of cheating and poor sportsmanship in a competitive environment. As such, it’s ridiculous to shame each other over these five matters.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five things that I’ve stopped doing in my NBA 2K19 MyCAREER games.

I’m at that point of the year where I’m trying to wrap up most of my business with the current games, maybe try a few other things before I’m completely bored of them, and then get ready for the preview season and this year’s releases. I’m more or less done with NBA Live 19 already; although I’m giving it another look in light of the recent patch, I just can’t get hooked on any of the modes. I enjoyed Ultimate Team last year, but NBA Live 19’s approach to the mode hasn’t been to my liking. I’m hoping it’ll be a different story with NBA Live 20.

Conversely, I’m still playing NBA 2K19 quite regularly. Despite my desire to get back to franchise gaming and a feeling of burnout when it came to career modes, I’m still going strong with MyCAREER. In fact, I actually have two careers going: one on PlayStation 4 in which I also play online, and a second one on PC. While I am still enjoying the MyCAREER experience, there are a few things that I’ve stopped doing in the mode. Most of them are admittedly extracurricular, but for several months they were nevertheless part of the MyCAREER grind. That’s in the past though, as for the most part, I’ve taken to shunning the following activities.

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at the mentors in NBA 2K15’s MyCAREER.

NBA 2K15 stands out as quite a noteworthy game in the NBA 2K series. It was the first time that the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version was ported to PC, and the first PC release to be available exclusively through Steam with no disc-based physical copies. The game also continued the story-driven MyCAREER concept, becoming the first game in which you didn’t start your rookie season on opening night. The story of how you make it to the league featured cameos from NBA players who acted as mentors, with the real players voicing their virtual counterparts in cutscenes.

On one hand, this was an improvement over similar cutscenes in NBA 2K14, in which the MyPLAYER character was voiced while the NBA players’ dialogue was just text. On the other hand, many of their performances were notoriously and hilariously bad, as discussed in an article over on Cracked a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, it was an idea that had merit, influencing presentation and features in subsequent games. At the very least, there’s some humour to be found with the mentors in NBA 2K15, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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In the wake of releasing “The Way Back” trailer for NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER, 2K Sports has revealed additional information on this year’s mode and story. It will apparently be possible to skip cutscenes this year, as well as the entire Prelude in subsequent playthroughs.

Dear Community,

You can skip cut scenes in #NBA2K19 and in your second and subsequent careers, you can skip the entire Prelude.

Best,
NBA 2K

— NBA 2K19 (@NBA2K) August 21, 2018

This comes as very welcome news, as many gamers have expressed a preference for a more streamlined MyCAREER experience without lengthy cutscenes. The ability to skip The Prelude entirely in subsequent MyCAREER games should also make the prospect of creating second players or starting over from scratch far less arduous. While these could be described as overdue additions to the mode, it’s great that community feedback has been heeded in this regard.

As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below, as well as here in the NLSC Forum!

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content.

Our (belated) 20th Anniversary of NBA Live content is on-going, and next up will be a retrospective of NBA Live 2003. Before we get to that, however, I wanted to profile one of the game’s most notorious features: its “Courtside Comedy” cutscenes. On top of gameplay that wasn’t quite as sim as most basketball gamers would’ve liked, NBA Live 2003 also took a more light-hearted approach to its atmosphere, with several cutscenes involving players joking around and goofing off.

While the comedic cutscenes weren’t universally disliked, I think it’s fair to say that most gamers were not sorry to see them gone in NBA Live 2004. For my part, I can see the humour, and I do have a certain amount of nostalgia for the sheer oddity of them, but they definitely didn’t create the atmosphere that I wanted for NBA Live. Nevertheless, they are fun to look back on, especially because some of them could be truly ridiculous. Ahead of my detailed retrospective of NBA Live 2003, here are some of the most memorable courtside comedy cutscenes.

Let’s take a look back…way back…

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