Tag Archives: Dynasty

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #480 of the NLSC Podcast!

NBA Live 15 generally wasn’t well-received when it was released, but might it be somewhat overlooked today? A fun session playing the game over Parsec prompts us to take a deep dive into all of its pros and cons. Suffice to say it’s a mixed bag, but it might just work its way into our rotation! We also connected to play NBA Live 06 PC with a 2012 season roster, and were reminded of what a special release it was. In this week’s mailbag, we join the community in talking about how we play basketball in real life. Which players would we compare our style of play to, and does that at all influence the creation of our players in career modes?

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:17:01 — 53.3MB)

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!

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 playing with the Baby Bulls teams in basketball video games.

My nostalgia for the NBA and basketball video games doesn’t end with the 90s; far from it! Many of my favourite titles were released in the 2000s through to the early 2010s, and I’ve remained an avid NBA and basketball junkie long after Michael Jordan called it a career. Of course, playing with His Airness on the virtual hardwood required some modding back in the day, owing to his absence from the official roster. When it came to running with Bulls teams in the years that followed, I (usually) didn’t have to worry about them missing a prominent player.

Mind you, while all the names might’ve been accounted for, the talent was certainly lacking. I’ve previously reflected on the challenges that came with assuming control of my favourite team in the early 2000s; an extraordinarily tough time to be a Bulls fan after experiencing the glory days of MJ! I mentioned in passing that they became far more appealing to play with as the decade wore on, and their rebuilding efforts began to yield better results. Those teams came to be known as the Baby Bulls due to their youth, and while they didn’t reach the top of the mountain once more, I did enjoy putting them on the virtual hardwood. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #478 of the NLSC Podcast!

Games that we wish we played more, seasons that we wish we finished, and saves that we wish we still had, are common tales among basketball gamers. This week, we join the community in reminiscing about some of our biggest basketball gaming regrets! A misconception about a job listing also prompts us to address the subject of NBA Live rumours, as well as clickbait content. Additionally, we touch on whether a theoretical future NBA Live should be sim, arcade, or a sim-arcade hybrid. We also reflect on some spectacular highlights in last week’s NLSC Top 10 that had us all buzzing, and provide an update on reaching Year 6 in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:17:08 — 53.3MB)

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!

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 times that basketball games featured fictional content.

Authenticity is the name of the game when it comes to sim basketball titles. There are acceptable breaks from reality, of course. MyTEAM allows us to construct lineups that span multiple eras, with everyone in their prime and ignoring that some players have passed away. It’s a fantasy mode, after all. We can also choose to have classic teams from different eras square off, play with teams featuring all of the best players in club history, or even have a team face itself. Even in a sim game, there’s fun to be had doing things that can’t be done in real life.

Fictional content is something else altogether. It’s usually the mark of an arcade game, such as the Stickmen and other bonus teams in NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, or the inclusion of Mortal Kombat characters in the arcade version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition. Most of the fictional content in sim titles comes from our own modding and roster customisation. With that being said, there are some times when fictional content appeared in sim basketball games, beyond the obvious examples of Roster Players filling in for unlicensed names. From placeholders and bonus content to questionable design choices, here are five times that sim basketball games had fictional elements.

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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 some reflections on how I prefer to start a game with realistic rosters, but end up with fictional lineups and outcomes.

Realism is relative when it comes to the virtual hardwood. I’m sure I’m not alone in admitting that as basketball video games became more sophisticated and encouraged a more strategic approach, I realised that my style of play wasn’t as “sim” as I thought. If nothing else, I was quite content to toss a more realistic style out the window if I desperately needed buckets, and use reliable tricks that would help me get them. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. The goal is to win – whether you’re up against the CPU or another person – and to enjoy the games that we play.

My point is that even those of us who value the sim style will take some liberties with realism from time to time. Indeed, it’s inevitable in franchise and career play. Those modes invite us to create our own reality, whether it’s placing ourselves in the league, or donning our GM suits to make the trades we wish our favourite team would in real life. The fictional results and player movement make playing through multiple years in franchise and career modes interesting, creating alternate history and fun scenarios. However, despite the appeal of these fictional outcomes, I’ve always preferred to begin new franchise games with real rosters, rather than shake things up right away.

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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 “No Portrait Available” placeholders that are a staple of old basketball video games.

Beyond obvious examples such as dated graphics, fewer modes, and less bonus content, there are some hallmarks that immediately identify basketball video games as old school. They are the approaches and design choices that modern games eschew, either because they’re no longer necessary, or newer technology facilitates preferable solutions. These days, you’d never see a Free Agents Pool that’s limited to the same number of players as a regular team. No active players will be represented by Roster Players, since the entire league is covered by the current licensing agreement.

That brings us to another staple of old games that we no longer see: a generic portrait for players who are missing a proper one. If you’ve been playing basketball games for a long time, these players with no available portrait will be part of the nostalgia that you feel for old favourites, whether it’s the approach in general or some more specific examples. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #470 of the NLSC Podcast!

Which basketball video games rank among our most-played all-time? This week, we join the community in reminiscing about the various titles that we’ve racked up the most hours in over the years. We’re also able to talk about the NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition mod at last, and it’s no surprise that the community shares our enthusiasm for it! johnz1 will also be joining us to talk about the mod next week, so stay tuned. The Elite 8 of our NCAA Basketball 10 Tournament is in the books, so we reflect on the action thus far, and look ahead to the Final Four. We also pay tribute to the late, great Willis Reed.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:18:33 — 54.3MB)

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!

One of my goals when tinkering with old favourites is to try and devise fixes for my fellow retro basketball gamers. To that end, I’ve been able to put together a fix for the bug/design flaw with training in Dynasty Mode in NBA Live 2004.

For those who may not remember, assigning less than 20% of the available training time to any of the four areas (Shooting, Defense, Offense, and Conditioning) in pre-season training camp or in-season training sessions would result in your players’ ratings declining. As such, the only way to see significant improvement in one area meant weathering a drop in ratings in another.

This issue was fixed in NBA Live 2005, but as it turns out, it can easily be resolved in NBA Live 2004 as well! The ratings increases and decreases relative to the assigned time are stored in DBF files, and it’s easy enough to remove all the negative values (and thus the nerfs). With this fix, training your players in Dynasty Mode in NBA Live 2004 will only ever result in ratings increasing, as long as you assign enough training time. Otherwise, player ratings will remain static until the offseason. Players will still improve and decline as normal as they develop between seasons.

Download the fix here, and find the support topic here! For the moment, I’ve left the default increases and thresholds intact, but it would be possible to make it easier (or indeed, harder) to increase ratings through training camp and training sessions, as well as change the size of the increases. It’s definitely satisfying to resolve this issue, even if it is going on twenty years later! I’m hoping to release more of these little mods and fixes throughout March Modness 2023, so stay tuned.

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 our very first Wishlist compiled for NBA Live 98, and how far basketball games have come since then.

On February 6th 1997, our founders submitted a Wishlist for NBA Live 98 on behalf of the community. It’s fun to look back at those suggestions now, and see just how many of them have been implemented in subsequent games. NBA Live was able to grant several of those wishes, and as NBA 2K became the premier brand in sim basketball titles, it also introduced features that once seemed like pipe dreams. Of course, going down that Wishlist, we can also see some ideas that unfortunately fell by the wayside after debuting, as well as some suggestions that weren’t so great.

Since Monday marked the 26th(!) anniversary of that very first Wishlist, I thought it’d be fun to go through it section by section, discussing what did eventually make it into video games, what still hasn’t, and in hindsight, what weren’t such great ideas. I believe it will demonstrate that feedback is (or certainly was) never in vain, as well as how far basketball video games have come as far as content, features, and mechanics. It may not always have been as we originally envisioned, but our wishes have indeed come true. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #463 of the NLSC Podcast!

Following a co-op session of NBA Live 10, we may have to bring it back into the rotation! We also connected to play NBA Live 98 PC with an old NLSC roster, and note that despite improvements in its immediate successors, it holds up just as well. Meanwhile, following up on a basketball management game riddled with microtransactions, it’s clear that the developer has no interest in goodwill or constructive feedback. We’re also talking about franchise mode follies, including the phenomena of “rosteritis” and “tradeitis”. We note how franchise mode burnout is similar to modding fatigue, and share tips on how to have a successful franchise game. In this week’s mailbag, community members share the origin stories of how they became basketball fans and gamers.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:30:15 — 62.3MB)

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!

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #459 of the NLSC Podcast!

As we tip off a new year of basketball gaming, we’re taking a look back at the titles that we and our fellow hoops gamers played and enjoyed the most throughout 2022. We discover that we’re definitely not alone in keeping the classics in our rotations, and from the sounds of things, a number of people will continue to enjoy a variety of games all year long in 2023! However, while we’ll support revisiting classics and enjoying all kinds of basketball games both new and old, there is one management title that we’d advise you to stay away from. If its greedy microtransactions aren’t enough, the way it treated someone with valid criticism certainly will be!

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:21:41 — 56.4MB)

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!

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 suggests five activities to help you freshen up your basketball gaming experiences.

I’m the last person who’ll scold you about stubbornly sticking with what you like. I’m absolutely a creature of habit, prone to returning to my old favourites rather than try something new. And hey, as long as you’re having fun, that’s the most important part of all recreational activities! There’s a reason I go on those long kicks such as playing through multiple seasons in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, assembling makeshift retro teams in NBA Live 10, or going back to my NBA Live 06 Dynasty if I’m not feeling the latest game. Indeed, it’s why I’ve stuck with franchise and career modes for years.

Of course, it’s nice to change things up when you’re weary of what you’re playing. This is why I advocate for a variety of deep modes in basketball games, and if they’re there, giving them a look whenever you’re getting bored. However, if you’re looking for a change of pace without diving into a whole new mode, there are many activities that you can do in basketball games that are, at the very least, fun palate cleansers. If you enjoy them, then you may want to make them a regular part of your basketball gaming, combining them with a mode if possible. Otherwise, these activities are ideas to keep in mind if you’re in a rut, and want to mess around on the virtual hardwood.

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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 some thoughts on the rewarding feeling of finishing seasons in basketball video games.

I’ve previously said that completion is what we make it when it comes to the virtual hardwood. Indeed, I dedicated an entire article to exploring that notion. I still stand by that. While it can be extremely fulfilling to be a completionist when it comes to the games we play, it isn’t a necessity to have fun. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t collect all of the cards in MyTEAM, reach the Hall of Fame in MyCAREER, or play through to a championship in a mode representing the NBA season. As you long as you enjoyed your time with a game and feel like you got your money’s worth, that’s what counts.

With that being said, there’s great joy to be had in playing through seasons from start to finish. If you manage to play multiple seasons – either before the next game comes out, or by returning to an old favourite – it can be an even more rewarding experience. It’s a tall order, especially with a full 82-game season on twelve minute quarters with no simulation, as I’ve often aimed to achieve. No matter which settings you prefer however, there’s a feeling of accomplishment when a season is in the books, and your team is standing at midcourt raising the Larry O’Brien trophy. Even before that, of course, there’s a journey that I strongly advise everyone to savour along the way.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #458 of the NLSC Podcast!

To all of our listeners, Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings! We’ve got a very festive episode for you this week, as we’re reflecting on why we’re thankful for basketball video games, and what basketball gaming and modding has meant to us throughout the years. From our very first games that tipped off our love of the hobby, to the landmark releases and innovations that blew us away, there’s plenty that we’re grateful for. In this week’s mailbag, we join the community in sharing some of our favourite holiday memories on the virtual hardwood, including the hoops titles that we received as gifts.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:20:35 — 55.7MB)

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!

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #456 of the NLSC Podcast!

A recent Tweet from a fellow “old head” perfectly summed up why it’s a ridiculous insult for anyone who’s been around the block and knows their stuff. It’s quite timely too, as this week we’re reflecting on what simulation basketball actually means in 2022. We discuss how changes in the real NBA have affected the virtual hardwood in terms of what gamers want and what they’re emulating, and compare it to our more traditional notion of sim hoops. Our deep dive encompasses everything from mindless playcalling to the selfishness and meta gaming that dominates the online scene. In this week’s mailbag, we’re quizzing the community on the top six current and classic players in NBA 2K17.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:02:46 — 43.5MB)

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!