Tag Archives: Emulation

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 modding projects that we could undertake to enhance retro basketball gaming.

As I’ve said before, we’re keen advocates of retro gaming and modding here at the NLSC! We’ll always cover new games and support the modding community in any way that we can, but we have a deep appreciation for the classics and don’t want there to be any stigma to revisiting them. There’s unquestionably a dedicated group of basketball gamers who feel as we do. One only has to look at the people who have been playing and updating NBA 2K14 PC for over a decade, or johnz1’s modding projects for NBA Jam: On Fire Edition.

Indeed, considering that our founders were providing tools for NBA Live 95 when NBA Live 96 was already out, modding has been helping to breathe new life into older titles since our community was formed! Quite a few of my modding projects have also centred around keeping old releases alive, from my earliest forays into modding NBA Live 96 to keeping the last four PC versions of NBA Live updated after the series went console-only. As I’ve been leaning more and more into my predisposition for retro gaming – and noticed others sharing that interest – I’ve been thinking about modding projects that would enhance the experience. Here are five!

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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 reminiscing about NBA 2K8 making a cameo during the story in NBA 2K19 MyCAREER.

MyCAREER stories have undoubtedly been hit or miss. From the way they impact the gameplay experience to the quality of the stories themselves, some have managed to enhance the mode, while others have unfortunately detracted from it. For me, “The Way Back” – the story of NBA 2K19’s MyCAREER – was one of the stronger tales. It took us along a very different path to the NBA, with some genuinely captivating story beats. Sure, there’s a glaring plot hole that could’ve easily been avoided with only a slight change to the ending, but even that makes it interesting!

With that in mind, “The Way Back” is definitely one of my favourite MyCAREER stories. It also helps that the developers got creative in adding interactive elements beyond the usual gameplay. Not only did we have character and dialogue choices, but there were also hoops-related activities ranging from a barnyard pickup game to mini basketball at a fair. This also includes a memorable tribute to the history of the NBA 2K series, as our MyPLAYER ends up playing NBA 2K8 during the course of the NBA 2K19 MyCAREER story. 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 technical tips for anyone who’d like to get into retro gaming, in particular through the use of emulation.

There seems to be a growing interest in retro basketball gaming, and I love to see it! Obviously, people have been going back to old favourites or sticking with a treasured game for a long time now, but I’ve been noticing more enthusiasm for it in recent years. Whether it’s a case of NBA 2K fatigue, people reaching an age where they’re feeling more nostalgic, less stigma around retro gaming, or a combination of those factors, there’s a clear desire to revisit the classics. We’re keen advocates for that here at the NLSC, and moving forward, we’ll look to expand our retro gaming resources.

In that spirit, I’d like to share some technical advice for retro gaming, with a focus on emulation. Naturally there’s a certain charm to playing on original hardware – whether it’s a console or an older PC – and in some ways it’s definitely easier! There are many benefits to emulation though, whether we’re talking about retro console emulators or compatibility fixes to get old PC games up and running on a modern system. Thanks to the efforts of some talented people throughout the years, we’re at a point where emulation has greatly improved, and retro gaming is technically viable. You may encounter a few difficulties here and there though, so hopefully these tips will help.

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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 finding basketball gaming’s answer to Tecmo Super Bowl.

Tecmo Super Bowl is undoubtedly an iconic video game. Fully-licensed NFL teams and players, well-designed gameplay, stat tracking, and the dominance of virtual Bo Jackson, all helped cement it as a legendary release. That legend has only grown over time, thanks to emulation facilitating a modding scene that has kept the game dutifully updated and enthusiastically played right through to today. When it comes to a cult following in the retro gaming and modding scene, Tecmo Super Bowl is right up there with the original Doom games.

Basketball is my sport however, so I’m left wondering: is there an equivalent retro hoops title to Tecmo Super Bowl? For that matter, could there be? Obviously, there are a handful of old favourites still being updated, but these days those titles rarely approach the same vintage as Tecmo Super Bowl. It stands to reason. It could be argued that sim basketball games that hold up decades later didn’t come along until the mid 90s, or even the mid 2000s. Once they evolved to that point, we ended up with several great releases that remained moddable and playable years later. With that in mind, which titles could potentially be basketball gaming’s Tecmo Super Bowl?

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #606 of the NLSC Podcast!

Earlier this month, Valve announced the return of the Steam Machine – their console-like gaming PC – which is slated for release in early 2026. This week, we’re joining the community in reacting to the news, including giving our thoughts on the announced specifications, discussing the potential advantages and disadvantages of a console-PC hybrid gaming device, stating our level of interest in possibly picking one up, and speculating on what it’s likely to cost. Suffice it to say, while we may not all be completely sold on the Steam Machine as of right now, it’s certainly an intriguing development that we’re going to keep an eye on!

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:03:38 — 44.1MB)

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 #602 of the NLSC Podcast!

Customer service, value for money, and quality products are topics that are on our minds this week. This comes in the wake of an eBay purchase that unfortunately became a deeply unpleasant transaction. After sharing that horror story, we do have some far more positive news about a successful upgrade to Windows 11, with old favourites still being playable on the new OS. We also discuss the big patch for NBA 2K26 failing to make the game better (and indeed, arguably making it worse). As we point out, some of the changes also have financial ramifications for MyCAREER and MyTEAM gamers. The show wraps up with some quick 2026 NBA predictions, though we’re admittedly still more excited to watch classic games.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 51:05 — 35.4MB)

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!

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #573 of the NLSC Podcast!

The alley-oop is one of the most exciting plays in all of basketball, and to that point, it’s vital that we can expertly throw lobs on the virtual hardwood as well. This week, we join the community in recalling the best and worst alley-oop mechanics that we’ve experienced in basketball video games, primarily focusing on NBA Live and NBA 2K. We’ve also been connecting to play co-op over Parsec a lot recently, which includes sessions with NBA 2K7 for PlayStation 3, NBA Live 95 for Super Nintendo, NBA Street Vol. 2, and NBA Live 06 PC using an old 1998 season mod. Naturally, this leads to some reflections on the teams we used, as well as the benefits of emulation in 2025.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 58:37 — 40.6MB)

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 some thoughts and advice on the old basketball games that are the easiest to get into.

If you’ve been around a while, reading my articles and listening to Dee and I on the NLSC Podcast, you’ll know that we’re enthusiastic advocates for retro basketball gaming. It’s not that we won’t play newer titles – and of course, the term “retro” is also subjective in that regard – but we love to revisit the classics, and encourage anyone who feels disappointed with modern games to do the same. Whether it’s a brief trip down memory lane or it becomes your primary means of hitting the virtual hardwood, there are many old basketball games that hold up and are still worth playing.

With that being said, some old basketball games are easier to get into than others. Needless to say, the further back you go, the more primitive the games, and everyone has a threshold as far as what’s too old to enjoy all these years later; at least on a regular basis. There’s also the matter of feasibility. You obviously need to be able to run the games, and that requires the necessary hardware, and sometimes technical savvy. There are ways to play pretty much any old basketball games that you can get your hands on, but some are definitely more accessible. To that end, here are my recommendations of where to begin if you’re interested in retro basketball gaming.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #518 of the NLSC Podcast!

While we have our concerns about future releases, we’re arguably in a golden age for retro gaming! To that end, we note the further improvements to PCSX2 and Windows 11’s ability to run NBA Action 98 without issues, and recap our recent sessions with ESPN NBA Basketball (aka NBA 2K4) and NBA 2K18 for PlayStation 3. The latter was a game we played by request, and it surprised us with its quality! Revisiting a game from the end of a generation also leads us to reflect on whether NBA 2K24 will be the final prior gen release. We also react to the news of massive layoffs at EA, and join the community in speculating what it might mean – if anything – for the future of the NBA Live series.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:05:30 — 45.3MB)

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 #517 of the NLSC Podcast!

The community has really been cooking with their submissions for the NLSC Top 10 Plays as of late. Indeed, we’re still excited about last week’s countdown! To that end, we recap what was a diverse array of spectacular virtual hardwood moments from a variety of titles, and also provide advice for both recording and submitting your highlights for future Top 10s. We also note some recent improvements to PlayStation 2 emulation (particularly in regards to NBA Street), discuss the ongoing saga with MyTEAM greed hitting an all-time high, and join the community in reminiscing about the introduction of Freestyle Control in this week’s mailbag.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:06:08 — 45.8MB)

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 some thoughts on whether it’s better to play retro basketball games on original hardware, or via emulation.

My first foray into emulation actually happened around 1994, though I wasn’t too familiar with the term or concept back then. I was trying to get Commander Keen – a legendary platformer and true classic of vintage PC gaming – to run on an Archimedes Acorn desktop, using an official DOS emulator. I wasn’t nearly as computer savvy as I’d later become, so I failed in the attempt. I had more success a few years later when I was checking out one of the early Super Nintendo emulators for PC, which was also DOS-based. I recall feeling underwhelmed though, especially with the lack of audio.

These days, emulation has come a long way, to the point where the emulators for many consoles can mimic original hardware near-perfectly. Not only that, but they also have other enhancements including save states, media capture, visual filters, and so on. That’s led to some debate among retro gamers as to whether it’s preferable to play on original hardware or simply rely on emulation. Needless to say, the latter does raise some ethical and indeed legal questions, but assuming that you can play a game you own on the original hardware or an emulator, which method is superior? As far as the virtual hardwood is concerned, for me, it depends on my needs at any given time.

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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 going back to the N64 version of NBA Live 99, and seeing if it can be suitably updated for the 1999 season.

While I do have fond and nostalgic memories of the Nintendo 64, it’s fair to say that the console hasn’t aged as well as other platforms. The 3D era was in its infancy, so on top of graphics that tend to be unappealing nowadays, many games display the teething problems of expanding into a new plane while designing game worlds and gameplay. Some of the best releases do still hold up, though very few of them tend to be sports games. The N64’s controller is a major culprit here, as it wasn’t ideal for several cross-platform genres.

Nevertheless, I was excited to get NBA Live 99 for N64 for Christmas in 1998. Due to the lockout of course, the game had to launch with final 1998 season rosters. This ultimately wouldn’t be a problem on PC, thanks to mods and official patches. As we were a long way from consoles supporting downloadable updates, those platforms were left out in the cold. We had to make do with the default rosters, or try our best to update them ourselves. With that being said, is it possible to make a sufficiently detailed roster update for NBA Live 99 on N64? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 presence of NBA Live 95 in the PlayStation 2 version of NBA Live 06.

Generally speaking, sim-oriented sports titles aren’t what most people think of, or indeed reach for, when it comes to retro gaming. They don’t always age well, mostly because they appeal to a demographic that wants to see more and more realism, as well as play with current season rosters. As such, they’re not as popular among retro gamers, to play or collect. That being said, there is a contingent of basketball gamers who do enjoy playing and modding older titles, so it’s certainly not unheard of. Finding a way to keep playing old favourites, or at least fire them up every once in a while, is something that people in our community do have an interest in.

When it came to the PlayStation 2 version of NBA Live 06, EA Sports made that a little easier by including an emulated version of NBA Live 95. It was a rather unusual example of bonus content, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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