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!
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #633 of the NLSC Podcast!
No matter the genre, online gaming undoubtedly has its ups and downs, depending on what you’re playing and who you’re playing with! To that point, this week we reflect on two very different online basketball gaming experiences. The first is the recent open beta for NBA The Run, while the second is our latest four and five-player Parsec sessions with NBA Live 96 for Super Nintendo and NBA Live 10 for PlayStation 3. We also have some further impressions of NBA The Run to share ahead of its release next week. We’ve still got our concerns about the game, but we’re keeping our minds open and fingers crossed for a successful launch, and are hoping for some fun times on the virtual blacktop.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 35:15 — 24.6MB)
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 another list of potential comebacks that would’ve been fun to play with in video games.
As I’ve taken a few more trips around the sun, I’ve developed stronger opinions about veterans seemingly being shooed out of the NBA. It just doesn’t feel right when long-tenured players – especially former All-Stars – end their careers so unceremoniously. Of course, as Jackie MacMullan discussed in a column some ten years ago, veteran NBA players don’t always know when their time has come, and when to let go. She cited R.C. Buford, who recalled an embarrassing 15-minute workout by an unnamed former Spurs player after they expressed an interest in returning midseason.
Mind you, some players do retire too soon, while others have shown that they can still be productive in their late 30s and even into their 40s. There have also been successful comebacks, even if those players weren’t quite as good as they were in their prime. As much as “Wizards Michael Jordan” is a meme, that stint is slightly underrated, as MJ was finding his groove prior to his knee injury. With that in mind, I’m in favour of players making or even just considering comebacks. There are some fascinating What Ifs with the ones that almost happened, and they could’ve been a blast in video games, too. And so, here are five more comebacks that would’ve been fun for hoops gamers!
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 PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 version of NBA 2K10.
I’ve really enjoyed going back and developing more of an appreciation for the seventh generation NBA 2K titles prior to NBA 2K13. Well, most of them! NBA 2K6 is now one of my favourite basketball video games, and I also ended up getting hooked on NBA 2K7 after revisiting it. NBA 2K8 felt like a misstep – an opinion that you’ll find in contemporary reviews of the game – but the series quickly got back on track with NBA 2K9. That game immediately shot up my rankings after I spent some more time with it, which includes a co-op Chicago Bulls Association with Dee.
That brings me to NBA 2K10. Like its predecessor, I think it’s unfortunately come to be overshadowed by the admittedly fantastic releases that followed it. To that point though, it’s still an excellent game in its own right. There are definitely aspects that its successors improved upon, but NBA 2K10 is still comparable in terms of its overall quality and how fun it is on the sticks. And so, just as I warmed up to its counterpart from EA Sports after it entered my rotation in 2021, I’m now quite fond of NBA 2K10 as well! Let’s take a look back…way back…
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #630 of the NLSC Podcast!
Entering 2026, we had some plans and goals for the virtual hardwood. Since we’re rapidly approaching the middle of the year – no, don’t ask us where the time went – we decided to check in on how those plans are going! To that end, this week we’re joining the community in discussing our basketball gaming habits so far in 2026, from the selection of titles that we’re playing to the modes that have kept us hooked. We also recap a fun Parsec session with the Snes9x Super Nintendo emulator featuring a five-player co-op game of NBA Live 95 that was an absolute blast, and an intense four-player head-to-head showdown in NBA Hangtime that was ultimately decided in overtime.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 52:14 — 36.2MB)
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 how the battle between passion and burnout can make it tough to walk away from modding.
Like thousands of others over the weekend, I watched Norman Caruso’s farewell video for The Gaming Historian. After some 15 years and so many wonderful gaming documentaries, Norman is officially ending the channel, though all of the videos will remain available. In his farewell, he reflects on he felt burned out after releasing his video on The Oregon Trail, and how that made it difficult to find the passion to begin work on the next project. After initially planning on a part time schedule in the hopes of reigniting his enthusiasm, he’s ultimately realised that it’s time to move on.
His candid and understandable explanation really resonated with me. While I won’t compare my dabbling with video content to what he and other fulltime YouTubers do, I’ve experienced similar feelings as I approach 25 years of running the NLSC. No, this isn’t me announcing my retirement! However, it did get me reminiscing about how I stopped creating roster updates for NBA Live, and my unsuccessful attempts to make similar mods for NBA 2K. Burnout is a roadblock for creative endeavours, but your lingering passion and sense of dedication encourages you to persist. At some point though, you’ll come to realise that it’s time to channel your energy into a new venture.
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 Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game, ahead of its 20th anniversary.
Tomorrow marks 20 years since Kobe Bryant torched the Toronto Raptors with an 81-point outburst, setting a new mark for the second-highest points scored in an NBA game. It always sounds cliché when we talk about how the years seem to fly by after we’ve taken a few more trips around the sun, but it’s absolutely true! Our perception of time undoubtedly changes. When Kobe dropped 81 on January 22nd 2006, I was only 21, so 20 years felt like a long time to me; basically a lifetime, in fact! Things that happened 20 years before that – or 20 years before I was even born – felt ancient.
For example, 20 years before Kobe had his 81-point game, Larry Bird and the Celtics were the 1986 Champions. To me, that felt like something from another time. And yet, because I remember it, Kobe’s 81-point game feels contemporary despite it being as old today as the Celtics’ 1986 title was in 2006! Again, it doesn’t feel like it’s been 20 years; or perhaps more accurately, 20 years doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel like eight years since I last reflected on Kobe’s big game, or indeed, six since his tragic passing. As that game is turning 20 though, let’s take a look back…way back…
Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee! 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, send Dee a message, or hit him up on X.
Earlier this week in Episode #607 of the NLSC Podcast, Michael Jordan and Victor Wembanyama were named as players to show a budding basketball fan to get them hooked on hoops. Very appropriately, the virtual counterparts of both players are featured in this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays, alongside other stars past and present. Whether you enjoy alley-oops, poster dunks, ankle-breakers, big blocks, trick shots, or gamewinners, our latest countdown is sure to delight you…and as always, fire you up for a weekend on the virtual hardwood. 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.
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 importance of playing with your own roster mods.
There have definitely been people over the years who are more interested in creating mods for basketball video games than hitting the virtual hardwood. Far be it from me to tell anyone else how to enjoy their leisure time, but that has always struck me as a little odd. Obviously there’s tremendous creative satisfaction in modding, but to me, mods are meant to enhance the gameplay experience. There are limitations to what we can achieve through modding of course, which is why I’d ultimately prefer a fun game that we can’t really mod to one that’s modder-friendly, but a poor on-court experience.
With that being said, the best and most popular games in our community throughout the years are the ones that were highly moddable, while also being great out of the box. As such, current roster updates, retro roster mods, and total conversions have all made some fantastic games even better. Because they take time to make however, if you’re creating one of those big projects, you may not always get to enjoy the fruits of your labour. I can certainly attest to this! It is important that we spend some time playing with our own roster mods, though. After all, not only should we be able to have fun with what we created, but it’s essential to becoming a better roster maker.
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #599 of the NLSC Podcast!
Music is a vital part of the atmosphere in basketball video games, and as such, it’s often connected to our nostalgia for them. This week, we join the community in reflecting on basketball video game music, from some of our all-time favourite soundtracks in NBA Live and NBA 2K to the tunes that just didn’t seem to be a good fit for the virtual hardwood. After all, while we may like certain songs in other contexts, they’re not always ideal for getting us pumped up to virtually ball! We also discuss the joy of discovering new music through gaming, and the appeal of remixed songs with new lyrics that reference basketball, or tracks that were produced specifically for a game.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 58:21 — 40.4MB)
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 taking a look back at players who ended up being notable names in the free agents pool in video games.
In a previous article, I mentioned that a number of future Hall of Fame players and other notable names have appeared in the free agents pool in various titles. Needless to say, they stand out among the selection of veteran journeymen and other far less prominent players. It was undoubtedly weird to see those all-time greats, multi-time all-stars, and other notable mainstays in the league languishing in the free agents pool. Once again though, they facilitated countless roster projects. Of course, it also led to some strange sights when CPU teams picked them up in franchise modes!
Obviously, there are reasons that notable names have occasionally turned up in the free agents pool of video games, particularly towards the end of their careers. Also, because older games came out on different platforms at different times, there were differences in their rosters. As such, not all versions of a game featured the same notable names among their array of unsigned free agents. I can’t pass up a chance to discuss NBA history when there’s a connection to basketball gaming trivia, and there are definitely some interesting stories here. Let’s take a look back…way back…
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 how online play encourages a mindset of “on to the next one”.
During our discussion of the presentation developer blog for NBA 2K26 in Episode #592 of the NLSC Podcast, we once again broached the idea of 2K bringing back the Pressbook in a future game. While it isn’t absolutely essential for offline gamers who can easily pause to use instant replay and Photo Moments, it’d still be handy to have. It would be even more useful in online play, since it would provide cinematic replays and stills that would otherwise be impossible to capture. While we both like the idea, Dee made a very important point about the mentality of many online gamers.
He pointed out that when it comes to online play, a lot of people take the approach of – to quote a Jay-Z song from the NBA 2K13 soundtrack – on to the next one. In other words, there’s no waiting around to reflect on your last game and to view screenshots and highlights from it, as is often the case in offline gameplay. As someone who did play online for several years, Dee is absolutely right here! Even though I’m still in favour of it returning, there’s no question that the Pressbook might not be very popular with online gamers, despite how fun and useful it could be for content creation. When it’s all about moving on to the next one though, the sentimentality just isn’t there.
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 noteworthy shortcomings with roster editing over the years.
Although comprehensive modding projects generally require external tools to achieve the level of detail we desire, it still helps to have robust in-game roster editing on PC. As for console releases, the in-game customisation functionality is all that we have to work with. In the best case scenario, we can put those functions to good use to create everything from minimalist projects to custom rosters that are surprisingly deep given the lack of custom art files and external modding. Unfortunately, several titles have severely limited what we can create in-game.
Alternatively, some shortcomings don’t stand in the way of creating the project that we envision, but may make roster editing more cumbersome than it should be. If nothing else, there might be some minor inaccuracies that don’t affect the on-court experience, but are nevertheless annoying for those of us who are sticklers for detail. I’ve talked about limitations to roster editing before, such as an inability to assign or edit certain bio data, and those certainly are frustrating shortcomings. However, for this list, I wanted to focus on some roster editing shortcomings that don’t necessarily receive a lot of attention, but have undoubtedly bothered modders over the years.
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 way that 2K responded with pettiness to the announcement of a new college basketball game from EA Sports.
Last week, EA Sports surprised a lot of gamers with the announcement of a new college basketball title, tentatively scheduled for release in 2028. There have been some questions as to why the announcement is being made so far out. It appears that the Collegiate Licensing Company entertained bids for a new basketball game in late June, with EA Sports’ bid being successful. A three year development window would be similar to the return of EA Sports College Football, which was announced in 2021 and released in 2024. Presumably, pre-production on this new hoops title has begun.
Needless to say, while not everyone is optimistic about a new college basketball game from EA Sports – understandably so – many gamers are excited. It’ll be a new release from an established company, in a genre that’s suffered from a lack of alternatives and competition. To that point, how did 2K respond to EA Sports rejoining the basketball gaming space with a college game? In short, a quote reply to a post on X opining that they should be the ones making the game wryly saying “the campus has been quiet for too long”, and a statement in which they referred to themselves as the “undisputed home of basketball gaming”. Basically, 2K is giving pettiness the old college try.
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 mods that are all about enhancing the original rosters.
Our modding community has produced some incredible projects going right back to the 90s. The original NLSC rosters by Tim and Lutz kept games up to date, saving gamers the trouble of doing it themselves and allowing some old favourites to remain current for the people that were still playing them. We’ve also had retro season roster mods for multiple games, including projects that span decades. NBA games have been turned into makeshift college basketball titles, and even revamped with foreign league mods. That’s just a very brief overview of the fantastic work that’s been done!
However, we shouldn’t overlook the value of simpler projects. I’m not just talking about minimalist mods, although I do remain an advocate for them as well. What I’m referring to here are mods that focus on the original rosters and setting of a game. On the surface, they’re not as impressive as a comprehensive current roster update for an older game that people still enjoy, an accurate retro season mod, or a total conversion, but they’re still worthwhile projects. With a handful of old favourites retaining their popularity years later, other classics getting a second look, and an increasing interest in retro basketball gaming, I’d like to see more mods that focus on original rosters.
NLSC Your source for basketball video games.
