Tag Archives: NBA Jam: On Fire Edition

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #493 of the NLSC Podcast!

Could you name your Top 25 all-time favourite basketball video games? We reflect on some of the titles that were ranked in last week’s Monday Tip-Off, and reiterate the distinction between personal favourites and “best” lists. With the release of NBA 2K24 looming, we also have some news on MyTEAM, MyCAREER, and The City to discuss. Have the promised changes to MyTEAM Points, pack odds, and Season progression, and the streamlined approach to the NBA career experience, affected our excitement and anticipation for this year’s game? Also, in this week’s mailbag, the community shares their reactions to NBA 2K24 gameplay footage, as well as some of the other details coming out of the recent community event.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:10:27 — 48.7MB)

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!

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 a countdown of my Top 25 favourite basketball video games, in celebration of another milestone here at the NLSC.

On Saturday, I celebrated my 22nd year of running the NLSC. It’s been a long ride with plenty of ups and downs, but I’m still very glad that I accepted the gig when Tim moved on to work at EA Sports, and that I stuck it out through some rough patches to enjoy the good times. To mark the occasion, I’ve decided to rank my Top 25 favourite basketball video games. This being my 22nd Anniversary as webmaster/admin of the NLSC, I was originally going to pick my Top 22 games. Top 25 has a better ring to it though, and it also serves as a belated 25th Anniversary celebration for the site itself!

Before we get to the countdown, let me emphasise once again that it is a Top 25 of my favourite basketball video games; not the Top 25 best hoops titles. That’s a different list, and if I were being more objective, there are games I’m listing here that wouldn’t make the cut. Because I haven’t spent as much time with certain NBA 2K, College Hoops, or NCAA Basketball/March Madness titles, I don’t have as much of an affinity for them, though that may well change in the future. I haven’t “forgotten” about those great basketball video games, but they haven’t become one of my personal favourites (as yet, anyway). With that being said, here are my Top 25 virtual hardwood classics!

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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 console-only basketball games that we really missed having on PC.

Although we’ve come to cover all basketball games across a variety of platforms, we certainly do have a reputation as a PC-oriented site. This goes back to our roots as the NBA Live Series Center, when we were strictly an NBA Live fansite and the home of many tools and mods (then referred to as patches) for the PC releases. Even as we’ve widened our scope, we’ve continued to support and advocate for the PC as a platform. As we’ve previously discussed on the NLSC Podcast, even though PC users are the smallest group of basketball gamers, it’s a passionate and enthusiastic demographic.

There was a time when the PC release of NBA Live was the definitive version, as even the average home computer far outstripped consoles in power and storage capacity. Around the time of the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox, the PC began to receive ports of the console version of NBA Live. Of course, it was one of the few basketball games that were being ported to PC, as there were far more console-only releases than PC exclusives. Putting aside emulation and the Xbox App in recent years, this means that we’ve missed out on having some landmark basketball games on PC. Here are five in particular we would’ve loved to have had on the platform.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #486 of the NLSC Podcast!

As we await the next round of news and previews, how hyped are we for NBA 2K24? Along with the community, we rate our excitement on a scale of one to ten. Of course, some of us break the scale in both directions! We also recap what we’ve been playing this past week, including a surprising session of NBA Live 18, testing out a work-in-progress mod for NBA Live 08, throwing it back with NBA Basketball for Intellivision, and tackling a tough challenge in NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. There’s also some more virtual hardwood elitism on Twitter to push back on, and the reveal of some interesting clutch ratings in this week’s mailbag trivia.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:21:44 — 56.5MB)

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!

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 factors that are drawing me towards playing older games rather than more recent titles.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a predisposition for playing older games, basketball or otherwise. My earliest forays into gaming came with a system that was already outdated before I was born, thanks to the Video Game Crash of 1983. I’m also a creature of habit prone to sentimentality and nostalgia, so I’m not one to readily throw the past away and never look back. I didn’t always have the latest hardware growing up, so sometimes I had to stick with the older games that I could run. It’s why I was still keen to update NBA Live 96 PC as others were gearing up for NBA Live 98.

Old habits die hard, so it’s no surprise that I remain open to playing older games, even though I own and can play more recent releases. Still, it’s not just nostalgia that has me reaching for old favourites over the last few NBA 2K games. It’s part of it, sure, but in all honesty, as far as my experiences on the virtual hardwood, I’ve had more fun going back to NBA 2K14 and an assortment of other older titles. Even though I was impressed by NBA 2K23 – and all of its nostalgic content – I soon put it aside to play my favourites from yesteryear, as well as search for new retro kicks. When I reflect upon it, there are five main factors that are continually drawing me to older games.

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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.

It’s always fun when a particular theme emerges in an instalment of the NLSC Top 10 Plays, and this week, it’s tip dunks! Putbacks can be rare and challenging to pull off on the virtual hardwood, but we have some people in the community that are adept at them, as you’ll see in the countdown. Of course, dunks are spectacular in general, so there’s the usual array of posters – preceded by great moves and defensive stops – and a slick play in NBA Live 19. Finally, six different games are featured this week, ranging from Team USA Basketball to NBA 2K23. 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.

Dee and I have discussed the NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition mod for NBA Jam: On Fire Edition at length on the NLSC Podcast, and we’ve also had johnz1 on the show to discuss the project. It’s something that we’ve been waiting for years to see, and we’ve had a blast connecting on Parsec to play with it! Recently, we used the mod to replay the 1993 NBA Finals matchup of the Chicago Bulls vs. the Phoenix Suns.

With Dee as the host and controlling Scottie Pippen, I took control of Michael Jordan as we battled Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson. Even with our experience playing co-op together and the skill of MJ and Pip, Sir Charles and KJ proved to be an extremely challenging matchup. Needless to say, Dee recorded our arcade take on the 1993 NBA Finals, and put together another fantastic highlight reel for the NLSC YouTube channel!

We’re consistently uploading great basketball gaming videos to our YouTube channel these days, an initiative that Dee has been spearheading with gameplay reels for a multitude of hoops titles, not to mention the weekly Top 10. I’ve also posted a couple of video retrospectives for Wayback Wednesday recently, including NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, so be sure to subscribe for more virtual hardwood fun!

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #476 of the NLSC Podcast!

If you go could back and play any basketball video game for the first time, which one would it be? This week, we join the community in reminiscing about the hoops titles that we wish we could experience anew, because of how much we were floored by our first impressions of them. A couple of other games that we’ve since changed our minds about, and would’ve liked to have had a better first impression of, likewise get a mention! After playing it over Parsec, we also take a look back at NBA Inside Drive 2004, an Xbox exclusive from Microsoft that more than held its own against stiff competition from the other 2004 season releases.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:11:40 — 49.6MB)

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!

As you may be aware, in addition to our modding community and original content here on the NLSC, we’re also active over on YouTube! It’s an initiative that Dee4Three has been spearheading for some time now, and his latest gameplay videos spotlight AND1 Streetball and the NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition mod for NBA Jam: On Fire Edition.

Both reels are from co-op sessions that we played over Parsec. In AND1 Streetball, we assembled a squad featuring some of the biggest names of the Mixtape Tour back in the day, including The Professor, Escalade, and Sik Wit It, and played a pickup game at Rucker Park. It was a joy to revisit this somewhat overlooked and underrated street hoops game, and produce some fun highlights. We also discussed the game in Episode #475 of the NLSC Podcast, and I’ve previously covered it for Wayback Wednesday.

For our session with NBA Jam: On Fire Edition using the Legends On Fire Edition mod, we replayed the 1995 NBA Finals matchup of the Houston Rockets vs. the Orlando Magic. It was a battle that went down to the wire, showcasing how challenging and exciting the mod can be! In case you missed it, a new version of NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition has just been released, and johnz1 also joined us on the podcast back in April. I also covered NBA Jam: On Fire Edition for Wayback Wednesday this week, with an in-depth video retrospective.

Check out both highlight reels below, and be sure to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel for more gameplay highlights, retrospectives, and other content! We’re also open to suggestions for games that you’d like to see us play, so by all means hit us up with those ideas.

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Back in March, johnz1 released the initial version of the NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition mod for the PlayStation 3 version of NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. As you may recall, the mod includes 67 squads based on the best NBA teams from the 1980s through to the 2020s, and a revamped Road Trip mode. Today, johnz1 has released v1.1 of the project!

The new version of NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition contains several ratings updates for better player performance, and corrects the colours of the press row tables for a number of teams. It also utilises a new installation method, and should now work properly on jailbroken PS3s as well as the RPCS3 emulator. A couple of other minor fixes such as changes to player order are also included. Full release notes from johnz1 can be found below.

Download v1.1 of NBA Jam: Legends On Fire Edition here! For more information and support, check out the release topic here in our Forum. Don’t forget that johnz1 has also released a 2023 update for NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, and joined us on the NLSC Podcast to talk about modding the game. Finally, if you need a reminder of how awesome NBA Jam: On Fire Edition is, be sure to check out my newly-posted Wayback Wednesday retrospective!

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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 NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, with a video retrospective.

Since I profiled the 2010 reboot in last week’s Wayback Wednesday, it only makes sense to cap off a month (and a bit) of 30th Anniversary celebrations with a look back at its sequel, NBA Jam: On Fire Edition! As I’ve said before, On Fire Edition has become my favourite NBA Jam game, and my pick for the best release in the series. That’s an opinion that I reiterate in the video, as I point out the enhancements to gameplay and modes that made the game so special. An NBA Jam: On Fire Edition retrospective has been long overdue, so let’s take a look back…way back…

I hope you enjoyed this retrospective, and all of the NBA Jam content in Wayback Wednesday over the past month! Even though we haven’t seen a new game since 2011, it remains an iconic series packed full of nostalgia, and the best releases are still fun to play today. Once again, I’ll plug our interview with Tim Kitzrow from 2019, and as always, encourage you to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel for more basketball gaming content.

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!

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.

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!

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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