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 it can be extremely difficult to put aside a beloved basketball game that you’re really enjoying.
Basketball games – and sports games in general – have a ticking clock. I’m not talking about the one that counts down while we’re on the virtual field of play, but rather the countdown to the release of the next title. Annual releases give us a year to get the most out of a basketball game before its successor is out, but sometimes, that won’t be enough. After all, an 82-game season on twelve minute quarters will take over 100 hours to finish. That’s certainly feasible for an enthusiastic basketball gamer, but with multi-season play, that may only be the beginning of the journey.
Needless to say, if a basketball game is good enough to keep us hooked even as the next release is on the horizon, then that’s fantastic! We’re not always so lucky, as I can attest to souring on games long before the end of their life cycle. Furthermore, we’re under no obligation to buy the new game every year or to bench a beloved basketball game if we still want to play it. We can always revisit old favourites too, though we’re seeing games become increasingly disposable. With that being said, many of us are still interested in seeing what a new release has to offer, so the need to make room in our rotation ends up clashing with our reluctance to bench a game we’re hooked on.
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 Ben Gordon becoming my favourite active player after Michael Jordan retired, and using him in video games.
Just as the Chicago Bulls remain my favourite NBA team all these years later, my all-time favourite player will always be Michael Jordan. However, although MJ is the player that got me and so many of my fellow 90s kids into basketball, my interest in hoops doesn’t end with him. Sure, I may have some quibbles with the modern game, and certainly the discourse that’s being led by so many talking heads with highly questionable agendas, but I’m still passionate about real and virtual basketball alike. In short, I didn’t drift away from the sport when MJ hung up his Air Jordans.
Of course, maintaining my interest in the NBA as my beloved Bulls fell from grace and MJ rode off into the sunset – temporarily once again, and then for good – required a change in how I approached my fandom. I’d never had trouble enjoying other stars and teams, but with the Bulls nowhere near contention, that interest beyond “my” team became even more important as far as remaining invested in the NBA. While MJ would remain my all-time favourite player, I needed a new active favourite to cheer for. In time, that would become Ben Gordon. Let’s take a look back…way back…
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 the long-running modding practice of rolling back rosters to the previous season.
Two of the most exciting modding ideas for basketball video games are bringing an old favourite up to date, and winding back the clock in new games with a detailed retro season mod. There’s something truly enchanting about a mod so comprehensive that you almost forget that several years – or indeed, decades – separate the game and the season that the roster mod is set in! In comparison, roster mods that just involve rolling the rosters back one year may seem like a more humble affair, particularly if they’re completely minimalist and don’t include any court, jersey, or logo updates.
And yet, these projects can be immensely satisfying to create and play with! There are reasons that for as long as we’ve been able to meaningfully customise rosters – with or without the aid of external tools – we’ve had the idea of rolling back a game’s rosters to the previous campaign. In short, it’s a combination of some of our favourite aspects of playing and modding basketball video games, to the point where a season needn’t be particularly old or established as nostalgic for us to want to re-create it. It’s a way of changing things up, so let’s look at a popular way to go back, that goes way back!
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.
Like the great Wilt Chamberlain, the NLSC Top 10 Plays will wow you as it breaks regulation numbers! What do I mean by that? Well, thanks to a couple of similarly spectacular highlights sharing the number one spot, this week’s countdown actually features eleven different basketball video games! Indeed, a couple of them are making their Top 10 debut, namely Space Jam and NBA Superstars, which we discussed in Episode #540 of the NLSC Podcast. From wild shots to rim-rattling dunks, the community has come through with the goods as always. 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.
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 some 90s stars who retired (or at least, left the NBA) in 2005, yet are still playable in NBA Live 06.
It’s wise not to jump to conclusions when we see coincidences that are in fact likely occurrences. Apophenia – the tendency to perceive patterns where none exist, also called patternicity – leads us to ascribe connections and deeper meaning to unrelated events. To that point, it’s hardly unusual for a player to retire (or perhaps bow out of the NBA to play overseas) around the same time as their generational peers. Sure, a few players in every generation will stick around much longer while others will have shorter careers, but most of them will retire concurrently or within a brief span.
With that in mind, there’s nothing particularly strange or suspicious about a group of players who entered the league in the late 80s to early 90s all hanging it up in the mid 2000s. Nevertheless, it’s still interesting that 2005 was the final season for a number of stars that I grew up watching in the 90s, and that they’re all available in NBA Live 06, either still on their final team or in the Free Agents Pool. If nothing else, it was a sign that their era and generation was now definitely drawing to a close, adding some wistful nostalgia to one of my favourite games. 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 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.
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 the five worst decisions I made with my Franchise mode games.
Since I’ve discussed five of the best decisions that I made with franchise modes over the years, it only makes sense to counter it with five of the worst! Even though I know the approach that’ll allow me to best enjoy franchise modes and also what tends to ruin them for me, I’m not immune to making mistakes. Knowing that a change of pace can be a way of keeping things fresh, you might be inclined to try an out-of-the-box idea that turns out to be a flop. Alternatively, a tried-and-true approach might actually be the wrong move on some occasions.
Fortunately, as I noted in my previous article, I haven’t really ruined any franchise games that I was heavily invested in, to the point where I couldn’t continue them. I’ve come close a couple of times, but I was able to correct course before doing any lasting damage. With that being said, there are other examples where poor decisions have set me up to fail in franchise games, creating scenarios that weren’t fun. Some of them were wild ideas, though overcaution can also have its drawbacks. For all of my fellow franchise enthusiasts, may these stories of my worst decisions and biggest blunders serve as cautionary tales the next time you’re getting ready to start a brand new game!
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 keeping an open mind when it comes to basketball video games.
Obviously, the ability to keep an open mind is a useful gift in general. We don’t need to go into any deeper socio-political issues here – we are a basketball gaming site and community at the end of the day – but there’s wisdom in open-mindedness. After all, having an open mind doesn’t mean believing everything you hear, or allowing your views to be easily changed. Indeed, when we’re open to new information, dissenting opinions, and examining and even challenging our own views, it may well strengthen our stance. If being better-informed changes our mind, there’s nobility in that, too.
As basketball gamers, we tend to have fairly strong preferences and beliefs. We have our mode of choice, and our preferred style of gameplay, from controls to mechanics. We know the games we like, and the games we don’t. If we encounter an opposing point of view when discussing basketball gaming on social media or in forums and Discord servers, we may be moved to vehemently disagree; often in a way that insults or belittles the other person and their perspective. Sadly, that’s online discourse in a nutshell, but for whatever my words are worth, I would like to encourage my fellow basketball gamers to keep an open mind. I can attest to it being a rewarding approach.
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 the five best decisions I made with my Franchise mode games.
Career and card collecting modes may be the most popular experiences in basketball video games nowadays, but there was a time when franchise play was king. I’ll admit that I’ve drifted away from franchise modes over the years, but they do represent some of my fondest basketball gaming memories. I’m always open to returning to my roots as a franchise gamer, if I can ever decide on a game and find a scenario that appeals to me. Of course, while I have unfortunately lost many of my franchise saves, I still have one from NBA Live 06 PC that I’m always open to picking up once more.
Having spent countless hours with various franchise modes in a number of games, I’ve made my share of good decisions and bad moves alike. There are some ways that you can almost instantly ruin a franchise game to the point where you don’t want to play it anymore, but fortunately I haven’t bungled too many games that I was heavily invested in. That’s a topic for another time, but for this week’s Five, I want to talk about some of my best decisions in franchise modes. These are the choices and moves that made the experience even better, and subsequently kept me hooked. A couple of them even went against my usual rules, proving that it’s wise to keep an open mind.
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 look at how Terry Hanson is beginning to spawn a multiverse.
When you think about it, basketball video games create a multitude of realities; a multiverse, if you will. For example, from my gaming alone, the Chicago Bulls have won their seventh championship – and sometimes an eighth title as well – on several occasions and in different seasons. In my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, I’m working on an alternate timeline spanning from the 2014 season through to today. With millions of people playing basketball video games, all manner of scenarios are happening on the virtual hardwood, repeating as new games come out and wipe the slate clean.
Technically speaking, Terry Hanson doesn’t have any “official” appearances in video games. After all, as a generated and thus fictional player, he’s not official to begin with! With that being said, he is functionally a part of the reality that has been created by my aforementioned NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, so that’s “officially” where he’s from. However, that’s not the only place that he shows up these days. My enthusiasm for this generated player – truly a Virtual Hardwood Legend – has ensured that from here on out, I’ll be doing my part in creating a Terry Hanson Multiverse. And so, I’d like to share with you how Top Floor Terry has leapt beyond his original game!
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 five stints that never officially appeared in basketball video games.
Yes, it’s time to reflect on another five stints that never appeared in video games; at least in any official rosters! As someone who enjoys basketball and basketball video game trivia alike, topics like this are always fun to dive into. It’s also risky, though. While I do have an extensive collection and try my best to thoroughly research in order to ensure these claims are accurate, I’m not infallible. This was made painfully clear after a previous article, when an assumption led me to overlook NBA Ballers and its inclusion of Rasheed Wallace’s brief stopover with the Atlanta Hawks.
Of course, that was also a handy reminder to do my due diligence! I believe that this time around, I’ve covered all of my bases by checking every game that I own, and crosschecking release dates and any roster listings that I can find online in ones that I don’t. And so, with the help of David L, I’ve compiled this list of five more players with stints that never appeared in games, as well as some others that I’ll get to in future articles. I’ll also once again clarify that I’m referring to official appearances, i.e. in the default rosters or an official roster update, so community-made rosters don’t count. With that being said, let’s look at five players and their unrepresented stints!
Following the project’s launch in May, Murat and company have released a new version of the MyEra Project for NBA Live 2005 and NBA Live 06 PC. Inspired by MyNBA Eras in NBA 2K23 and NBA 2K24, the mod currently includes 1984-85 and 1995-96 rosters. It remains a work in progress, but to that point, some significant additions have been made in V0.1.1. Please note that it is not compatible with the console versions of NBA Live 2005 and NBA Live 06.
Key features of the latest release include:
Cyberfaces and PA data for more than 500 players
Generic dornas for 1995-96 season
More coaches
You can pick up the latest version of the NBA Live MyEra project here in our Downloads section! For more information and previews, be sure to check out the release and support topic here in the NLSC Forum. As you may have seen, Murat has been making some excellent efforts to revive the modding scene for NBA Live 2005 and NBA Live 06 PC throughout 2024, as well as working on enhancing the retro gaming experience with those titles. This includes the development of some widescreen fixes that are also compatible with NBA Live 07 and NBA Live 08 PC. If you’re willing and able to give Murat a hand with the MyEra project moving forward, please get in touch with him!
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 ups and downs of NBA Live on the seventh gen consoles, i.e. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
As of writing, I’m not confident that NBA Live will ever return. I scoffed at rumours that NBA Live 20 would be cancelled, especially after NBA Live 18 and 19 garnered a more positive reception, leading to a loyal following that continues to this day. The game was indeed canned though, and despite assurances that the developers and EA Sports brass were pleased with the progress and intended for the series to return, that has yet to materialise. Frankly, I’ll be ecstatic if I’m proven wrong and these words age like milk in the near future, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
Of course, NBA Live’s downfall began long before those PlayStation 4 and Xbox One releases. The series struggled mightily during the era of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 -aka the seventh console generation – culminating with the cancellation of NBA Elite 11 that caused lasting damage. These events are well-known to long-time basketball gamers, though I’d suggest there are some misconceptions; specifically, that the series was never good, that there was nothing good about the seventh gen NBA Live games, and that the series failed because it was too “arcade-y”. In the interest of a clearer picture of NBA Live’s seventh gen collapse, let’s take a look back…way back…
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #534 of the NLSC Podcast!
We had a blast this past week playing a co-op game of NBA 2K10 PC over Parsec, using a 1997 season roster. We reflect on how the game is an overlooked gem, and the brilliance of retro season mods in general. Indeed, it seems there’s more and more interest in revisiting classic games and memorable seasons with retro roster mods recently, and we’re all for it! To that end, this week we join the community in discussing what’s been drawing us to old favourites and classic seasons in the NBA. We also talk about the importance of appreciating history and note how video games play a role in that, as well as touch on the need to debunk ridiculous narratives such as the recent hit piece on Michael Jordan.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:10:38 — 48.9MB)
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 reviving the retro modding scene, and how we could best accomplish that.
Given that my dissatisfaction with the most recent releases in the NBA 2K series has pushed me towards retro basketball gaming – however you want to define that – I’m obviously intrigued by the prospect of reviving the retro modding scene. To reiterate a point I made when I discussed the definition of retro gaming, retro modding means different things to different people, but broadly speaking, I’d suggest that it refers to nostalgic favourites that the community has largely moved on from, but a dedicated contingent of people still revisit and have interest in modding and using mods for.
As far as the specific titles, we can name some popular examples here. NBA 2K13 and NBA 2K14 are two of the most modded games of their generation, and they hold up well. There’s a ton of nostalgia for the later NBA Live releases on PC, especially NBA Live 2005 and NBA Live 06, with NBA Live 2003 and NBA Live 2004 being up there as well. NBA 2K11 has some untapped potential, and is a game I’ve seen gamers cite as one they’d like to see benefit from more retro modding. NBA 2K17 and NBA 2K19 are two recent classics that gamers want to keep alive. I love the idea and support the initiative, but to make it happen, we must keep a few things in mind.
NLSC Your source for basketball video games.
