Tag Archives: NBA Live 13

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 roster editing in NBA Live 18.

Roster editing is a feature that’s very easy to take for granted. It’s been a staple of basketball video games since the mid 90s, and even earlier titles such as TV Sports Basketball allowed us to modify the names and ratings of its generic players. With that being said, we couldn’t always count on games to provide us with roster editing functionality. A number of games in the 90s and even early 2000s also bungled the basics of roster customisation, making it needlessly difficult to trade players or alter a team’s rotation.

During its heyday, NBA Live was the gold standard in many aspects of sim basketball games, including roster editing. To that end, many of the best NBA Live games also feature deep and robust roster customisation functionality. In fact, the quality of NBA Live’s roster editing features remained fairly consistent even as the series faltered on the virtual hardwood. By the eighth generation however, the customisation options had become as disappointing as the gameplay. Fortunately, NBA Live 18 saw a big turnaround in both areas. 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 bad omens in basketball gaming.

I don’t believe in omens as a mystical force in the universe. However, I do believe that there are warning signs that we should take notice of, which I’ll colloquially refer to as bad omens. As far as basketball gaming is concerned, there are definitely some bad omens when it comes to an upcoming release, or the future of a series. They’re not exactly mysterious and hard to spot, but it obviously gets easier with experience. We can recognise patterns, acknowledge precedent, and employ some common sense. At the same time, it’s easy to ignore bad omens.

After all, many of us try to remain optimistic about our hobby. We don’t want to jump the gun and assume the worst, especially if our predictions and pessimism have been proven wrong in the past. Things that have seemed like bad omens have turned out to be meaningless, or in rare cases, good news. Still, it pays to err on the side of caution, and there are warning signs that we should probably brace ourselves for bad news; or at the very least, temper our expectations. Once again, experience can usually guide us, as the red flags are much easier to spot after you’ve been through a few preview seasons. To that end, when one of these five events occurs, it tends to be a bad omen.

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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 how the door has seemingly closed on NBA Live.

Although NBA Live has remained dormant since 2019, I’ve still had plenty of reasons to write about it. Older releases have re-entered my rotation, and I’ve developed more of an appreciation for them. There are some that I’d like to dust off more often, and even mod. I’ve talked about the opportunities the series has had, and some of the ones that it’s squandered. I’ve lamented how both the series and its long-time fans deserved better. Above all, I’ve continued to champion the need for alternatives, and noted how despite numerous setbacks, somehow the door has remained open for NBA Live.

However, with the shutdown of NBA Live 19’s servers and no new release on the horizon, it feels as though the door has finally closed. I could be wrong here, and it’s certainly not the outcome that I wanted. I still believe in the importance of having at least two viable sim options on the market, and I’ll continue to advocate for that. Even if a return for NBA Live is as highly unlikely as it seems, there’s arguably still a better chance of that happening than another developer stepping up to try to compete with NBA 2K. For now though, with online support for NBA Live 19 ending and NBA Live Mobile being the last vestige of the series, the door has seemingly slammed shut.

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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 NBA Elite 11 demo and its impact on the NBA Live series with an in-depth video retrospective.

Fifteen years ago on Sunday, NBA Elite 11 was supposed to be released. However, following a disastrous hands-on preview that made it very clear that the game wasn’t anywhere close to being ready, it was delayed right before it was set to hit shelves. While much of its infamy comes from the video of Andrew Bynum getting stuck in the t-pose at halfcourt, there were so many other problems with the NBA Elite 11 demo, and the retail version. It’s no surprise that the game was ultimately cancelled, but just how badly did EA Sports mess up? Let’s take a look back…way back…

I hope you enjoyed this look back at EA Sports’ biggest basketball blunder! It’s been on my list of Wayback Wednesday ideas for a while now, and since we’ve reached the 15th anniversary of the whole debacle, the timing seemed right. Incidentally, if you have an Xbox 360 and would like to give the demo a try, it’s still available here in our Downloads section. If you’re after a legitimate copy of the full version…well, that can be an expensive endeavour! In any case, feel free to share your thoughts on the NBA Elite 11 demo, as well as the retail version if you’ve played it. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven’t already, and stay tuned for more retrospectives!

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…

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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 issues with NBA Live that were seemingly evergreen.

When we look at the struggles that NBA Live endured for over a decade, there are two levels to our critique. The first concerns the minutia of the games; the hands-on experience, from gameplay to game modes. In other words, the technical issues and specific design choices that have resulted in titles which failed to live up to ours or EA’s expectations. That’s an important conversation to have, especially when we’ve compiled Wishlists, or otherwise sent in feedback to the developers. However, there’s also a second level in which we evaluate concepts and approach.

It’s at the conceptual level that you’ll find many evergreen issues with the NBA Live series, which have served to hold it back and take it in bad directions. It isn’t a case of laziness, a lack of knowledge, or even resources, though it could be argued that NBA Live has never received the same support from EA Sports brass as its other franchises. There are common mistakes that are present in all of the problematic NBA Live titles though, and even some of the best releases still suffer from these evergreen issues. A comeback for NBA Live will require many specific fixes and additions from a virtual basketball perspective, but conceptually, it must also break the cycle on these trends.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #500 of the NLSC Podcast!

We’re celebrating a huge milestone this week, as it’s the 500th episode of the NLSC Podcast! To mark the occasion, we’re dipping into the archives to find some classic clips from over eleven years of shows, from the original test pilot in 2010 to interviews with a couple of fantastic guests. We’ve had a ton of fun over the years, and we promise that we’re not done yet! We also recap a couple of sessions with NBA 2K10 PC that we played with the recently-released fixed official roster, and reflect once again on how the game is often overlooked due to the brilliance of NBA 2K11 the very next year.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:37:31 — 67.3MB)

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!

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 creating clickbait content in lieu of actual news.

I’m a content creator in the basketball gaming community. I think it’s fair to claim that; I write articles, co-host a podcast, produce videos, and even occasionally create mods. To that point, I’m all too aware of the desire to see your content clicked on, downloaded, shared, and hopefully enjoyed. I realise that we all need to aim for SEO, jump on trends and hashtags, and attempt to appease whatever convoluted algorithm is steering people towards content on any given platform. I’m not puzzled as to the reasons why content creators engage in clickbait, because it’s a highly effective tactic.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a cheap, lousy practice. Mind you, if the content is at least halfway decent, then having some clickbait-y elements is somewhat excusable. Indeed, if the content is enjoyable and there’s nothing really misleading about it, you could argue that it isn’t actually clickbait. Some things are pure clickbait however, and it does exist in the basketball gaming community. With an extremely short preview season nowadays, not to mention NBA Live’s absence, it’s inevitable – and logical – to fill in the silence with speculative content. That needn’t be a problem, but it depends on how it’s presented. A lack of news is not an excuse for clickbait.

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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 my very first Friday Five, published ten years ago today.

As I always note in my introduction for Wayback Wednesday, one of the intended purposes of this weekly feature is to republish old articles, usually with some added commentary. Funnily enough, that was actually the subject of the very first Wayback Wednesday, as I posted an article that was no longer available on the site due to us switching content management systems. However, much like Jerry West winning the first NBA Finals MVP despite losing the series, this didn’t set a precedent! I’ve mostly opted for retrospectives and other game-oriented features over republishing articles.

Honestly, I do think that’s the right call, as it’s the optimal use of a weekly feature such as Wayback Wednesday. It’s handy to leave the door open to republishing lost articles and generally digging into our own archives, but I believe that basketball video games should always be the star of the show, so to speak. With that being said, since it is ten years to the day that I posted my first edition of The Friday Five, I’m reflecting on the beginning of my longest-running NLSC feature, as well as the topic that it covered. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 2K13.

As a 90s kid who grew up with NBA Live, that series has been the focus of several of my retrospectives. In addition to Wayback Wednesday features, I’ve also covered every NBA Live as part of our 25th Anniversary celebrations. I haven’t celebrated NBA 2K’s milestones in the same way, mostly because while I do consider myself a fan of the series now, I don’t have the same nostalgia for and experience with it going right back to the beginning of my basketball gaming. Games like NBA 2K14 and even NBA 2K11 have only become some of my all-time favourites in retrospect.

However, there are NBA 2K titles that I’ve played enthusiastically from launch, and am nostalgic for. Indeed, this year marks the tenth anniversary of the first 2K title that I was hooked on from day one: NBA 2K13. While the cancellation of NBA Live 13 was another blow for EA Sports, it opened up an opportunity for me to expand my basketball gaming horizons, and Visual Concepts didn’t disappoint. Even putting aside my personal affinity for NBA 2K13, I believe it’s one of the strongest releases in the NBA 2K series. 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 events that will shake your confidence in a forthcoming basketball game.

Although we can sometimes seem like a cynical bunch, I believe that a majority of basketball gamers do want to see a great new game every year. Sure, there’s a certain catharsis in a smug “I told you so”, but when it comes down to it, I expect most of us want to at least be satisfied with, if not blown away by, the latest release. It’s wise to keep our expectations realistic, and not get our hearts set on something that hasn’t been promised. At the same time, we can still be optimistic without getting carried away, or ignoring troubling signs.

To that point though, there are warning signs that we must pay attention to. These are the events that shake our confidence in a game, and for good reason. While it’s easy to jump to conclusions, there are recognisable patterns and red flags when it comes to the development of basketball video games. The longer you play them, and the more preview seasons that you experience, the better you get at recognising those signs. Also, while social media giving us access to the devs has been great for feedback, it can also leave us concerned about the people responsible for our favourite games. One way or another, these events will shake our confidence, and dampen our enthusiasm.

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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 examines the five main reasons that NBA Live flopped on the PS4/X1, aka the eighth generation consoles.

Unlike certain content creators and other haters in the basketball gaming community, I don’t delight at NBA Live’s shortcomings, or gleefully dance on its grave. While NBA 2K has provided many of us with hours upon hours of entertainment on the virtual hardwood and blacktop, we’ve also seen the drawbacks that come with a lack of competition in the genre. If you’re a fan of football games – NFL, that is – you’ve known the pain of not having alternatives even longer than basketball gamers. Even if the lone game is satisfactory, the lack of choice still stings.

Of course, it’s not quite the same situation. Madden’s monopoly comes from EA Sports having the clout and money to secure an exclusive contract when the NFL were offering it. NBA 2K’s monopoly, meanwhile, has been solidified by EA’s inability to produce a viable alternative. We’re more than a decade removed from NBA Live being the top-selling basketball game, and longer still from when it was easily the gold standard in the genre. Its attempts to rebuild during the PS4/X1 generation were largely disappointing, and have left the series in a tenuous position. These five factors are the chief reasons that those NBA Live games flopped.

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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 fall of NBA Live 13, and its lasting impact on the NBA Live series.

When I covered NBA Elite 11 and NBA Live 13 for our 25th Anniversary of NBA Live content, it wasn’t the easiest article to write. Not only was it delving into major low points for the series in the midst of celebrating a milestone, but it’s talking about games that didn’t come out and most of us have never played, apart from the NBA Elite 11 demo. Of course, the full version of NBA Elite 11 has since leaked online, which has given gamers the opportunity to play it via emulation. There are some mixed opinions, but the general consensus is that it’s on par with the demo.

To that end, there’s a reasonably clear picture of NBA Elite 11: a full preview season, a widely-panned demo, leaked copies in the wild that people got their hands on, and a ripped version that finally gave more gamers a hands-on look. Conversely, NBA Live 13 remains more of a mystery. The previews were mostly vague about details before they stopped, and not much else has been revealed about the cancelled game except that it wasn’t close to being good enough. Still, despite being canned, NBA Live 13 had a lasting impact on the series and community. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Start your week here at the NLSC with a feature that’s dedicated to opinions, commentary, and other fun stuff related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games. This week, I’m tipping things off with some candid thoughts on the downfall of the NBA Live series, and how it – and basketball gamers – really deserved better.

Maybe it’s too early to be eulogising the NBA Live series, though others might argue that it’s too late. It’s been almost two years since the official Twitter posted an update on the future of the series, announcing that EA Sports would be skipping NBA Live 20. Since then, the account has only Re-Tweeted a tribute to the late Kobe Bryant. While the silence is deafening and does little to convince fans that the door hasn’t been slammed shut on the NBA Live series, the lack of an official announcement and the occasional interesting leak or rumour has maintained a glimmer of hope.

However, after another EA Play without any word on the future of the series, many of the fans who have continued to fly the flag for NBA Live are beginning to give up on it ever returning. If nothing else, supporters of the brand are resigning themselves to the fact that until they actually hear concrete news, there’s no point in speculation and getting their hopes up. I’d count myself in the second group, though I’ve never been less optimistic about NBA Live. You may ask why we wanted NBA Live to return, and why we care about its current state. To be blunt, the NBA Live series deserved much better than it received over the past fifteen years, and so did hoops gamers.

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Thank you to everyone who has been following along with our 25th Anniversary of NBA Live content! We tipped off the celebrations in 2019 and continued them through 2020, marking the 25th Anniversary of both the original release in 1994, and the PC version in 1995.

It was my goal to wrap up the retrospectives by the end of 2020. One of the main reasons for that – aside from chronological accuracy, of course – was to avoid what happened with the 20th Anniversary celebrations five years earlier. Unfortunately I didn’t produce all of the content that I had planned, in particular the game-by-game retrospectives. That’s why I burned through the 25th Anniversary retrospectives so quickly last month, as I wanted to make sure that I got them done. I also wanted to give everyone some fresh content to enjoy over the holiday season.

The end of the retrospectives also marks the end of our main celebrations. However, there are a few other odds and ends to share, including republishing articles from the 20th Anniversary, a couple of other features, and if we can line them up, further interviews with people involved with NBA Live during the early days. You can consider this “overtime” content, and it’ll run through the early stages of 2021. Some other ideas will likely instead be repurposed for Wayback Wednesday features, and possibly March Modness.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the retrospectives and other throwback content! It was definitely fun to revisit every game in the series, reminisce about the good times, and put the series’ struggles in perspective. Stay tuned for the overtime content, and in the meantime, I invite you to check out all of our 25th Anniversary of NBA Live features that have been posted so far! I’ve compiled all of the links below, or you can browse the archive. Here’s to getting some good news about the future of the NBA Live series at some point in 2021!

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