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 ten years of embracing NBA 2K, after growing up playing NBA Live.
Just in case there’s any confusion, no, this isn’t a tenth anniversary for NBA 2K. As the special edition of NBA 2K19 reminds us, the series is already twice as old as that! However, 2022 marks ten years that I’ve personally been embracing NBA 2K as a key part of my basketball gaming experience. If you’ve grown up with NBA 2K and never played NBA Live when it was the brand leader, this undoubtedly sounds strange. Why would I need to warm up to NBA 2K, and come around on embracing it? As a keen basketball gamer, shouldn’t I want to play the game that’s been on top for years?
Of course, but for an older gamer like me who grew up with NBA Live, embracing NBA 2K and its approach to sim basketball took some time. There was bias and a comfort zone to push past, not to mention availability and preferred platform. While I have my criticisms – and it’s important that we do constructively criticise any game we play, basketball or otherwise – I have grown to truly appreciate and enjoy the NBA 2K series. It’s been ten years since I’ve fully committed to embracing NBA 2K, so it feels as though some reflections are in order. 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 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.
This week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays features some wild shots, including a halftime buzzer beater in NBA Live 2004, and a really long bomb in NBA Live 97 (though sadly, not by Christian Laettner). NBA Live 19 produced a couple of nifty plays ending in emphatic dunks, as did NBA 2K22, including a clip where Donovan Mitchell has already made his Cleveland Cavaliers debut. As always, it’s great to see the community having fun with a variety of titles. Check out the countdown, and get in the mood to hit the virtual hardwood this weekend!
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.
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.
If this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays are anything to go by, basketball gamers are really looking forward to the new Jordan Challenge in NBA 2K23! Of course, His Airness isn’t the only Top 10 staple making an appearance in this week’s countdown. Ankles are getting broken, lobs are being thrown, buzzers are being beaten, and players are getting put on posters, in six different games ranging from NBA in the Zone 2000 right up to NBA 2K22. Some fantastic mods are also on display, which is definitely something we love to see in our community.
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 my thoughts on how having a personal court is an underrated feature in career modes.
As you can probably glean from how often I’ve talked about an extended playthrough of MyCAREER in NBA 2K14, I’m enjoying the experience immensely. For years I snubbed the mode, and NBA 2K14 in general. I’m not too proud to admit that I was wrong about both of them. While NBA 2K14 does have its quirks, its gameplay still holds up tremendously well in 2022. As for that first MyCAREER story, it isn’t as “on rails” or as intrusive as I’d long believed. Again, I do have some criticisms, but after finally giving it a chance, my impressions and experiences are largely positive.
On the subject of my criticisms however, there’s the matter of what I do between games in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER. I check the league leaders of course, as well as the stats for my MyPLAYER and my teammates. I keep tabs on the standings and the emerging Playoff picture late in the season, envisioning my likeliest path to the NBA Finals, and the opponent that I’ll probably face for the championship. I’ll check the news, and track career milestones. Something that I don’t do, however, is partake in a shootaround. I don’t do that because, quite simply, I can’t. For all the great aspects of NBA 2K14 MyCAREER, it unfortunately doesn’t have a court that you can call home.
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.
As you might expect following the developer blog on the revamped Jordan Challenge, His Airness makes a couple of appearances in this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays. Of course, with classic titles appearing in our countdown every week, there’s always a chance that Michael Jordan will show up! Fellow high flyer Vince Carter put on a show from a unique camera angle in NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360, while NBA 2K22’s online modes also provided a couple of posters. Enjoy another Top 10 filled with exciting dunks, incredible passes, and other fun moments from a variety of titles!
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.
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.
This week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays celebrates highlights at both ends of the virtual hardwood, with a bevy of high-flying jams, brutal poster dunks, blocks, and behind-the-back passes. The NBA Live 2001 Legends Nate and Roger return with their favourite game, LookyDaGamer lives up to his reputation as a Putback King with an incredible clean up of a miss, and I even take a break from MyCAREER (albeit still with a highlight from NBA 2K14 PS4)! This week’s countdown also pays tribute to the late great Bill Russell, who sadly passed away last Sunday.
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.
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #437 of the NLSC Podcast!
Following up on last week’s show about retro collecting, we have some further recommendations, and a possible new recurring segment. We also make good on two promises: to test multiplayer in Garfield Kart, and to play NBA in the Zone and NBA in the Zone 2. Garfield Kart was of course life-changing, but Konami’s classics proved to be very interesting releases to revisit. The NBA 2K23 First Look Trailer has given us a glimpse of the Next Gen version in action, and we certainly have some thoughts ahead of next week’s gameplay news. A recent video from Agent 00 resonated with us, and aptly summed up the politics of content creation. Finally, we’re opening up this week’s mailbag to discuss 2K fatigue.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:30:35 — 62.6MB)
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!
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.
Once again, spectacular dunks are a recurring motif in this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays. They come from a variety of titles though, beginning with Latrell Sprewell rocking the baby a la Doctor J in NBA in the Zone. Nate and Roger have also taken a break from NBA Live 2001 to have some fun with NBA Live 2004, Lookydagamer is making posters as King of the Blacktop, and BBallVideoGames is going retro with the PS1 version of NBA Live 2002. Add Kenny mixing things up with savvy plays in the virtual WNBA in NBA 2K22, and you’ve got another great countdown of basketball gaming highlights!
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.
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #436 of the NLSC Podcast!
Revisiting Fox Sports NBA Basketball 2000 reminded us of how hilariously bad it is, but it also found a new way to mess with us. Not surprisingly, NBA Live 2004 holds up much better, especially with a broadcast camera mod and the 1996 season roster. We received a couple of responses to last week’s show asking about acquiring copies of NBA Live PC and other older releases, so this week, we dive into how to get into retro basketball gaming/collecting. It needn’t be expensive, nor do you need to be the crazy collectors that we are! In this week’s mailbag, we circle back to the question of what counts as retro in basketball gaming, with our listeners sharing some interesting and differing opinions on the matter.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:17:27 — 53.5MB)
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!
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.
Shawn Kemp tips off another NLSC Top 10 Plays with a signature dunk in NBA Live 2004 using my 1996 mod, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg! This week’s countdown features a variety of highlights: emphatic dunks, crafty ankle breakers, slick passes, and buttery smooth layups. Five different games are providing this week’s assortment of spectacular plays including NBA 2K8, which also showcases a classic camera angle. NBA Live 19 and NBA 2K22 also remain very popular, with the bottom line being that the community is having a blast. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about!
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.
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.
This week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays features a Dee-lightful highlight from NBA Live 95 that you may have seen on our social media, but where does it rank? It has some stiff competition courtesy of a true Putback King, no-look alley-oops, snatch blocks, and other great highlights from six different basketball video games. Additionally, Harlem Globetrotters for the NES makes its first appearance in the countdown. It’s always fun to see an obscure title show up in the Top 10, along with the regular assortment of spectacular plays that are guaranteed to get you on the sticks!
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.
From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #433 of the NLSC Podcast!
The official Electronic Arts and WWE Games Twitter accounts made bewildering gaffes this past week, and like many of our fellow gamers, we’re unimpressed. Obsidian, meanwhile, displayed an attitude that we’d like to see more often. Elsewhere, NBA insider Shams Charania apparently leaked the NBA 2K23 cover player, and we have some thoughts on 2K’s choice. Since the NBA 2K23 preview season is almost upon us, we also reflect on NBA 2K22, summing up our final thoughts on the game, and giving it a rating out of ten. After reminiscing about a satisfying session of NBA Jam: On Fire Edition, we open up the mailbag to discuss who should be the five best-rated players in NBA 2K23.
Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:30:06 — 62.2MB)
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!
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.
Fans of the Seattle SuperSonics should be delighted by this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays, as Shawn Kemp appears twice in the countdown! Admittedly he’s wearing a Bulls jersey in one of them: a dunk plus the foul in NBA Live 15 Ultimate Team. Nevertheless, I’m sure you’ll still enjoy seeing The Reignman throw it down after going coast to coast! There’s also an incredible move by Doctor J, a poster dunk by new Lakers coach Darvin Ham, and more great highlights from nine different games, from Looney Tunes B-Ball all the way up to NBA 2K22.
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.
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.
This week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays features another highlight from my NBA 2K14 MyCAREER that I’m definitely not capable of, as well as a larger than life jam by Terry Porter in NBA in the Zone! The rest of the countdown is generally more believable – inter-era matchups aside – but certainly no less spectacular. Poster dunks, breathtaking alley-oops, and more magic in the clutch, make for another exciting Top 10. Eight different games are featured this week, along with an assortment of fantastic mods for NBA 2K17, NBA 2K19, and NBA 2K22.
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 another ten players that ended up as familiar faces in strange places.
Yes, we’re reached the seventh instalment of this series! For the record, while this may not be the last time I cover this topic in Wayback Wednesday, it’s the final list that I’ve had planned. I’m sure there are other examples that I’ll find when I revisit classic games, and of course over time, new games will grow old and more players will end up becoming familiar faces in strange places. If there are any noteworthy examples that I haven’t covered in these seven articles, feel free to let me know. A Part 8 may be in order at some point!
For those who may be unfamiliar with this topic, I’m taking a look back at the unusual stints of players who are generally associated with a specific team. They’re the stints that are often forgotten, or in some cases, ones that we tried to forget because of how lacklustre they were, or how wrong it felt to see a player in a different jersey. I’m looking at them through the lens of basketball video games, as we’ll often see these familiar faces in strange places when we fire up older titles and browse the rosters. To that end, I’ve mostly tried to focus on stints that have been officially represented in games, at launch or in official roster updates. Let’s take a look back…way back…
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