Tag Archives: NBA Live 2000

Episode #392 of the NLSC Podcast is out now! Derek (aka Dee4Three) and I are your hosts for this weekly podcast that’s all about basketball gaming.

NBA 2K22 is out, and many people are calling it the best NBA 2K game ever. We’re not so sure about that, but we do have some initial impressions to share, including lists of pros and cons for Current Gen and Next Gen. An issue with the PC release will also hopefully be sorted out ASAP. The addition of Evan Eschmeyer to the 2003 Mavericks prompts us to share some interesting trivia about his career, and its impact on the virtual hardwood. Elsewhere, the NBA Live 10 Tournament rolls on with some exciting games, and NBA 2K14 continues to be a captivating retro kick. In this week’s mailbag, we’re reflecting on some memorable basketball video game launches, and titles that impressed us from Day One.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:50:48 — 76.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Join in the conversation in the comments below, or here in the Forum! Additionally, feel free to hit us up with any feedback on the episode, as well as mailbag questions and topic suggestions for future shows. For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. The show also comes out on our YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe for future episodes and other video content.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five weird quirks that you can find in basketball games from the 90s.

As someone who was born in 1984 and thus grew up and became a teenager in the 90s, I have a lot of nostalgia for the decade. It’s become a popular decade to hate on, perhaps because it’s the one that people were starting to feel nostalgic for as social media really took off. Perhaps if the Internet had been a bigger thing earlier in the 90s, 60s and 70s nostalgia would be the popular subject of scorn instead. Then again, I suppose people have been railing against nostalgia for as long as they’ve been feeling nostalgic. History suggests that both of these feelings are cyclical, and inevitable.

With that being said, while nostalgia goggles are rose-coloured by design, it doesn’t mean that there’s no truth or accuracy in holding the past in high regard. No, not everything in the 90s was wonderful, but there were great shows, films, and video games, and it was a tremendous era for basketball. Combining those last two things, there were some very important basketball games released during the 90s that paved the way for even better titles. They were great for their time, and some are still quite playable today. Those 90s basketball games do have some weird quirks though, which we’re highly unlikely to see ever again. Of course, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at another collection of players that became familiar faces in strange places.

Yes, it’s time for a fifth instalment in my ongoing series profiling familiar faces that ended up in strange places! In case you missed the previous articles, or the title is a bit too esoteric, this series looks back at well-known players that are generally associated with a particular team, and their stints wearing unfamiliar jerseys that looked strange at the time as well as in hindsight. Because video games capture these unusual stints, I’m also looking at them through the lens of the virtual hardwood. As I’ve said before, I love the “interactive almanac” aspect of old video games!

The ten familiar faces in strange places that I’m profiling this time around feature a mix of several big names, as well as some prominent role players from back in the day. Although it’s more jarring to see All-Stars and future Hall of Fame inductees wearing unfamiliar uniforms, we can still come to associate long-tenured role players with a certain team as well. As such, it’s similarly strange when they move on to a new club, both in real life and in video games. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is another list of cover players that you may not recall being the face of a game.

In my first Friday Five article on cover players that you may not recall, I focused on international/alternate covers that likely flew under the radar for even the keenest of hoops gamers. For Part 2, I’m focusing on players who were the main/only cover athlete for their respective titles, but due to either their standing in the league at the time, their game being somewhat overlooked and forgotten, or a combination of the two, they’re less likely to be remembered for being cover players at one point. That’s not to say nobody recalls their appearances on covers, but it’s easy enough to forget.

Looking back, there have been some unusual and surprising cover players. There are explanations, of course. As basketball games have become more popular, the choice of cover player has become more significant, if only as an indication of the strength of the brand. Younger players who grew up with video games naturally tend to be more excited about endorsing them, likely viewing them the same way older players looked upon appearing on a Wheaties box or the cover of Sports Illustrated. On top of that, when there were more NBA games on the market, not every title could secure a top star. With that being said, here are five more cover players that may surprise you.

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Episode #381 of the NLSC Podcast is out now! Derek (aka Dee4Three) and I are your hosts for this weekly podcast that’s all about basketball gaming.

We have a lot on our minds this week! Our NBA Live 10 sessions continued with another epic clash that delighted us with its authenticity. NBA Action 94 and 95 were also briefly in the rotation, and they had their interesting points. Unfortunately, NBA Live 15 and 16 provided a reminder of staples that have been missing from the series for years. Playing NBA Live 10 as well as NBA 2K14 on PS4 also leads us to reminisce about external factors that tainted our first impressions of games we later came to enjoy. Meanwhile, a comment blaming the community for recurrent revenue mechanics has us fired up; suffice to say, we disagree! We also cover a recent fix in NBA 2K21 Next Gen, and answer a mailbag question about gameplay improvements that we’re yet to see.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:38:28 — 67.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Join in the conversation in the comments below, or here in the Forum! Additionally, feel free to hit us up with any feedback on the episode, as well as mailbag questions and topic suggestions for future shows. For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. The show also comes out on our YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe for future episodes and other video content.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five corrections to previous articles that I’ve written.

Guess what? I’m not perfect. Just ask former Forum members that we’ve had to show the door for one reason or another; especially the ones that email me long diatribes, or bash me in social media and blog posts! Alright, maybe don’t listen to them. For all my faults, I’d like to think I’m not the wretched stain on humanity that they paint me as being. Wry potshots at disillusioned denizens of days gone by aside, I do make mistakes. I’m not infallible in my knowledge of basketball and basketball gaming, and to that end, occasionally I’ve erred and failed to double-check for accuracy.

I’d also like to think that my features, be they articles or videos, have continued to improve. I’ve been able to develop a style, hone my writing and editing skills, and devise some interesting topics to discuss. At least, I hope that’s been the case! I’ve also made it a point to ensure that I do the necessary research regarding details that aren’t widely known, or otherwise embedded in my memory. However, there are still times when I’ve trusted my recollections when I shouldn’t have, as well as a few things that I didn’t know until I expanded my basketball video game collection. In the interests of transparency and accuracy, here are five corrections I’m making to previous articles.

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at basketball gaming on the Nintendo 64.

For basketball gamers who are at the tail end of Generation X, or Millennials/Gen Y folks like me, we’re starting to experience milestones that remind us that we’re getting older. Realising we’re coming up on the 30th Anniversary of the Chicago Bulls’ first championship – an event that was just a few years old when I really got into basketball – is a good example. Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of NBA Live over the past two years is another. We’re also starting to see a lot of classic consoles that I recall being one of the systems to own back in the day, now reaching significant anniversaries.

To that end, the Nintendo 64 turns twenty five this week, being released in Japan on June 24th 1996 and North America on September 29th. It wouldn’t be released in Europe or Australia until March 1997, and I didn’t actually own the console until I received it for my 13th birthday in October that year. Nevertheless, it’s the 25th Anniversary of the debut of the Nintendo 64, so it only seems appropriate to reflect on the history of basketball gaming on the console. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at what we might consider the signature songs of some classic games (including a few recent classics).

There are many aspects to our nostalgia for video games, some of which don’t have anything to do with the gameplay itself. Music is a strong nostalgic trigger in general, and when it comes to basketball games, hearing a song from its soundtrack will take you back to all the time you spent with it. This includes both the original tracks that were created for very old games, and licensed music that began appearing in titles around the early 2000s. This is particularly true if a title ended up including a remixed version of the song referencing basketball and gaming.

With that in mind, what are some of the signature songs in the games we’ve loved over the years? Sometimes it’s difficult to pick just one, as certain soundtracks have been full of hits and bangers. Nevertheless, I believe it’s possible to pick one stand out track that you instantly remember when you fire up a game again. Alternatively, you’ll think of the game when you hear the song elsewhere. From the golden oldies to some more recent favourites, let’s take a look back…way back…

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five times that various basketball video games featured incorrect jerseys.

In sim basketball titles, accuracy down to the last detail is the name of the game. An arcade title usually has more wiggle room for inaccurate, exaggerated, and stylised details, but we still expect a certain degree of faithfulness in NBA-licensed products. Some inaccuracies are admittedly only apparent to the most eagle-eyed gamers who are particularly attuned to minute details on jerseys, courts, and shoes. However, other inaccuracies are blatantly obvious to everyone, leaving one to wonder just what the developers and artists were thinking (or what sources they were working from).

Case in point: the five incorrect jerseys that I’ll be spotlighting today. Now, I’ve decided not to include any jerseys with incorrect colour palettes, such as the Chicago Bulls jerseys that were more pink than red for so many years. My reason is that they tend to be well-known examples too numerous to mention, and we can assume that they’re the result of developers working from official colour palettes that didn’t yield the proper results in-game. Instead, I’m focusing on jerseys that were incorrect due to weird mistakes in their design, or some other oddity. Some of these incorrect jerseys are noticeable right away, while others do require being something of a uniform buff.

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Episode #369 of the NLSC Podcast is out now! Derek (aka Dee4Three) and I are your hosts for this weekly podcast that’s all about basketball gaming.

An annoying issue in MLB The Show 20 leads us to reflect on some of the flaws in our all-time favourite basketball games. We conclude that there isn’t a title that we wouldn’t change something in; content, a mechanic, or a noteworthy bug that needed fixing. Also, March Modness may be over, but we’ve still got modding on our minds. For anyone looking to get into the hobby, we offer up some advice, and discuss the various possibilities. In this week’s mailbag, we’re throwing it back to NBA Live 2001, and discussing the benefits of the User vs. User experience.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:41:23 — 69.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Join in the conversation in the comments below, or here in the Forum! Additionally, feel free to hit us up with any feedback on the episode, as well as mailbag questions and topic suggestions for future shows. For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. The show also comes out on our YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe for future episodes and other video content.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five small ways that basketball games have gone that extra mile in their details.

The small details in basketball video games are a funny thing. It’s possible to obsess over them too much, to the point of nitpicking. Nothing makes us appear to be an unpleasable fanbase quite like overreacting to a minor error or missing detail that most people would never notice, and hardly ruins the entire game. At the same time, attention to detail is important, and we do notice when games go that extra mile in order to be fun and immersive. Even if it’s purely cosmetic, we’re likely to say “hey, that’s awesome” once we’ve seen it.

It may be a detail that we can barely see during gameplay, but it adds authenticity that we can appreciate when replays take us closer to the action. It may be functionality that improves the quality of the experience, or contributes to the atmosphere. In some cases, it may even be content that gets patched in, adding a level of detail that we didn’t expect. Whatever the case may be, the developers went that extra mile to make the game better in small ways. I’m sure we all have our favourite examples of little details that impressed us when we discovered them, and so today I’m sharing five of mine, in no particular order. Hats off to the developers for these efforts!

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five odd features that can be found in various Create-a-Player modes over the years.

One of the most basic staples of roster customisation in basketball games – and most sports games for that matter – is Create-a-Player. Whether you want to add a real player that’s missing from the official roster, insert your own avatar into the game, or spice things up with a fictional character, it’s there to indulge your creativity. Despite being a staple of roster editing, Create-a-Player has been missing from a few games, including NBA Live 14 through 16, and NBA Live 18 before a patch added it post-launch. Other than that, most games from the mid 90s onwards have included it.

Create-a-Player modes have usually offered a standard set of features as far as the ratings, bio data, and other attributes that can be assigned. As the graphics of hoops games have improved, so have the face creation tools. Generally speaking, apart from an option here and there for added depth, most 5v5 sim-oriented basketball titles have very similar Create-a-Player facilities. With that being said, there have been a few games with creation modes that have included some odd features and options, ranging from design choices and limitations to unexpected content. You know the drill: I’ve got five such examples to discuss, so let’s begin!

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five cheats that have major drawbacks.

Cheaters never prosper, as the saying goes. Of course, that saying predates video games, where cheating often leads to great success! Doom II sure felt like a walk in the park when my cousin and I punched in IDDQD and IDKFA for invincibility and all the items. There are a couple of adventure games I probably wouldn’t have ever finished if not for a walkthrough, and the Konami code has benefited many a gamer over the years. Alright, it’s kind of cheating yourself and it’s far more satisfying when you beat a game legitimately, but the point is that cheats are indeed effective.

Well, some of them. Some cheats are more like Easter eggs, unlocking weird effects and bonus content that don’t actually help you win. Some are definitely just for fun, but even then, there can be drawbacks. As is the case in other genres, employing cheats in basketball games may not allow you to make any progress. The effects of some cheats are a letdown, while others may actually make the game more difficult. Whatever the case may be, you’re better off avoiding these codes and activities if you want to enjoy basketball gaming to its fullest. Here are five such examples, and the drawbacks that you can expect to experience.

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at the Space Jam video game.

Happy 58th Birthday to my all-time favourite player, Michael Jordan! You know, it kind of blows my mind that I’m now older than MJ was when he won his final title with the Chicago Bulls in 1998. Appropriately enough, that was 23 years ago; a fact that’s also difficult to wrap my head around! In any case, I figured that since it is His Airness’ birthday today, it only makes sense to cover something related to him. The problem is that I’ve already covered The Jordan Challenge (from several angles, too), as well as Michael Jordan in Flight, his history in games, and his comeback in 1995.

What else is there? Well, how about the Space Jam video game? Yes, there was a lot of merchandise related to Space Jam when it came out, and like so many movies in the 90s, there was a video game tie-in for PC, PlayStation, and Sega Saturn. I didn’t actually play it back in the day, but I’ve since added it to my collection. We got a real jam going down, so let’s take it into overtime…I mean, let’s take a look back…way back…

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five lists five times that NBL players appeared in classic NBA video games.

After the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the original start of the season, the Australian NBL is tipping off its 2021 campaign today. I’ve always been more of an NBA fan, but I do have an affinity for my country’s league; even if my hometown has lost two teams since the league was founded here in 1979. In any event, it’s been great to see the NBL grow, and become a viable path to the NBA. Not only have more and more home-grown talents made it to the NBA, but American players are opting for the NBL over college. Examples include Terrance Ferguson, and more recently, LaMelo Ball.

The number of players who spent time in both leagues has resulted in several NBL alumni appearing in NBA video games. Luc Longley played two games for the Perth Wildcats in 1986 before he was drafted in 1991, and became the first Australian to play in the NBA. Journeyman point guard Doug Overton played a season for the Illawarra Hawks before beginning his NBA career with the Washington Bullets. You may be familiar with them thanks to their NBA careers and video game appearances, as well as more recent NBL alumni such as Joe Ingles and Torrey Craig. There are some older appearances you may not recall however, such as these five examples.

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