Tag Archives: NBA Live 2005

As you may have previously seen, Murat (aka Badger) has been working on some great fixes to enhance retro basketball gaming, specifically for the last four NBA Live games on PC. To that end, he’s updated his Widescreen and Windowed Mode fixes for NBA Live 2005-08 PC, allowing them to look much better on modern systems and 16:9 displays.

You’ll notice that the Widescreen fix now not only increases the resolution during gameplay, but also displays the in-game overlays with the correct proportions. Windowed mode is also a handy feature, and the plugin doesn’t require any external applications. Whether you’re looking to create video content featuring one of these old favourites, or you just want to dust one of them off for your own enjoyment, I’d highly recommend checking out Murat’s fixes!

Download the Widescreen fix for NBA Live 2005-08 here, and the Windowed mode fix here. Murat is keenly working on other fixes to make revisiting NBA Live on PC even better, so stay tuned. These kinds of fixes have definitely been overlooked in our community throughout the years, so as more people take an interest in going back to their favourites, we’d absolutely welcome further fixes that enhance retro gaming, and new modding projects for the classics.

March Modness tips off tomorrow, but before then, we have a couple of new NBA Live 2005 mod releases! Modders27 has released face updates for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jayson Tatum, which you can pick up at the links below.

Modders27
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Face
Jayson Tatum Face + Tattoos

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

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 EA Sports cover players that can be found in NBA Live 16.

Did you know that every single NBA 2K cover player is available to play with in NBA 2K24? Between the cover players that are still active and the game’s array of classic and All-Time teams, they’re all accounted for. Obviously, we haven’t had a new NBA Live since 2018, but even then, NBA Live 19 didn’t include every cover player in the history of the series. On top of that, a couple of the cover players that were included in NBA Live 19 were nevertheless retired, and thus exclusive to the collection of Legends in Ultimate Team.

If we want to find the last NBA Live game that featured a healthy selection of players who appeared on the cover of EA Sports’ long-running basketball sim series, we must go back a few years to NBA Live 16. In fact, not only does NBA Live 16 feature a number of NBA Live cover players, but also players who graced the covers of EA Sports’ college basketball titles. And so, I thought it might be fun to spotlight those cover players who are readily accessible in NBA Live 16, wearing EA Sports jerseys in the game’s practice mode. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #517 of the NLSC Podcast!

The community has really been cooking with their submissions for the NLSC Top 10 Plays as of late. Indeed, we’re still excited about last week’s countdown! To that end, we recap what was a diverse array of spectacular virtual hardwood moments from a variety of titles, and also provide advice for both recording and submitting your highlights for future Top 10s. We also note some recent improvements to PlayStation 2 emulation (particularly in regards to NBA Street), discuss the ongoing saga with MyTEAM greed hitting an all-time high, and join the community in reminiscing about the introduction of Freestyle Control in this week’s mailbag.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:06:08 — 45.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is Part 21 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

Remember when I said this series was done with Part 20? I lied! Well, to be fair, I did say that it was done “for now”. Part 20 was the last instalment that I had planned coming into 2024, as it’s been my intention to move on to other topics here in The Friday Five. However, I did leave the door open for a Part 21 at least, as thanks to David L’s help and my own research/serendipitous discoveries, there are some more examples to discuss. Even though I would like to explore some other topics, there’s no sense in delaying this postscript instalment.

Unlike Part 20, I don’t have a consistent theme for this group of players who only appeared on certain teams in games. As it stands, I was lucky that I still had five players whose phantom stints could all be found in NBA Live 2000 in order to give Part 20 an added motif. At this point, I’ve also covered the biggest names and most prominent examples of players who only appeared on certain teams in games. Of course, the more obscure names are still worth talking about, especially as they can jog the memories of long-time fans who haven’t thought about those players in years. With that being said, let’s take a look at five more phantom stints…for now…honest!

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I don’t want to prematurely declare that we’re in a modding renaissance for NBA Live 2005, but it’s heartening to see some regular mod releases for a classic game! The latest include 2024 season rosters updated as of the trade deadline, and a face for Austin Reaves. Download them at the links below!

Modders27
Austin Reaves Face

(Ice) mrjea99
2024 Trade Deadline Update

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #516 of the NLSC Podcast!

Suffice to say, we’ve been on a major NBA Live kick lately! To that point, we’ve got some extremely enjoyable sessions with NBA Live 97, NBA Live 2004, NBA Live 06 (both versions), NBA Live 09, and NBA Live 10 to recap. We also join the community in reflecting on the NBA Live titles that we’ve spent the most time with over the years. On a less positive note, 2K has reached a whole new level of greed with NBA 2K24 MyTEAM. In addition to expressing our disgust, we commend some content creators for (finally) speaking out about these issues. We wrap up this week’s show with a celebration of Michael Jordan’s birthday, as we and our listeners share our fondest memories of MJ on the real and virtual hardwood alike.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 2:00:17 — 83.0MB)

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!

Get ready for more fantastic highlights from the basketball gaming community in the NLSC Top 10 Plays of the Week, curated by Dee4Three! New and old games alike are featured in this celebration of spectacular moments on the virtual hardwood. To submit your clips, post them in this topic, or hit up Dee on Twitter.

It’s February 17th, so Happy Birthday to Michael Jordan! The Greatest of All-Time turns 61 today, so it’s only appropriate that this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays features one of the greatest highlights you’ll ever see from virtual MJ; even if he is wearing a Cleveland Cavaliers jersey! You’ll also see action from the All-Star Weekend, and some of the biggest names in the history of basketball doing their thing on the virtual hardwood, as seven different games ranging from NBA Live 2005 through to NBA 2K24 are featured in the latest countdown. 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.

Long-time community member Murat (aka Badger) has been working on some fixes for NBA Live PC that will aid with retro gaming. They include a Widescreen Fix and Windowed Mode for NBA Live 2005, NBA Live 06, NBA Live 07, and NBA Live 08. Pick up the Widescreen Fix here, and the Windowed Mode fix here.

In addition to the Widescreen Fix and Windowed Mode Fix for the last four NBA Live games on PC, Murat has been dabbling with some other useful modifications. These include creating custom plugins for games, something that could potentially open up fantastic new retro modding possibilities. They require the FIFA Manager ASI Loader, and accordingly, Murat has uploaded both a DirectDraw and DirectX9 version in anticipation of further releases.

Helping gamers to play these classics on modern operating systems remains a goal of ours, and Murat has helped out by uploading a few more fixed executable files to the Game Fixes section of our Downloads database. If you have any retro gaming tutorials or resources to share, then we’d certainly welcome them!

A big thanks to Murat for providing these resources, and his continued research into developing mods and fixes for some classic NBA Live releases. He’s been sharing some updates in the NLSC Discord, so if you’d like to check them out, feel free to join! Be sure to head to the modding-discussion channel for the latest details.

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 additions that would’ve greatly improved specific basketball video games.

We’ve yet to see a truly perfect basketball video game. That’s not surprising since true perfection is an unrealistic goal, and we all have our own ideas as to what that would entail besides. We have had some fantastic sim and arcade basketball games though, with the NBA Live, NBA 2K, NBA Jam, and NBA Street series all offering up some candidates for the best hoops titles of all-time. However, much as many of the all-time great players have had a weakness or two, the best basketball video games are often missing a feature or mode that would’ve made them even better.

Interestingly, it’s not just the all-time best basketball video games that feasibly could have been improved by just one addition. There are some very good and even a few mediocre games whose overall quality and reputations would be greatly impacted by the addition of a key feature or mode. It might not quite push them into the upper echelon of virtual hardwood classics, but hypothetically, they suddenly become far more appealing and playable with one big addition. I’ve selected five hoops games of varying quality, and nominated a major addition – one per game – that I believe either pushes them closer to “perfection”, or results in the most significant improvement.

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We have another current season update in today’s NBA Live 2005 mod releases, as suleyman48 has uploaded a face for Nikola Jokic. Check it out at the link below!

suleyman48
Nikola Jokić Face

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

It’s always great to see new mod releases for NBA Live 2005, especially with the ongoing efforts to update the game for the 2024 season! To that end, today’s new mods include a handful of player faces, a custom practice court, and a scoreboard colour update. Pick them up at the links below!

suleyman48
Alperen Sengun Face
Ja Morant Face
Victor Wembanyama Face

(Ice) mrjea99
2024 Practice Court
2024 Scoreboard Colors

Thanks to everyone who continues to contribute to our Downloads database! If you need help uploading files, be sure to check out this video tutorial. For more information about downloads, the modding community, and Mod Releases bulletins, please see this FAQ in our Wiki.

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 Team Rankings and Overall Ratings in basketball video games.

It’s interesting how we get attached to the little details in our favourite basketball video games, particularly the ones that served as our introduction to the genre! I can trace many of my preferences related to presentation and UI to NBA Live 96 PC as it was one of the first 5-on-5 sim games that I played, and it was also the very first one that I owned rather than just frequently renting. To that point, growing up with NBA Live conditioned me to expect teams to be sorted alphabetically by location. 2K’s method of sorting by team name thus felt strange at first, though I’m used to it now.

Another detail that I really enjoyed in the early NBA Live games was the rankings that appeared on team selection screens. Mind you, while I associate them with NBA Live given that it was the series that I primarily played as a young basketball gamer, many sim titles ranked and rated the teams in both individual categories and overall. These rankings gave way to Overall Ratings similar to the ones that players have, which didn’t feel as special, but are also nostalgic in their own way. 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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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 a combination of new inspiration, impatience, and the appeal of fresh starts, can derail modding projects.

Last year, I was quite relieved when I finally released my fixed official roster for NBA 2K10; a roster that added missing Legends, corrected ratings and tendencies for the original Legends, and made a few other enhancements. Not only was I pleased with the results – as egotistical as that may sound – but it was gratifying to finish a modding project that I’d started, particularly one that can inject more fun into retro basketball gaming, and possibly even serve as a base for future projects. It came out later than I’d hoped, but it did mean that I was able to take more care with it.

Of course, it’s not the only modding project that I’ve envisioned or attempted in recent years. I’ve shared some of the roster mod ideas that have come to mind in Friday Five articles, and of course previewed an NBA 2K11 current roster project that ultimately fell through. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, as I was once very dedicated to maintaining current roster updates for NBA Live, on top of other mods over the years. Unfortunately, as I’ve looked to get back into the hobby, I’ve found that being struck by inspiration for another project has a tendency to cause impatience with the current one, and a strong yearning for the excitement that comes with fresh starts.

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