Tag Archives: NBA Starting Five 2005

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 whether it’s better to play retro basketball games on original hardware, or via emulation.

My first foray into emulation actually happened around 1994, though I wasn’t too familiar with the term or concept back then. I was trying to get Commander Keen – a legendary platformer and true classic of vintage PC gaming – to run on an Archimedes Acorn desktop, using an official DOS emulator. I wasn’t nearly as computer savvy as I’d later become, so I failed in the attempt. I had more success a few years later when I was checking out one of the early Super Nintendo emulators for PC, which was also DOS-based. I recall feeling underwhelmed though, especially with the lack of audio.

These days, emulation has come a long way, to the point where the emulators for many consoles can mimic original hardware near-perfectly. Not only that, but they also have other enhancements including save states, media capture, visual filters, and so on. That’s led to some debate among retro gamers as to whether it’s preferable to play on original hardware or simply rely on emulation. Needless to say, the latter does raise some ethical and indeed legal questions, but assuming that you can play a game you own on the original hardware or an emulator, which method is superior? As far as the virtual hardwood is concerned, for me, it depends on my needs at any given time.

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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 whether it’s possible to enjoy bad basketball games.

On the surface, the idea of enjoying bad video games of any kind seems like an oxymoron. Of course, “bad” may be a matter of personal preference, and it’s not as though we don’t enjoy other media that’s judged to be subpar. We may like a “bad” song because it’s still catchy, even if it’s lacking in artistic merit. The same goes for TV shows and films. No one’s claiming that they’re great art, but they’re fun despite their flaws (or sometimes because of them). They’re the proverbial guilty pleasures: entertainment products that we know aren’t good, but we enjoy them all the same.

As many people have observed throughout the years, it’s harder to accomplish this with video games, given that they’re an interactive medium. Hammy acting is one thing, because it’s either intentionally or ironically humorous. Conversely, broken controls and poor game design are more difficult to enjoy than terrible scripts, or laughably amateur or outdated special effects. And yet, it is possible to enjoy bad video games…sometimes. There’s a limit on how flawed they can be, and you won’t want to have paid full price for them after anticipating their release, but there are ways to enjoy both “bad” and truly bad basketball video games. I know that I have.

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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 lists five features that didn’t originate in NBA Live or NBA 2K.

From the mid 90s through to today, NBA Live and NBA 2K are the two biggest names as far as sim basketball games are concerned. Obviously NBA Jam and NBA Street were the top dogs in the arcade space, and there have been other series of sim titles that have produced quality releases. However, when we’re talking about the brand leader in NBA licensed sim titles, it’s been NBA Live and NBA 2K for more than a quarter of a century, with the latter taking the crown from the former during the 2000s. Of course, it hasn’t been a competition for quite some time.

Nevertheless, being the two biggest names/brand leaders in sim basketball games has meant that many of the innovations in the genre did originate with either NBA Live or NBA 2K. To that end, they’ve ended up borrowing ideas from each other, which as I’ve long maintained is actually a good thing when it comes to features that should be staples of a sim game. Of course, there are also some great features that we take for granted that didn’t originate in NBA Live or NBA 2K. Some of them are older than we think, appearing in one of their predecessors, while other times it was one of their contemporaries that beat them to the punch. Either way, another game did it first.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #452 of the NLSC Podcast!

After playing a co-op game of NBA Starting Five 2005 over Parsec, it’s clear why the game wasn’t a worldwide release! The Japanese-exclusive title is still interesting though, and it leads us to reflect on Konami’s history on the virtual hardwood. We also connected for a game of NBA Live 96 PC with work-in-progress Draft Rosters, and had a blast playing with and against stacked lineups. Our eagerness to play older games also points towards a feeling of ennui when it comes to NBA 2K23. After comparing Birthday Lineups, we open up the mailbag to quiz the community on the Top 7 Overall Ratings back in NBA 2K10, which featured a couple of surprises.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 54:09 — 37.5MB)

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!

From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #445 of the NLSC Podcast!

The greediness and pushiness of microtransactions in NBA 2K23 is under fire this past week, as the honeymoon period with the game appears to be drawing to a close. We’re certainly inclined to agree with that critique, though it’s disheartening to see people shilling and shouting down valid criticism. While we’re still enjoying NBA 2K23, there are concerning issues from gameplay balance online, to the expense of MyTEAM packs and upgrades in MyCAREER. Meanwhile, the quickness in patching a happy accident with MyNBA Eras rosters while leaving other issues untouched highlights a continued lack of goodwill. We also recall a cool feature in the Japanese-exclusive NBA Starting Five 2005, and open up the mailbag to get the community’s thoughts on the approach to VC in NBA 2K23, as well as find out what they’ve been playing so far.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:25:35 — 59.1MB)

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!

Episode #325 of the NLSC Podcast is out now! Dee4Three and I are your hosts for this week’s show.

NBA Playgrounds and its sequel NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 have been quite successful, but thus far, the series hasn’t had the same staying power as NBA Jam or NBA Street. We take a deep-dive into the Playground games, discussing the parts that we like, and the parts that we believe could be better. Along the way, we compare and contrast Playgrounds with Jam and Street, discuss missed opportunities for the series, and consider its future. We also talk about NBA Starting Five 2005 – an overlooked Japanese exclusive from the mid 2000s with features that were ahead of their time – and the latest title update for Basketball Classics. A retro pick-up teased in last week’s show is also revealed.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 2:22:30 — 97.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

What’s your take on this week’s topics? Sound off in the comments section below, or join in the discussion here in the Forum! Additionally, feel free to hit us up with any feedback on the episode, as well as suggestions for topics that you’d like to hear us discuss in future episodes. For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki.