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 a time when certain basketball video games were regional exclusives, and/or had late releases.
The basketball gaming landscape has changed drastically since our choices were whittled down to just NBA Live and NBA 2K, culminating in a virtual monopoly for the latter. When a handful of developers and publishers were throwing their hat into the ring with hoops games, we received a variety of titles of varying quality, but most brought something interesting to the table. Of course, not every game was available worldwide. While NBA Live and NBA 2K stood as examples of global brands, other games were regional exclusives, usually only released in North America.
On top of that, if other regions did receive a particular game, it might not be until several months later. It may seem like a terrible marketing decision to release an NBA game well after the season has tipped off, but there are titles that have come along quite late in a campaign, even with their domestic release. Indeed, not even NBA 2K and NBA Live have been immune to late releases, if only outside North America. It’s an interesting difference in the way that basketball video games used to be handled, so let’s take a look back…way back…