Tag Archives: PC

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 candid thoughts on elitist attitudes regarding the Next Gen consoles, and how they’ve been frequently disproven.

So, look. Getting older has its drawbacks. Creaky knees, more responsibilities, and existential dread all come to mind. At the same time, it has its perks! One of them is that you care a lot less about trends than you used to. When high school is rapidly becoming a smaller and smaller speck in the rear view mirror, you don’t really care if you’re not on the cutting edge of fashion, or not completely au fait with the latest slang. Youthful status symbols become increasingly meaningless when you’ve been out of school longer than you were ever in it.

Well…to a point. Not everyone enjoys being completely out of touch, even if you’re still generally comfortable in your own skin. More to the point, if you’re a content creator, then you have to care about trends, algorithms, and current events, at least to some extent. Unless you’re exclusively covering retro gaming, you’re going to need hardware that plays the latest titles. To that end, I do have a gaming PC capable of running new NBA 2K releases, as well as a PlayStation 5. I also have an interest in other genres of games, so it makes sense to invest in those platforms. What doesn’t make sense is the elitism that I see regarding ownership of Next Gen consoles.

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With the focus being placed on the PlayStation 5/Xbox Series X|S release, we didn’t learn much about the PC version of NBA 2K24 during the preview season. As it turns out, there was some good news, as the game has native mod support this year. It’s also quite solid on the sticks, as you’ll hear Dee and I discuss in the next episode of the NLSC Podcast.

Before that drops however, we can show you what the gameplay in NBA 2K24 PC is like! Dee has uploaded two highlight reels to our YouTube channel, with the first coming from a game he played against the CPU, using his Boston Celtics to take on the New York Knicks. It spotlights the footplanting and player movement – two positive attributes that we discuss on the show – as well as a variety of highlight plays.

The second video is from a Play With Friends Online game between me and Dee. In this head-to-head showdown, I took control of the Chicago Bulls, while Dee used the Charlotte Hornets, setting up a battle between Lonzo Ball and LaMelo Ball. The Big Baller Brothers had their moments, but Zach LaVine ended up stealing the show in what was a fun battle from start to finish!

You can check out both highlight reels below. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more basketball gaming content, and as always, let us know what you’d like to see us play. There’ll obviously be more NBA 2K24 videos moving forward, but we’ll still be dipping into our collection to play old favourites as well, so please feel free to hit us up with any suggestions.

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NBA 2K24 is out now on all platforms! Whether you prefer to go digital or pick up a physical copy from a store, you can now get your hands on this year’s game. As previously mentioned, I’ve launched the appropriate sections in our Forum, as well as added the necessary categories to our Downloads database. I’ve also added pages for the Next Gen and Current Gen update histories to our Wiki.

Speaking of modding, the PC version of NBA 2K24 has an exciting development! While we still don’t have any official modding tools from 2K, this year’s game includes a mods folder by default. This means we don’t need to use an unofficial plugin to have the game load custom files. This is something we haven’t had since NBA Live provided us with CustomArt, and it should definitely make creating and installing mods much easier!

Indeed, we’ve already got our first NBA 2K24 mod release – shout out to SexCurryBeats! – so stay tuned for a separate bulletin after a few more mods have been uploaded. In the meantime, please feel free to share your impressions of the game in the Forum, as well as get into modding if that’s your scene! Once again, we’d appreciate any help keeping our Wiki resources for NBA 2K24 updated, but as long as you’re enjoying our facilities and content, that’s the main thing. We’ll have plenty of post-release coverage and content for NBA 2K24 in the weeks and months to come, so keep it locked to the NLSC, and have a great time on the virtual hardwood!

As you may have seen, the official NBA 2K Twitter/X account – and yes, that branding change is still taking some getting used to! – posted a trailer and some screenshots of The Neighborhood in the Current Gen/PC version of NBA 2K24. After two years on a cruise ship, this year’s iteration of MyCAREER on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One will be keeping the theme of basketball in paradise, albeit in a coastal location.

From the screenshots and trailer, there will be courts right down on the beach, The Rec will be located in a castle, and it seems like 2K Pro-Am will be played in an airship! A personal MyCOURT will still be available, which The City on Next Gen has notably lacked since NBA 2K21. Indeed, the new coastal Neighborhood in NBA 2K24 seems to resemble a scaled down version of The City, rather than the block, town square, or indeed cruise ship from previous games.

You can check out the trailer below, as well as the screenshots that 2K has shared so far. Got any thoughts? Feel free to post them in the comments, as well as join in the discussion in our NBA 2K24 Forum!

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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 console-only basketball games that we really missed having on PC.

Although we’ve come to cover all basketball games across a variety of platforms, we certainly do have a reputation as a PC-oriented site. This goes back to our roots as the NBA Live Series Center, when we were strictly an NBA Live fansite and the home of many tools and mods (then referred to as patches) for the PC releases. Even as we’ve widened our scope, we’ve continued to support and advocate for the PC as a platform. As we’ve previously discussed on the NLSC Podcast, even though PC users are the smallest group of basketball gamers, it’s a passionate and enthusiastic demographic.

There was a time when the PC release of NBA Live was the definitive version, as even the average home computer far outstripped consoles in power and storage capacity. Around the time of the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox, the PC began to receive ports of the console version of NBA Live. Of course, it was one of the few basketball games that were being ported to PC, as there were far more console-only releases than PC exclusives. Putting aside emulation and the Xbox App in recent years, this means that we’ve missed out on having some landmark basketball games on PC. Here are five in particular we would’ve loved to have had on the platform.

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #486 of the NLSC Podcast!

As we await the next round of news and previews, how hyped are we for NBA 2K24? Along with the community, we rate our excitement on a scale of one to ten. Of course, some of us break the scale in both directions! We also recap what we’ve been playing this past week, including a surprising session of NBA Live 18, testing out a work-in-progress mod for NBA Live 08, throwing it back with NBA Basketball for Intellivision, and tackling a tough challenge in NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. There’s also some more virtual hardwood elitism on Twitter to push back on, and the reveal of some interesting clutch ratings in this week’s mailbag trivia.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:21:44 — 56.5MB)

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!

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 forgotten NBA 2K14 MyCAREER game.

I’ve been having a blast with MyCAREER in the PlayStation 4 version of NBA 2K14 since I revisited it a couple of years ago to write a retrospective. I got hooked on it after giving NBA 2K14 PS4 a second chance following an uncommonly negative first impression, and it’s become one of my favourite basketball video games. It’s why I’m currently in my sixth season in that MyCAREER, with an eye towards somehow, some way, playing through to the current day. Truly experiencing an NBA career is far more fun than grinding and worrying about the online meta!

However, while that specific game is a fairly recent kick, it wasn’t actually my first foray into MyCAREER in NBA 2K14. When it was released, I did begin a new MyCAREER in the PC version of NBA 2K14, intending to continue the fun that I’d had in NBA 2K13. That didn’t come to pass, as I struggled to enjoy the game, and didn’t warm up to NBA 2K14 until almost a decade later. I did keep the save file though, and it was interesting to revisit it now that I have a more positive view of NBA 2K14. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #485 of the NLSC Podcast!

The NBA 2K24 preview season is officially underway, with the reveal of this year’s cover players and a few interesting tidbits that have the community buzzing. To that end, we break down and react to everything we know so far. That also includes confirmation that the PC version will be a prior gen port once again, which has naturally drawn some strong reactions! Speaking of reactions, one of Dee’s Tweets about NBA 2K14 Next Gen really resonated with the community, demonstrating how it’s still held in extremely high regard. We share that sentiment, especially after a co-op session that earned the game a place in our Parsec rotation! We also touch on devious practices, and the latest ridiculous comments from online cheesers.

Download or play on your mobile device/tablet: CLICK HERE (Running time: 1:07:16 — 46.6MB)

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!

In the wake of the cover reveal, 2K has also released some first look screenshots of Kobe Bryant in NBA 2K24; one of young “Frobe”, and one of prime Mamba from the 2000s. You can check out both screenshots below, as well as in the Screenshots section of our newly-launched NBA 2K24 hub!

As a number of people have noticed, the older Kobe is wearing an NBA Finals patch on his jersey. The NBA 2K Leaks & Intel Twitter account – which has been extremely reliable in recent years – has stated that there will be a Mamba Moments mode in NBA 2K24, which will basically be a Kobe Bryant version of The Jordan Challenge. The NBA Finals patch certainly seems to back that up, and suggests the possibility of at least one new classic team.

The Intel account also mentioned a new Next Gen feature called ProPLAY. This tech will reportedly directly translate NBA footage into gameplay to deliver authentic animations and movement. Combined with their leak of a blurb about MyCAREER in Current Gen/Old Gen, this seems to confirm that the PC version will be identical to the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version once again. The Neighborhood will be returning in that version, along with streamlined quests. Keep in mind that this hasn’t been officially announced, but the account’s track record for accuracy has been exceptional.

There’s also a tidbit about a new salary cap mode in MyTEAM, revamped controls and roster authenticity, and the continued inclusion of WNBA content. The release date is September 8th 2023, as also confirmed by ESPN. The ESPN article also mentions crossplay, though no further details are available at this time.

That’s the NBA 2K24 info that’s currently circulating, along with the first look Kobe screenshots. What are your thoughts? Share them in the comments below, as well as join in the discussion in the new NBA 2K24 section of the Forum! Once again, I’ll be aggregating news throughout the preview season, and Dee and I will be breaking it down with our commentary on the NLSC Podcast.

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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 loading screens in basketball video games.

While catching up on some Zero Punctuation and Extra Punctuation videos, the one in which Yahtzee is reminiscing about loading screens really spoke to me. And so, once again, I’m shamelessly jumping on a topic that was brought up by a far, far more well-known content creator! It’s a topic that I undoubtedly relate to, though. In the video, Yahtzee notes the nostalgia at play here, acknowledging that faster loading times are obviously an improvement. However, for gamers of our generation, they’re not just a reminder of youthful excitement, but also examples of creative design.

In particular, Yahtzee notes the use of mini-games and interactive elements on loading screens. This got me thinking about how basketball games have tried to keep us entertained while they load, notably the approach that NBA Live took during the seventh generation. Needless to say, lengthy loading times are not something I want to see return, and they can be an annoyance while retro gaming. There’s nevertheless nostalgia there however, and it’s interesting that some ideas were dropped before loading times were shortened. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 presentation in NBA Live 96 PC.

While the Super Nintendo version of NBA Live 95 was the first game in the NBA Live series that I ever played – and one of my first basketball video games, period – NBA Live 96 PC was the first hoops title that I actually owned. I remember the day I got it. It had been featured in an ad that showcased EA Sports’ 1996 season lineup, presented as the “EA Sports Countdown”. My basketball fandom was now in full swing, and I wanted to be able to hit the virtual hardwood without relying on a weekly video store rental, where my Season save files were constantly at risk of deletion.

It may have taken a boot disk to run it properly on a rapidly aging 486, and at one point I needed to use a scratch repair kit on the CD to get it working again (it’s never failed me since). However, from playing to modding, I’ve spent countless hours with NBA Live 96 PC, solidifying it as one of my all-time favourite games. Obviously I’m partial to it because of the sentimentality of it being one of the first basketball games that I owned, but I still appreciate the game itself: the on-court experience, the season it’s set in, and of course, that golden presentation. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 my thoughts on anti-cheat measures in NBA 2K23 PC, and their effect on the modding scene.

The Season 6 patch for NBA 2K23 introduced some unexpected complications for the PC version. Specifically, it includes anti-cheat measures that interfere with looyh’s Hook tool, which as modders and mod users are all too aware, is an essential utility for modding. Naturally, this led to some understandable frustration. To state the obvious, modding is a big part of what we do in this community, and these anti-cheat measures resulted in a new barrier to creating and enjoying mods. Considering that the PC version is already a lower priority release, it’s a disappointing development.

Of course, ever since the PC began receiving ports of the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version of NBA 2K, official patches have presented a challenge to modding. The changes to the executable require utilities and Cheat Engine tables to be updated accordingly; something that wasn’t necessary when we were editing the roster files directly. It’s something that other modding communities have had to deal with for a long time, and we have ultimately been able to adapt. The addition of anti-cheat measures makes things tricky, which is obviously unfortunate. It also spotlights the needs of the online scene being at odds with the needs of the modding community.

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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 PS1 version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition.

Although it’s been surpassed by NBA Jam: On Fire Edition as both my personal favourite and my pick for the best game in the NBA Jam series, I still hold NBA Jam Tournament Edition in extremely high regard. It’s a title that I’ve covered several times here on the NLSC, from reflections while watching a game I’d recorded and an in-depth retrospective, to discussing weird ratings and an error that I somehow overlooked for more than twenty years. In short, NBA Jam TE is a release that I’ll eagerly revisit for both content creation purposes, and my own enjoyment.

As I’ve mentioned in previous features, I grew up playing the PC and Super Nintendo versions of NBA Jam Tournament Edition. Since I’ve been expanding my collection of basketball video games in recent years, I’ve sought out the PlayStation version of NBA Jam TE as well. It was the only version that I didn’t own for the platforms at my disposal, but late last year, I finally managed to snag a copy at a reasonable price. I noted that since I now had it as part of my collection, I’d be comparing NBA Jam Tournament Edition PS1 to the releases I grew up with, in a future Wayback Wednesday feature. The time has come, so 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 lists five decisions that burned goodwill with basketball gamers.

As a fanbase, we basketball gamers have demonstrated that we’ll put up with a lot. There have been a number of decisions and debacles with hoops gamers over the years that should’ve cost companies dearly, but most of us are back the very next year, buying the new release. In our defense, we do have an interest in getting a new game for the latest season, and unfortunately we don’t have the variety in the space that we once did. At the same time, we’ve become far too tolerant of issues that other fanbases would protest far more passionately.

With that being said, there have been decisions – particularly from EA Sports and 2K – that have burned goodwill. Quality was obviously a problem for NBA Live that ended up eroding significant trust in the brand, but to that point, it also squandered goodwill that it established in its heyday. NBA 2K has maintained a higher quality and sold far better, but there are gamers who do follow through on their insistence that they’ll boycott future releases. Even if the bottom line isn’t affected, these decisions that burn goodwill still damage a game’s reputation, to the point where we don’t feel the same brand affinity as before. In short, this is how publishers have lost face and fans alike.

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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 somersault dunks in NBA Jam Tournament Edition.

One of the joys of hitting the virtual hardwood is discovering all the moves that you can pull off, and the variety of animations on offer. It’s something that we can take for granted now that hoops titles boast thousands of animations and an array of signature styles. Back when games were far more limited in what they could feasibly include, it was a thrill to discover new moves that we didn’t expect to see. Dunks were of course the premiere highlight, and we all have slams that we’re partial to in our favourite basketball video games.

There are many spectacular slams that I enjoy seeing thrown down by the players I’m controlling, but when it comes to NBA Jam Tournament Edition, I’m particularly fond of the somersault dunks. As a 90s kid who loved basketball and video games, they represented the pinnacle of highlights in a title that was all about over-the-top high-flying dunks. Even when I go back and play NBA Jam TE today, I’m excited whenever I see a player going into a somersault as they leap into the air. I’m sure I’m not alone in appreciating the soaring somersault dunks of NBA Jam TE, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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