Tag Archives: Roster Management

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 reflections on how we ignored the red flags of the original MyGM in NBA 2K14.

These are controversial times for gaming. The Steam Machine underwhelmed with its specs, and has had gamers understandably balking at its price. Sony has announced that the end of physical releases of PlayStation games is coming in January 2028, which has led to more backlash than they were anticipating. And, most recently, EA Sports were forced to walk back their attempts to gouge College Football 27 gamers at every turn. Needless to say, their attempts to implement microtransactions in single player modes had not been warmly received!

Of course, this is what companies like Electronic Arts and Take-Two have been striving for over the past couple of generations: ramping up microtransactions, and the pressure to spend. There has been plenty of criticism of modes like MyTEAM and Ultimate Team, and the grind-or-pay aspect of MyCAREER, and rightfully so. When I read about the attempts to monetise Dynasty in College Football 27 though, I was reminded of the original MyGM in NBA 2K14. Although the replacement for The Association was innovative and included some nifty attention to detail, it also brought Virtual Currency to the mode. In hindsight, we overlooked some glaring red flags.

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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 things that I loved about my NBA Live 2004 Dynasty.

Back in May, I reflected on five things that I loved about my MyCAREER game with the Denver Nuggets in NBA 2K13. That was a fun trip down memory lane, so today I’m doing the same for my NBA Live 2004 Dynasty with the Chicago Bulls! Like my NBA 2K13 MyCAREER, my NBA Live 2004 Dynasty remains one of my all-time favourite basketball gaming memories and experiences. I’ve reminisced about both of them for Wayback Wednesday, but I wanted to revisit some of the key reasons that they were so memorable, and indeed more successful than a few of my other games.

After all, in theory it might seem like a good idea to take cues from games that turned out so well. It’s certainly worth keeping them in mind and having an approach that you know will generally work for you, but some of the things that make a franchise or career mode game so special just can’t be replicated. From the excitement of having a brand new experience to specific scenarios and circumstances, a certain amount of uniqueness goes a long way in those games becoming treasured memories. My NBA Live 2004 Dynasty was a combination of many things that make franchise modes an exciting journey, and these five were major factors in keeping me hooked for hours.

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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 mistakes that were very common in the Season modes of older basketball titles.

Disclaimer: just because basketball video games have come a long way, it doesn’t mean that we can’t criticise modern releases. It’s fair to respectfully point out issues and ways that they could improve, and to expect value for money as a consumer. With that being said, if it’s been a while since you dusted off a really old game, it’s easy to overlook just how far they’ve come. Broadly speaking, one of the most significant improvements to the genre has been establishing a standard approach to core modes such as Season, Franchise, Career, Card Collecting, and so on.

I know phrases such as “in their infancy” and “it was the Wild West!” are somewhat cliché, but frankly, when basketball games were in their infancy, it was the Wild West when it came to how they designed certain features! EA Sports and Tecmo pioneered many of the design principles for modes based on the NBA season that have since become the standard approach. As such, if you revisit an old NBA Live or one of the NBA Playoffs games, or Tecmo Super NBA Basketball, you’ll find Season modes that clearly laid the foundation for modern titles. They had some drawbacks of course, and other games were also employing some rather unusual ideas in their Season modes.

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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 broken rotation screen that appeared in various NBA Live releases.

During my extended NBA Live 10 retro kick, I wondered why I didn’t spend more time with it when it was new. I’ve wondered the same about some of its immediate predecessors, a couple of which were fairly solid in their own right. Issues with lobs and broken plays soon reminded me why. The fact of the matter is that NBA Live 10 does have some quirky moments that were annoying when it was the newest game I owned, but are more tolerable now that the game is nostalgic. My involvement in NBA Live modding also kept me focused on the PC releases.

However, reflecting on it further, I’ve also realised that the quality of Dynasty mode played a large role here. In many ways, I feel that Dynasty peaked with the prior gen version of NBA Live 06, which also included the PC port. It’s not that there weren’t any improvements in the following games, but there were also inaccuracies with the sim engine, and other such annoyances. Oh, and the broken rotation screen, which affected basic functionality, and stood in the way of one of the main joys of roster management: creating different lineups. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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