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 gripes that I’ve had with menu and presentation elements in various basketball video games.

When it comes to my basketball video game gripes, issues with the menu or the presentation usually aren’t at the top of the list, unless something is particularly bad or frustrating. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the visual elements of basketball games, but if the gameplay experience is enjoyable, I can usually make allowances for graphical quibbles. Of course, the bothersome nature of gripes and pet peeves isn’t necessarily proportionate to their overall importance. Even if you’re well aware that something isn’t a big deal, it can still bug you all the same.

To that end, over the years I have had some gripes with aspects of the menu design and presentation in various games. I do still stand by some of them as they reflect personal preference and taste (or maybe lack thereof, as the case might be), but others simply reflect stubbornness. In some cases, they’re the final straw for a game that I just didn’t like the vibe of. And yes, at least one that springs to mind had an effect on functionality in addition to spoiling the presentation. Mind you, sometimes it’s the little things that really make a game, or conversely detract from it. As such, here are five menu and presentation gripes I’ve had. I’m sure I’m not alone with some of them.

1. Player Renders Instead of Portraits in NBA Live 09

In hindsight, one of the strangest gripes I’ve had with the menu and presentation in a basketball video game is the use of player renders instead of real portraits back in NBA Live 09. Player faces were consistently improving, and in many ways it was a sign of things to come. Still, to me they were a distracting reminder that this was a video game, and that the player faces weren’t quite photorealistic just yet. It’s strange because I did like having the 3D portraits in NBA Live games from the late 90s and early 2000s, but found it off-putting in NBA Live 09. Of course, the 3D portraits in earlier games moved while NBA Live 09’s were static renders, and had an odd glow.

Although my gripes with menu and presentation issues are usually minor, I do recall being unusually passionate about this one, and pleased when NBA Live 10 went back to using real portraits. Of course, they had issues of their own when players were traded in Dynasty or in the official roster updates, and instantly became outdated. At the time I considered this preferable to the renders in NBA Live 09, though these days the faces in NBA 2K are realistic enough to ably stand in for portraits when they aren’t available. Reflecting on it now, the NBA Live 09 renders didn’t look too bad, and they were certainly much better than earlier games such as ESPN NBA 2Night.

2. Order of Teams in Menus

I’ll admit to being a creature of habit, and preferring things to be a certain way simply because that’s what I’m used to. In my defense, some of those approaches are for the best (or at least as effective as any other), but I’ve also been resistant to change just because it’s different. With that in mind, it’s probably no surprise that one of my old gripes with the team selection menu in NBA 2K games was that it used a different order to the one I was used to in NBA Live. Traditionally, NBA Live ordered teams alphabetically by location, beginning with Atlanta. NBA 2K games have instead opted to order them alphabetically by team name, thus placing the 76ers first.

Now, I’d still argue that there’s merit in the way old NBA Lives ordered the teams, though the series has since adopted the same order as NBA 2K. However, I’m now used to 2K’s approach. Indeed, it’s actually gotten to the point where I’ll head in the wrong direction while cycling through teams in an old NBA Live game, forgetting how they’re ordered. Other games have adopted some very clunky ordering in their team menus, leading to awkward presentation and navigation. This was often the case in any games that grouped teams by Division, and then alphabetically by location or name. It’s one of those areas where a standard approach in the genre is a good idea.

3. Fonts & Presentation in NBA 2K18 MyCAREER

Look, if that sounds ridiculously petty, I can’t disagree. Even saying it myself, I can’t help thinking of Calculon flipping through a script and dismissing it because “I don’t like the font” in a classic episode of Futurama. Once again though, I must stress that these are gripes and pet peeves, rather than objectively horrible aspects and major issues. With that being said, from my very first taste of NBA 2K18’s MyCAREER in that year’s Prelude demo, the heading fonts and overall art style became one of my gripes with the presentation. It’s not ugly per se, but something about it just didn’t sit right. It set the tone for the mode, and that tone wasn’t one that I greatly enjoyed.

Of course, NBA 2K18’s problems run deeper than menu fonts and presentation, so to keep it in perspective, it’s among my most minor gripes. I do believe that the overall “vibe” of a game is important though, and for some reason, the font used in NBA 2K18’s MyCAREER menu – and other menus in the game for that matter – screamed that the tone and style were heading in a direction that I didn’t like. For me, it’s not a case of “the game is terrible because of the font”, because that would be silly. Rather, I’d use it to sum up how so many aspects of NBA 2K18 feel off: “even the font seems wrong”. Gameplay is paramount, but the atmosphere does impact our enjoyment.

4. The General Aesthetic of NBA Live 98 PC

There were many welcome improvements in NBA Live 98 PC. It finally added a steal button, which was long overdue in the PC version. GM Mode took the first real steps towards what would become the franchise experience. It was the first fully 3D title in the series, and while the player faces look quite primitive today, they were a massive leap for the time. The game adopted DBF files in its roster saves, included the ability to save replays and games in progress, and is fun on the court. In a year that saw a number of NBA licensed games, it was easily the deepest and all-around best sim title. By no stretch of the imagination do I hate or even dislike NBA Live 98 PC.

Except its menus; I’ve never been a fan! They’re functional and easy to navigate, and it wasn’t the worst design I’ve seen. It’s far from the best though, especially following in the footsteps of the 90s goodness that was NBA Live 97 PC’s frontend. NBA Live 98 PC went for another aesthetic that was gaining popularity in the late 90s, namely the futuristic “cyberspace” motif. The in-game presentation is fine, though the pause menu is rather plain. I suppose I don’t loathe the main menu aesthetic and frontend presentation in NBA Live 98 PC. It doesn’t get in the way of my nostalgia for what was an outstanding game overall. It’s always been one of my gripes with it, though.

5. Use of Metric System in Menus & Presentation

I didn’t opt to make this Friday Five a countdown, but if I had, this would take the top spot. Now, I am very familiar with the metric system, as it’s what I’ve grown up with here in Australia. It makes sense to me, and it’s what I’ll use when measuring anything in daily life. The exception is basketball, especially when it comes to the NBA. It’s a US-based league after all, and therefore uses imperial measurements (i.e. feet, inches, and pounds). As such, I grew up with those measurements in basketball video games, which mirrored what I saw in NBA broadcasts. For some reason though, the PAL versions of NBA Live 09 and NBA Live 10 switched to using metric measurements.

Even though I’m accustomed to the metric system, it detracted from the presentation in both games, whether it was a menu screen or in-game overlay. It also made player creation more cumbersome, as I’d have to make the conversions in order to set the desired height and weight. Thankfully, NBA Live 14 and NBA Live 15 used imperial measurements in all releases, only for the metric system to return in PAL copies of NBA Live 16, NBA Live 18, and NBA Live 19. Conversely, NBA 2K has handled the situation much better, allowing us to choose between them. Unfortunately, it’s yet another detail that EA Sports were disinterested in addressing with a simple fix.

What are some of your biggest menu and presentation gripes in basketball video games? Do you share any of mine? Have your say in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.