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 modding projects that we could undertake to enhance retro basketball gaming.

As I’ve said before, we’re keen advocates of retro gaming and modding here at the NLSC! We’ll always cover new games and support the modding community in any way that we can, but we have a deep appreciation for the classics and don’t want there to be any stigma to revisiting them. There’s unquestionably a dedicated group of basketball gamers who feel as we do. One only has to look at the people who have been playing and updating NBA 2K14 PC for over a decade, or johnz1’s modding projects for NBA Jam: On Fire Edition.

Indeed, considering that our founders were providing tools for NBA Live 95 when NBA Live 96 was already out, modding has been helping to breathe new life into older titles since our community was formed! Quite a few of my modding projects have also centred around keeping old releases alive, from my earliest forays into modding NBA Live 96 to keeping the last four PC versions of NBA Live updated after the series went console-only. As I’ve been leaning more and more into my predisposition for retro gaming – and noticed others sharing that interest – I’ve been thinking about modding projects that would enhance the experience. Here are five!

1. Making Old Mods Easier to Install

In addition to preserving the games in the first place, retro PC gaming requires the development of resources and workarounds to get old titles running on our modern systems. Thankfully, projects such as DOSBox and nGlide allow us to play the early NBA Live releases for PC, and there are also solutions for getting around the disc copy protection that’s no longer supported by Windows. Naturally, once we get those classics up and running, the next step is to install some of the great mods from our archives. The problem is that much like the games themselves, those mods weren’t designed to be installed on an operating system that was developed decades later.

For example, many of the art updates – faces, jerseys, courts, etc – were distributed with an importer utility, along with a batch file that runs the necessary commands. The catch is that most of those old utilities are DOS-based, and thus won’t run under 64-bit Windows. Other mods have installation routines that will run, but they’ll either be flagged as suspicious or not complete all of their tasks successfully. And so, as we look to expand our retro gaming resources, a worthy modding project would be to repackage old mods and make them easier to install. From better use of custom file folders to updated instructions, I’m sure we can make them far more user-friendly.

2. Revamped & Updated Releases of Old Modding Projects

This isn’t the first time that I’ve championed this idea, but it bears mentioning again as interest in retro basketball gaming and modding grows. Enhancing old favourites with brand new modding projects is certainly an awesome idea, and I would never want to discourage it. With that being said, big modding projects take a lot of time and effort. Depending on the age of the game and how many people are still around and willing to lend a hand, some ideas just might not be feasible. Minimalist modding is always an option – particularly if it’s just for your own use – but that may not feel satisfying. To that end, on top of making old mods easier to install, we could also update them.

Obviously, this starts with any mods that you’ve personally made for games that you’d like to bring back into your rotation. After revisiting a few games and playing with my mods, I’ve noticed errors that I overlooked and other ways they could improve. I’ve already gone back and polished up my 1996 roster for NBA Live 2004, and I’m eyeing other old modding projects that I could enhance; if only for my own creative satisfaction! Beyond that, there are other old mods in our archives that could be fixed up, whether it’s ironing out a bug, correcting a mistake, or adding to its contents. As long as we keep the original credits intact, I don’t believe that would be inappropriate.

3. Modding Projects Creating a “Definitive” Retro Gaming Experience

Essentially, this is the modding equivalent of a remaster, and indeed that’s a name that modders often adopt for such projects. I’ve released a couple of rosters for NBA Live 95 and NBA Live 96 that I’ve referred to as “Definitive”, because they’re intended to update them for the season they’re set in, while providing an optimal retro basketball gaming experience. That means updating the rosters with transactions and missing players, fixing player ratings and appearances, and making any other enhancements. Needless to say, there’s even more that we can do with games that already include Legends and other content that can be updated alongside the contemporary rosters.

Once again, total conversions and current season roster updates for classic games are great, and I don’t want to discourage more ambitious ideas. At the same time, a large part of our nostalgia for old basketball games also includes the season they’re set in, and the era of NBA history they represent. As I’m fond of saying, they’re interactive almanacs. To that point though, due to roster cut-off dates and licensing issues with historical content, they may have a few pages missing! By adding what the developers couldn’t, and perhaps improving textures and lighting for better visuals, “Definitive” and “Remastered” modding projects can make old favourites even better to revisit.

4. Quality of Life Fixes

I don’t want to downplay the fantastic work that our modding community has done over the years, but even the biggest projects have mostly been about re-skinning the game. Those have still been fun and important mods, allowing people to play with the latest rosters or an entirely different league with gameplay they love. Still, compared to other communities, historically we haven’t achieved as much as far as adding new functionality, creating unofficial bug fixes, and developing other useful quality of life mods. It’s easier said than done of course, and other games have been more modder-friendly in this regard. Nevertheless, it’s something to keep in mind for retro gaming.

When Dee mentioned his frustration with the Freestyle Superstars Replay pop-up in NBA Live 06 PC, it encouraged me to try removing it, and I end up discovering an elegant solution. Similarly, poking around in NBA Live 2004’s databases, I realised that simply changing some values eliminates the possibility of players declining in Dynasty’s training sessions. Murat’s work on the last few PC versions of NBA Live has been far more technically ambitious, such as creating widescreen patches. Issues in old favourites that may have once been beyond our capabilities to fix are worth a second look now that there are more resources to help us troubleshoot, and even code.

5. Exploring New Possibilities With Other Old Favourites

I’m all for seeing new retro modding projects for our all-time favourite NBA Live and NBA 2K titles on PC. However, emulation has opened up new opportunities to tinker with console releases as well. For that matter, there are also old PC basketball games that have some modding potential that we’ve never really looked into. Some titles are easier to mod than others, and we’re limited in what we can do with certain games. All the same, with retro basketball gamers looking to revisit a variety of titles in addition to NBA Live and NBA 2K, I definitely believe that we should explore what’s possible through a combination of in-game roster editing functionality and external modding.

Granted, such modding projects would have niche interest at best, but that applies to mods for just about any basketball game that’s more than a few years old! Personally, now that I’ve discovered how to change the names in NBA Jam Tournament Edition PC, I’d love to keep digging and see what else I can modify. Michael Jordan in Flight could be more fun if I replace the fictional player names with ones I choose, including real players. With how far PlayStation 3 emulation has come, NBA Live 10 has some intriguing possibilities. Sure, these modding projects may not be as comprehensive as what we’ve had in the past, but it’d be a start, and would freshen up some favourites.

Retro basketball gamers, what are some modding projects that could enhance the hobby for you and others? What are some games that you feel might have untapped modding potential? 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.