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 you’ll see in games that are unpatched.

Patches are a contentious issue among gamers, and basketball video games are no exception. No game is perfect, and some issues are bound to slip by QA and won’t be discovered until a game is in the public’s hands. Naturally, we want to see those problems resolved via official patches, especially when there’s no viable unofficial fix. At the same time, we’re wary of undesirable changes being made to games that we’re enjoying, as we have seen games ruined by their updates. Day one patches are also the subject of scorn, being seen as an excuse to release unfinished games.

As such, many of us have mixed feelings whenever we receive a notification that a new update is waiting to be downloaded. With that being said, I’d much rather see regular updates than have to beg for them as we used to, or not get them at all. When you look back at certain titles in their unpatched state, you’ll see missing content, features, and functionality that really needed to be there, as in these five examples. Please note that I’m intentionally excluding the 1998 rosters in NBA Live 99. While it’s a notable example of the phenomenon, all games inevitably launch with outdated rosters. These five examples are more unique side effects of a game being unpatched.

1. A Complete Lack of Rim Stuffs in NBA Live 10

Do you remember missing any dunks in NBA Live 10? If they were the result of rim stuffs, those only would’ve occurred once the game was patched. In the unpatched game, the only way to miss a dunk was for it to be blocked by a defender, be it legally or via goaltending. That’s right; at launch, it was impossible to miss a dunk of your own accord in NBA Live 10! Rim stuffs were just one of the gameplay changes that were implemented in the first patch, which was pushed through in late October. A couple of other notable changes included in that update were the ability to manually shoot runners, and control automatically switching to the point guard after a basket.

To that point, if you’re playing NBA Live 10 on an emulator these days, you’ll probably want to at least install the first patch. Otherwise, play in the paint will resemble the original, unpatched version of the game. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. NBA Live 10 was still great out of the box, and as I’ve said before, its patches did introduce a few issues of their own. Rim stuffs when attempting an ambitious dunk in traffic do add challenge to the game of course, which undoubtedly led to them being activated via the update. It’s easy to forget changes like that when we’re almost always playing the updated game, owing to updates coming through automatically.

2. No Fatigue in NBA Live 07 (PC & Prior Gen)

NBA Live 07 was not a good release for the series, regardless of the generation or platform. It could be argued that the PC version was the best, although that’s a very low bar to clear! The Xbox 360 version was a disaster, and a release that undoubtedly turned many basketball gamers away from the NBA Live series. However, the 360 version can at least hang its on hat on the fact that it had no issue with player fatigue. All players would tire appropriately, and there was also a slider to alter the fatigue effect if it wasn’t to your liking. Conversely, players in the PC and prior gen version of NBA Live 07 didn’t fatigue, and there was no option to toggle it on and off.

A patch eventually came through on PC – unfortunately, the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions had to miss out – and the fatigue bug was one of the issues that it addressed. Unfortunately, that amounted to an On/Off option, with no corresponding slider. Indeed, the removal of the slider was the problem, as it had basically been the method of enabling and disabling fatigue in prior games (zero for off, any other figure for a varying effect). Even with fatigue added by the patch, the rate at which players tired wasn’t satisfactory, with the only possible fix being to adjust their stamina ratings. There’s a reason that I ended up modding NBA Live 07 PC more than playing it!

3. Target Indicator in NBA 2K12’s Instant Replay

That is to say, in the unpatched version of NBA 2K12, you’ll always see the target indicator when you go into instant replay, because there’s no way to hide it. Even if you hid the instant replay control overlay, the target indicator remained. The patch added the shortcut of holding both front shoulder buttons to hide the target indicator, allowing for cleaner screenshots and recordings. Obviously, that isn’t something that everyone will care about, but I can attest to preferring to hide details like that in any media that I capture. Clearly I’m not alone on that front given that the functionality ended up being patched in, and future games made it a point to include it by default.

Interestingly, the inability to hide the target indicator was a recurring issue for a couple of years. It kept getting left out, so patches had to keep putting it back in post-release. It’s a strange situation, but it may have been a case of it being a makeshift hotfix that was forgotten about while the code was being re-written for the next game. Whatever the case, it eventually became a staple function. Incidentally, to see this issue in an unpatched game, you’ll need to be using the DVD-ROM version of NBA 2K12. If you own it through Steam, you’ll always download the final build, which includes the patch. With the disc version, it’s easy enough to forget to install it.

4. David Stern Basketball in NBA 2K14

There are two kinds of updates for basketball video games, which can be confusing. The first, which are commonly referred to as official patches or title updates, are downloaded through the digital platform the game is tied to. These patches will still come through even after online support has concluded and a game’s servers have been switched off. The second type is comprised of data and roster updates, as well as the occasional tuning tweak, and is downloaded in-game. They’re the ones that we’re prompted to return to the main menu to apply. Since they do rely on the servers being active, once online support ends, those updates can no longer be readily downloaded.

Art updates are often included in official patches, but they’ve also been distributed as part of the in-game roster updates. Such was the case when NBA 2K14 received a brand new basketball, bearing Adam Silver’s signature. As you may recall, Adam Silver took over as NBA Commissioner on February 1st 2014, halfway through the season. Up until that changing of the guard, both the real NBA and NBA 2K14 continued to use basketballs bearing the signature of the late David Stern. Because it was part of the in-game updates however, in an unpatched NBA 2K14, you’ll still see that original ball. Fortunately, the PC version can actually be manually updated.

5. Oklahoma City Placeholder Branding

The Seattle SuperSonics’ move to Oklahoma City and rebranding to the Thunder remains one of the most controversial events in NBA history. They were the third team to relocate in the space of a decade, and the efforts to keep the team in Seattle were questionable to say the least, enraging a dedicated fanbase. The move would happen quite abruptly during the 2008 offseason following the settlement of a lawsuit, and the franchise’s new name and branding were unveiled on September 3rd. NBA Live 09 and NBA 2K9 were set for release in October, but naturally EA Sports and Visual Concepts had access to those designs in time to include them in their games.

This is obvious from pre-release screenshots. However, only NBA 2K9 launched with the new branding. Despite previews of NBA Live 09 featuring Kevin Durant in his new Thunder uniform, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version launched with the placeholder logo used during Summer League play, and generic black and white jerseys. The new uniforms and logo were instead free DLC made available at launch, while the PS2 version was stuck with the placeholders. Since the DLC is no longer available, the PS3 and 360 versions are now stuck with it, too. I realise that it’s DLC and thus technically not a patch, but it was essentially a gimmicky official update.

Do you remember seeing these things before the games in question were patched, or did you perhaps notice them while dusting off a game without the updates installed? What other noteworthy things will be apparent in certain unpatched games? Let me know 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.