Welcome to this week’s edition of The Friday Five! The Friday Five is a feature that I post every Friday in which I give my thoughts on a topic that’s related to NBA Live, NBA 2K, and other basketball video games, as well as the real NBA, and other areas of interest to our community. The feature is presented as either a list of five items, or in the form of a Top 5 countdown. This week’s Five is a list of five weird quirks that you can find in basketball games from the 90s.

As someone who was born in 1984 and thus grew up and became a teenager in the 90s, I have a lot of nostalgia for the decade. It’s become a popular decade to hate on, perhaps because it’s the one that people were starting to feel nostalgic for as social media really took off. Perhaps if the Internet had been a bigger thing earlier in the 90s, 60s and 70s nostalgia would be the popular subject of scorn instead. Then again, I suppose people have been railing against nostalgia for as long as they’ve been feeling nostalgic. History suggests that both of these feelings are cyclical, and inevitable.

With that being said, while nostalgia goggles are rose-coloured by design, it doesn’t mean that there’s no truth or accuracy in holding the past in high regard. No, not everything in the 90s was wonderful, but there were great shows, films, and video games, and it was a tremendous era for basketball. Combining those last two things, there were some very important basketball games released during the 90s that paved the way for even better titles. They were great for their time, and some are still quite playable today. Those 90s basketball games do have some weird quirks though, which we’re highly unlikely to see ever again. Of course, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

1. Avoiding Using MJ in Covers & Videos

The idea of not seeing top active players in a new release is itself one of the weird quirks of 90s basketball games. If there’s one name that stands out here, it’s Michael Jordan. Shaquille O’Neal was exclusive to NBA Live for a few years, but he was eventually available to all developers. David Robinson was left out of NBA Live 95 PC due to being the cover player of NBA Action 95 and exclusive to the game, but it’s his only absence prior to retiring. Even Charles Barkley would come to be included in the default rosters of basketball games by the late 90s. That left MJ as the only major name that had to be replaced by an infamous Roster Player, or excluded entirely.

That part was straightforward. MJ wasn’t in the rosters, and we added him ourselves if we wanted and were able to. With the rise of CD-ROMs however, it became common to include actual highlight clips in the games as part of the intro/title sequence, as well as reels for halftime shows. How do you include Bulls highlights from the mid to late 90s that don’t show Michael Jordan? Careful selection, that’s how! Similarly, NBA Fastbreak 98 (aka NBA Action 98, aka the forerunner to NBA 2K) used a photo from the 1997 Finals on its cover. Finding a shot without MJ was no mean feat, and indeed, you can see his arm poking out from behind Adam Keefe in the one that they used.

2. Fictional All-Star Teams

Not all 90s basketball games did this, which makes the ones that did do it stand out as weird. There are a handful of games from the 90s including a couple of the titles from the NBA in the Zone series that have fictional East and West All-Star teams. I’m not talking about generating fictional All-Star squads during Season play, mind you. I’m talking about the default East and West All-Stars that you can use in exhibition play. While most games including NBA Live used the previous year’s All-Star teams – as is logical – other developers decided that they’d be more experimental, and change it up from the usual approach with All-Star squads featuring players of their own choosing.

There is some merit in that idea, and if nothing else, you couldn’t say that the teams were outdated. On the other hand, you can say they were inaccurate, which I’d suggest is a worse scenario. The problem is that games that opted for fictional All-Star teams often picked players that had never been All-Stars, never became All-Stars (that year or any other year), and weren’t necessarily all that popular. On the plus side, we were able to choose new All-Stars in NBA ShootOut 98 and 99, which is something that not a lot of basketball games – in the 90s or otherwise – have allowed. The choice to begin with fictional squads was strange though, and felt just as odd back in the 90s.

3. No Inactive Rosters

It isn’t feasible until the season tips off and official roster updates add players that couldn’t be included at launch, but these days sim games are expected to feature team rosters in their entirety. Active, inactive/injured, assigned to the G League, or on a two-way deal; if players are under contract, they’re eligible to be in licensed games, and official updates will likely get them into the rosters eventually. Back in the 90s, there was a greater chance that certain players would miss the cut, even when they were under contract by the time the rosters were finalised. This was due to the fact that a number of 90s basketball games didn’t accommodate inactive roster slots.

During the 90s, the rule was that an NBA team could have twelve players in its active roster, thus many basketball video games only featured twelve-man lineups. NBA Live 96 PC added two inactive roster slots, and then NBA Live 97 PC expanded to full fifteen-man rosters. Even after that however, there were other games that only had twelve players on each team, with no inactive list. This generally still allowed for the core rotation to be accurate, but a couple of games did choose to include players that mostly rode the pine, while excluding a key reserve or two. It’s definitely a relic of 90s basketball games that you’ll be reminded of when you revisit some old favourites.

4. Cheat Codes in Sim Games

Some might say that old school cheat codes themselves are relics of 90s video games in general, though they lasted through the turn of the millennium and they’re not completely obsolete today. Still, when it comes to gaining an advantage or unlocking content, these days you’re mostly talking about microtransactions, or a lot of grinding for in-game currency. In any case, while cheat codes were far more common in the 90s, one might not expect to see them in sim basketball games. It wasn’t surprising to find them in arcade titles such as NBA Jam that were meant to be wacky and over the top, but they weren’t necessarily expected in games that were intended to be realistic.

To that point though, it’s probably why they were included. For the most part, sim games took things seriously, but sometimes offered up a change of pace via Easter eggs and cheat codes. These included playing on a street court in NBA Live 99 and 2000 PC, or a disco court in Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside. Rod Reddekopp told me about a code that swapped player heads with the basketball in NBA Live 95. There was also a debug cheat code that triggered the championship celebration for testing purposes. And of course, there were unlockable developer teams and other secret squads. Of all the weird quirks in 90s basketball games, this is one I actually miss.

5. Mouse Controls on PC

Let’s finish up with perhaps the weirdest of the weird quirks of 90s basketball games: the ability to use the mouse on PC. And no, not just to navigate the menus; I mean in gameplay as well. If you were an enthusiastic PC gamer back in the 90s, you probably had a couple of peripherals at your disposal. If nothing else, you likely would’ve had some kind of gamepad or joystick in addition to the keyboard. Most basketball games were best played using a gamepad/joystick with the keyboard being a close second, but some also supported the mouse as an alternative controller. At this point, you’re no doubt wondering how that idea could possibly work in a basketball video game.

In short, not particularly well at all! Even assuming that the two mouse buttons were sufficient, it was difficult to move players, or indeed halt their movement, with any kind of precision. Turbo/sprint was a matter of quick mouse movements, though it most likely meant running out of bounds for a turnover. For the most part, it was an absolute last resort; technically supporting up to four players, but not realistically. Interestingly, the PC-exclusive Michael Jordan in Flight only utilised mouse controls. It kind of worked there, but there’s a reason that mouse controls are among the weird quirks generally only found in 90s basketball games. They’re just not built for it.

What are some other weird quirks of 90s basketball games that you recall? What are your thoughts on the ones that I mentioned here? 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.