Wayback Wednesday: The Glorious Menus of NBA Live 97

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at the truly glorious menus found in the PC version of NBA Live 97.

The nostalgic rush you get from a beloved old basketball video game begins long before you hit the virtual hardwood. It’s there upon the first glimpse of the boot-up screens and introduction videos. The first notes of the soundtrack will take you back to all the hours you spent with a game when it was brand new. And then, there are the menus. For many of us, our memories of our favourite basketball games also include spending a sizeable chunk of time in the menus: setting up games, creating players, updating the rosters, and sometimes just enjoying listening to the music.

As such, there are some frontends that stick in our minds. If we vividly remember the menu from a particular game, it’s either because it was visually appealing and easy to navigate, or incredibly ugly and clunky. When it comes to the menus in NBA Live 97, I’d definitely describe them as the former. I know I’ve touched on the menus in NBA Live 97 PC in my retrospective of the game, but I believe that they’re worthy of their own article. Let’s take a look back…way back…

Presentation and frontend aesthetics naturally reflect the style and sensibilities of the era that a basketball video game was released in. To that point, it may seem like it’s stating the obvious when a title that came out in the 90s is described as having a 90s vibe. However, the menus in NBA Live 97 PC scream “mid 90s”, and in the best possible way. It immediately identifies the era it came from, as that style permeated everything, including basketball culture. We saw it used in the formatting of many basketball magazines, as well as in the design of basketball trading cards. It was used in advertising, game shows aimed at a younger audience, NBA Action; you name it!

These screenshots are worth a thousand words, but let’s break down what we’re seeing here. Vibrant colours and graffiti-style artwork, combined with irregular shapes. The backgrounds feature a collage of players, appearing as though they’ve been painted with blurry brushstrokes. In the foreground, we’ve got the original photos of players that look like they were clipped out of a magazine. The typeface resembles scribbled handwriting and chalk lines are everywhere; even the mouse pointer! Capital letters are used sparingly and many labels are completely in lowercase, as are the names of teams and players throughout the various menus in NBA Live 97 PC. It’s so 90s!

It was a drastic change from NBA Live 96 PC, which had opted for a classy and more traditional aesthetic. I still love the menus in NBA Live 96 PC of course, and I’d argue that they were cool in their own right, especially with all of the gold and the spotlight motif. The player collages and team-specific backgrounds actually began with NBA Live 95 PC, which established the basic layout that NBA Live 96 and NBA Live 97 would then reuse. NBA Live 97 PC’s menus were more artistically ambitious than its predecessors, though. The tagline of NBA Live 97 was “The Soul of Hoops”, and the art team were clearly tapping into contemporary basketball culture with their designs.

The players pictured on the game setup options in the main menu, and the buttons of various submenus, were randomly selected every time you visited the screen. On the main menu, they’d also cycle as you toggled the options for difficulty level, quarter length, gameplay style, and game mode. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who wasted time/undertook the very important task of cycling through those options until both the setting and pictured player were to my liking. It’s one of those Player Tics we indulge in. Incidentally, NBA Live 98 PC’s menus would facilitate a similar one: clicking quit and cancelling out again until the game displayed your favourite cheerleader photo!

When I’ve previously discussed the menus in NBA Live 97 PC, I’ve mentioned the unmistakeable 90s style encapsulated by the chalk lines, graffiti, shapes, colours, player photos, and other effects. However, I’ve neglected to talk about the icons, which are another memorable aspect of the game’s frontend. In NBA Live 95 and NBA Live 96, labelled buttons accessed submenus and toggled between statistics and ratings on certain screens. NBA Live 97 replaced them with icons that represented the menus and functions. Most were self-explanatory, but if you did find any of the icons to be ambiguous, a description came up on mouseover after a couple of seconds.

Those icons might appear childish to some gamers, and I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily better than traditional buttons. The modern approach of navigating and performing tasks using designated gamepad buttons also works just fine. The icons used in NBA Live 97 PC’s menus are unique, however. I mean, an ice cube wearing sunglasses for Cool Facts? It doesn’t get any cooler than that! Other icons included scales for the Compare Players screen, filmstrip for Instant Replay, and a group of players for the roster customisation menus. They were intuitive, visually appealing, and a significant factor in making the frontend in NBA Live 97 PC so distinctive.

Creative flourishes could be found throughout the menus in NBA Live 97 PC. The button to sign and release players on the Free Agent Pool menu toggles between a dotted line with “Sign Here” as the signature, and a “Release” stamp accordingly. It also had its own unique background, as did the Standings screen in Season mode. There were also team-specific backgrounds for stats and information screens. Even the screens that shared the same backgrounds featuring player collages – including the main menu – displayed them at random. It’s a subtle detail, but combined with the aforementioned cycling player photos, it made the menus feel fresh and dynamic.

Because it’s so representative of its time, there’s undoubtedly a certain element of cheesiness to the menus of NBA Live 97 PC. In many ways, it’s like looking at a photo where you’re sporting a haircut that’s no longer in vogue, or noticing the outdated fashions in an old movie or TV show. You may question why it was ever considered cool and cutting edge. However, that kind of hindsight isn’t possible until we know what will turn out to be merely a fad, and what will become classic and evergreen. It’s also all too easy to giggle at trends that are no longer fashionable, while forgetting that given enough time, what’s cool now may one day itself be “cringe”.

When NBA Live 97 was new, I loved its menus because they were cool at that point in the 90s. I love them today because they’re such brazen, unapologetic examples of the decade’s style. A timeless look is impressive, but it’s often by pure luck that it happens. I’m just as appreciative of a time capsule as timelessness, and that’s what NBA Live 97 PC feels like. When I see those menus, I don’t just recall all the time I spent playing the game, but the players of the era. I remember collecting basketball trading cards and reading magazines cover to cover, many of which featured a similar art style at one time or another. It stirs up so many fond basketball-related memories.

There’s something untouchable about the nostalgia we have for memorable frontend aesthetics and soundtracks in basketball video games. Graphics and gameplay show their age, and although I love revisiting old favourites, it’s obvious when they’ve been surpassed on the virtual hardwood. A game may still be extremely fun to play, but once you go back a couple of generations, it’s impossible for titles to not look and feel dated. As such, our nostalgia can take a hit when we realise how much improvement has been made in a specific area, or that we’ve glossed over major issues in games we loved. It can shatter the nostalgic illusion of perfection, especially if it’s been a while.

Even though frontend aesthetics and soundtracks are likewise very much of their time and thus reflect bygone trends, our nostalgia for them prevails. It does so because they represent fashion, styles, and pop culture, rather than technological limitations and subsequent improvements. Again, gameplay can age poorly – or at least feel primitive, even if it’s still enjoyable – and better tech has facilitated more realistic graphics. We usually don’t stop enjoying songs though, and while the menus in some old games can be clunky, their aesthetic simply changes style rather than objectively improving. Our nostalgia for menus and soundtracks therefore usually isn’t affected by newer games.

It’s why you’ll often see comments on videos of old basketball games reminiscing about menu details such as the players dribbling in NBA Live 2003 and NBA Live 2004, players morphing into each other in NBA Live 2000 PC, or the camera pans through the arena in NBA Live 99 PC. These wonderful and creative designs stick in our minds as much our favourite plays on the virtual hardwood, and they trigger that nostalgic rush whenever we see a video of them, or replay the games ourselves. Once again, we spend a lot of time in menus, creating players, editing rosters, and setting up games. They’re as memorable to us as every bucket and virtual NBA championship.

For those who may be wondering, the menus in the SNES version of NBA Live 97 was likewise unmistakably of the time, and the frontend on PlayStation was basically a lower resolution version of what we had on PC. Peak quality aside, I mostly played the PC version of NBA Live 97, so its menus are the ones I picture when discussing that gloriously 90s style. I may joke about it from time to time because it’s such an in-your-face example of 90s motifs, but I honestly do love it. It perfectly captures the era’s style, and is one of the most unique frontend designs in the NBA Live series. What else can I say? The NBA Live 97 PC menus were radical to the extreme, dude.