Tag Archives: Karl Malone

This past week, Dee and I connected on Parsec to play NBA Live 98 – a standout game in the series – and as always, our session produced some fun highlights. Dee has put together a reel of those moments, and uploaded them for the community to enjoy.

As you can see, we took control of the Chicago Bulls in a co-op showdown against the Utah Jazz. It was a highly competitive game that saw us make a furious rally to force overtime. In case you’re wondering about the presence of Michael Jordan in these NBA Live 98 highlights, we were playing with the 1998 season roster update created by our founders, Lutz and Tim. That mod is still available here in our Downloads database, for anyone who would like to use it in their own retro gaming sessions!

We’ve said it several times on the NLSC Podcast, but connecting to play over Parsec has been an absolute joy, and we expect it to be a large part of another fun year of basketball gaming in 2023. Dee has been spearheading the initiative to share gameplay highlights for the past couple of years – from reels to the weekly Top 10 Plays – and there’ll be a lot of fun coming your way throughout the year. To that point, please subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel, and feel free to hit us up with any suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play!

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at some alternative retro teams that you can create in the PS4/X1 version of NBA 2K14.

While I was on my extended retro kick with NBA 2K14 for PS4, I played several games with the retro teams. There aren’t as many to choose from as in later games, and while inter-era games can be fun, I do like to re-create historical matchups. As such, after a while I tried my hand at creating some alternative retro teams. I’ve already discussed my fondness for minimalist modding, and given the content that’s available and the lack of Create-a-Player in NBA 2K14 PS4/X1, it was a stimulating challenge to see how many new retro squads could be assembled.

To that point, there are some obvious limitations when you don’t have the benefit of mods and external roster editing, to say nothing of having to destroy the lone custom roster save file. However, as long as you have a backup on hand – either via USB or cloud storage – you can mess around and add some new retro teams to NBA 2K14 PS4, and later restore a cleaner custom roster as necessary. If you’re keen to find out how you can change up your retro gaming, let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 derailed comebacks for NBA players that would’ve been fun to play with in games, had they come to fruition.

We’ve seen some noteworthy comebacks take place in the NBA over the years. Two of the most famous NBA comebacks are Michael Jordan – twice, in fact – and Magic Johnson. A number of other players have likewise returned to action after years away from the NBA, though not all of them were retired for that duration. Nevertheless, whenever there are rumours that a former star is contemplating a return, it grabs our attention. Will it happen? Where will they sign? How much do they have left in the tank? And yes, how will it impact their team in video games?

Even before these comebacks are official, we can speculate and play out scenarios on the virtual hardwood. We can also create our own fictional “What Ifs”. My cousin and I had Larry Bird make a brief but shocking return to the Houston Rockets in our NBA Live 95 PC Season. Bringing Shawn Kemp out of retirement for one last run in my NBA Live 06 PC Dynasty really made the experience. However, there are some real almost-comebacks that likewise present us with some intriguing “What If” scenarios to dabble with in video games. Some of them would’ve required a bit of prep work in the form of modding, while others were quite easy to set up using the default assets.

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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 NBA players who became familiar faces in strange places, and the games that captured those stints.

With the NBA season on hiatus, a lot of the conversation on Twitter has turned to historical debates and reminiscing. I’ve seen a couple of recent threads talking about big names who had brief stints with teams that are often overlooked and forgotten. Those Tweets have taken the form of facetious captions describing these familiar faces in strange places as a legend of the team in question, sometimes with a photo for emphasis. It’s an apt way of describing the oddity of those stints, many of which we’d rather pretend didn’t happen (or at least, claim to).

They did happen of course, and we’ve got the photos, footage, and records to prove it. We’ve also got basketball video games, which as I’ve grown fond of saying, act as time capsules and interactive almanacs. In a previous Wayback Wednesday article, I noted how video games have marked various milestones in NBA history. This time, I’m reminiscing about the weird stints of well-known players, and the games we saw them in. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 reimagining NBA’s Greatest in NBA 2K12.

I had a lot of fun reimagining The Jordan Challenge back in June, so I thought I’d give the same treatment to NBA’s Greatest. As I remarked in my retrospective on NBA’s Greatest, it was a fantastic follow-up to The Jordan Challenge, and added new content to NBA 2K12 with the lockout of 2011 delaying the inclusion of the new rookies and updated rosters. The level of detail with the retro presentation was very impressive, and it’s a feature that would be really fun to have when playing with historical teams in future NBA 2K games.

However, as with The Jordan Challenge, NBA’s Greatest wasn’t perfect. Looking back, there are a few ways it could’ve been better, and teams that would’ve been preferable. As with my previous reimagining, this isn’t intended to disparage the work that Visual Concepts put into NBA’s Greatest, but rather consider what might have been if not for a few legal barriers, and how an already fantastic mode could be made even better. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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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 a post move that I’ve never been able to perform in NBA Live 2003.

There’s a distinct satisfaction that comes with mastering advanced moves in basketball video games. Whether it’s pulling off the Dream Shake, or performing a beautiful combination of dribbling moves that leaves a defender stumbling, developing superior skills on the sticks is supremely satisfying. Sometimes, however, there’s that one move that you’re just never able to perform. You’ve seen it in trailers and other people’s gameplay footage, but for whatever reason, you just can’t perform the move yourself. Alternatively, it may be a contextual animation that very rarely triggers, even when you appear to do everything correctly.

For me, my white whale of basketball gaming is a post move that can be seen in the introduction video of NBA Live 2003. Try as I might, I’ve never been able to perform it in all the years that I’ve had the game (which is to say, since late 2002). What is this elusive post move? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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