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NLSC Podcast #519: Infinite NBA Modes To Keep Us Hooked

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #519 of the NLSC Podcast!

We’re tipping things off this week with a strange (but not altogether surprising) incident on Twitter/X. Indeed, the quality of discourse on social media is on our minds this week, as we feel compelled to respond to the latest ridiculous narrative being pushed about Michael Jordan and NBA history. We also check in with Troydan’s quest to pull a 100 Overall card in NBA 2K24 MyTEAM, and discuss the new mobile game, NBA Infinite. In this week’s mailbag/featured discussion, we join the community in reminiscing about the basketball video game modes that have kept us hooked over the years, and the titles that we played them in.

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

Monday Tip-Off: Don’t Let Imperfection Stifle Fun

Monday Tip-Off: Don't Let Imperfection Stifle Fun

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some advice to not allow imperfection get in the way of having fun on the virtual hardwood.

When it comes to sim basketball games – or sim sports titles in general – accuracy is obviously the name of the game. Inaccuracies, whether aesthetic or gameplay-related, stick out like a sore thumb. We have a similar philosophy when it comes to modding. Missing or incorrectly assigned art updates, inaccurate ratings, or some other mistake, will not go unnoticed. Perfection is a lofty and indeed impossible goal, but developers and modders alike strive to come as close to it as possible. At some point of course, we do need to make peace with some level of imperfection.

In fact, it’s important to not let imperfection stifle or stand in the way of fun. Again, this isn’t to say that accuracy isn’t important or something to aim for. However, by focusing on imperfections or allowing limitations to shoot down an otherwise good idea, you’re robbing yourself of a good time on the virtual hardwood. You can and certainly should point out errors, and constructively criticise aspects of games and mods that could stand to improve. There are undoubtedly times when an imperfection will detract from the experience. With that being said, as the saying goes, perfection is the enemy of good, and the pursuit of it can often stand in the way of our enjoyment.

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Wayback Wednesday: Tom Gugliotta & Basketball Video Games

Wayback Wednesday: Tom Gugliotta & Basketball Video Games

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 Tom Gugliotta and some interesting trivia regarding his career and appearances in video games.

There are some well-known examples of players whose history with basketball video games is interesting and unusual. It seems such a weird and unfathomable situation nowadays, but back in the 90s, Roster Players were frequently a necessity due to the absence of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, owing to them retaining the rights to their likenesses. Shaquille O’Neal was also briefly exclusive to NBA Live, and even David Robinson once required a stand-in. Of course, I also enjoy delving into virtual hardwood trivia concerning far more obscure players, such as Junior Harrington.

Now, on the scale of obscurity to all-time fame, Tom Gugliotta is probably closer to the likes of MJ, Chuck, Shaq, and The Admiral than he is to Harrington. That is to say, if you were to ask long-time basketball fans and history buffs, they’d be far more likely to recall Googs than Junior. With that being said, like so many players of yesteryear that were very good but not all-time greats, Gugliotta doesn’t get talked about enough. That’s unfortunate from a basketball standpoint, but his career also resulted in some fun NBA video game trivia. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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The Friday Five: 5 Reasons I Won’t Stop Retro Gaming

The Friday Five: 5 Reasons I Won't Stop Retro Gaming

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 reasons why I have no intention of putting a stop to my retro basketball gaming habits.

One of the best things that I’ve done to enhance my enjoyment of basketball gaming in recent years is to avoid the annual grind in MyCAREER, freeing up time to play some old favourites. Dee has obviously been a great influence in that regard, as we’ve connected to play a variety of classics over Parsec. It’s reminded me of how I used to enjoy going back to older games or sticking with one for more than a year, especially when I was disappointed with the latest release. Of course, my enthusiasm for retro basketball gaming has now made it tougher to spend time with newer games.

I have no regrets, though. I still gave NBA 2K23 and NBA 2K24 ample opportunity to impress, knowing that they might not, and that I had other options if they didn’t. To dust off a very old but nevertheless wise saying, I’ve learned to not put all of my eggs in one basket. I don’t feel defeated or robbed of a good time if the latest NBA 2K isn’t entirely to my liking. Beyond my interest in other genres, I have a huge collection of basketball games to fall back on if I’m itching to hit the virtual hardwood. While I do obviously have an interest in the future of basketball gaming, I’m finding plenty of reasons to return to old favourites, as well as seek out some new ones. Here are five!

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Wayback Wednesday: NBA in the Zone Retrospective

Wayback Wednesday: NBA in the Zone Retrospective

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 NBA in the Zone, developed and released by Konami.

The sim-arcade hybrid genre of basketball video games is one that I’ve really come to appreciate in recent years. I didn’t play many of them growing up, as I preferred NBA Live for its more realistic approach to the sim style, and NBA Jam for its definitive arcade experience. While I ultimately still prefer games that are firmly sim or arcade in their style of play, sim-arcade hybrid titles undoubtedly have their place. The best ones strike a fun balance between a realistic depiction of basketball, and exaggerating the action for looser, up-tempo gameplay that takes a few liberties with accuracy.

Because they occupy a middle ground between simulation and arcade games, there are a handful of games that could be considered sim-arcade hybrids. And 1 Streetball is definitely in the conversation, mixing 5-on-5 gameplay with some power-ups and slightly exaggerated dunks. NBA Live 2003’s wackier elements arguably make it a candidate, though it’s still mostly sim at its core. When I think of prime examples of sim-arcade hybrid games though, Konami’s hoops titles are what come to mind, and that includes NBA in the Zone. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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NLSC Podcast #513: Bringing Back An Alternative to NBA 2K

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #513 of the NLSC Podcast!

If we could bring back just one Triple-A release as an alternative to the NBA 2K series, what type of game would we choose: NBA sim, NBA arcade, street, or college basketball? This week we join the community in answering what is a very tough question! We also recap a session revisiting ESPN NBA 2Night, which despite some interesting features and great presentation, was not one of Konami’s better hoops titles. On the bright side, we played with an interesting New York Knicks team that was definitely in a transitional era. In this week’s mailbag, we’re talking about the players that got us into basketball, and our historical favourites on the virtual hardwood.

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

The Friday Five: 5 Players Who Only Appeared on Certain Teams in Games (Part 20)

The Friday Five: 5 Players Who Only Appeared on Certain Teams in Games (Part 20)

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 Part 20 in an ongoing series looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in video games.

At long last, we’ve reached the end of this second run of Friday Five articles looking at players who only appeared on certain teams in games, for one reason or another! The series was actually intended to finish much earlier – at least for the short term – but thanks to the help of David L, I ended up with numerous examples that were just too interesting not to discuss. As I didn’t want to scrap the articles I’d already written and the fun stories they included, this second series of articles has ultimately spanned an entire year, becoming a fun recurring topic for the last Friday of each month.

All good things must come to an end though, so this is it for now; famous last words, I know! There are definitely more examples, but I’ve basically covered the biggest names and most interesting stories; a total of one hundred players, as of Part 20! It’s time to move on to some other topics, but we are ending this second run of articles about players who only appeared on certain teams in video games on an interesting note. All five examples this time around are from NBA Live 2000 PC, with one of the players also boasting a second phantom stint in the original NBA 2K. So, let’s take a look at five more phantom stints that have been captured on the virtual hardwood!

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Monday Tip-Off: Crunching Those Virtual Numbers

Monday Tip-Off: Crunching Those Virtual Numbers

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with some thoughts on racking up statistics, and keeping track of the virtual numbers we accumulate in basketball video games.

Grumpy Elder Millennial of 39 that I am, I have a love-hate relationship with stats. I dislike how basketball and NBA discourse has been reduced to numbers, often cherry-picked to suit an agenda. Of course, even in my 20s – when I wasn’t quite as old or as grumpy – I disliked the way advanced metrics were beginning to creep into hoops talk. Some of the statistical feats being cited these days are utterly ridiculous: “first player to have 39 points, 17 rebounds, 13 assists, three steals, two blocks, and shoot better than 54%, on a Monday, in a blue jersey”. Just stop!

With that being said, stats are still interesting, and they do factor into analysis of the sport. They’ve always been relevant to some degree, and part of the discussion. Big performances matter, and are fun to watch. After all, if a player scores 50, they’ve clearly hit a lot of shots, potentially on some spectacular plays. The same goes for the numbers we post on the virtual hardwood. Whether we’re controlling NBA players or an avatar in a career mode, most of us enjoy filling the stat sheet. Game-to-game, it keeps things interesting. Over the course of a virtual season, those numbers can be almost as fun to look at as the statistics that star players are tallying in the real NBA.

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Wayback Wednesday: Keyboard Controls & PC Basketball Gaming

Wayback Wednesday: Keyboard Controls & PC Basketball Gaming

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 keyboard controls in basketball video games.

Believe it or not, keyboard controls are still supported as of NBA 2K24 PC! If you take a look at the system requirements, you’ll see that a dual analog gamepad is only “highly recommended” to play the game. Of course, this is probably underselling the importance of such a peripheral in modern releases. Gameplay is unquestionably designed around the use of a dual analog gamepad, and has been since NBA Live introduced Freestyle Control. On top of that, based on a couple of Forum posts, NBA 2K24 has some issues with configuring its limited keyboard controls.

There was a time when keyboard controls were more than sufficient for PC basketball gaming; even in titles that recommended a gamepad. As a long-time PC gamer, I’m no stranger to using keyboard controls in a variety of titles, including basketball games. There have even been times when I’ve opted for the keyboard on the virtual hardwood despite having a gamepad, including retro gaming sessions nowadays. They have had their advantages, but also their share of drawbacks, even long before hoops games were designed for a controller with dual joysticks. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Wayback Wednesday: Re-Playing the 1995 Season in NBA Live 95 PC

Wayback Wednesday: Re-Playing the 1995 Season in NBA Live 95 PC

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 reminiscing about re-playing the 1995 season in NBA Live 95 PC, a few years after it had concluded.

As I’ve said, I was born to be a retro gamer. My introduction to gaming was through a console that was already outdated, and even in the late 90s I was sticking with and going back to old favourites. The family’s aging 486 PC and the Nintendo 64 being the console I owned were also factors, especially when it came to basketball gaming. I didn’t have much choice without the hardware to play the newest NBA Live, nor could I convince my folks that I needed yet another basketball video game (“you’ve already got plenty!”). Nevertheless, my collection began when I was a teenager.

One of the most exciting pickups was NBA Live 95 PC. The Super Nintendo version of NBA Live 95 had been my introduction to 5v5 sim basketball games, but it was a frequent video store rental. NBA Live 96 was the first game I owned on PC, and also one of the first basketball video games that I actually owned, period. It was by chance that I happened across a copy of NBA Live 95 PC one school holidays, and as soon as I had it, it entered the rotation of games that my cousin Clinton and I played as often as we could. We eventually decided to re-play the 1995 season, and it became one of my all-time favourite hoops gaming experiences. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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NLSC Podcast #500: NBA 2K10 & A Huge Milestone

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #500 of the NLSC Podcast!

We’re celebrating a huge milestone this week, as it’s the 500th episode of the NLSC Podcast! To mark the occasion, we’re dipping into the archives to find some classic clips from over eleven years of shows, from the original test pilot in 2010 to interviews with a couple of fantastic guests. We’ve had a ton of fun over the years, and we promise that we’re not done yet! We also recap a couple of sessions with NBA 2K10 PC that we played with the recently-released fixed official roster, and reflect once again on how the game is often overlooked due to the brilliance of NBA 2K11 the very next year.

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

NLSC Podcast #496: NBA 2K17, NBA Live 06, & Community Favourites

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #496 of the NLSC Podcast!

Many of our all-time favourite basketball video games are still in the rotation, and this week we connected on Parsec to revisit two of them: NBA 2K17 and NBA Live 06 PC! We reflect on the strong points of each game and why they hold up so well years later, as well as the satisfying feeling of playing them with mods that we created! We’re also interested in the community’s all-time favourite hoops titles, so in this week’s mailbag, our listeners tell us which ones they still hold close to their hearts. We’ve also got some tips regarding affordable cards in NBA 2K24 MyTEAM – while advocating for No Money Spent, of course – and a couple of customary cheap plugs.

To get involved with the mailbag or to provide any feedback on the show, hit us up in the comments, reach out on social media, or post here in the NLSC Forum! For more information on the NLSC Podcast including episode guides, check out this page in our Wiki. You can also find the show on our YouTube channel, along with the rest of our video content. As always, thanks for tuning in, and go get buckets!

Monday Tip-Off: My 25 Favourite Basketball Video Games

Monday Tip-Off: My 25 Favourite Basketball Video Games

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a countdown of my Top 25 favourite basketball video games, in celebration of another milestone here at the NLSC.

On Saturday, I celebrated my 22nd year of running the NLSC. It’s been a long ride with plenty of ups and downs, but I’m still very glad that I accepted the gig when Tim moved on to work at EA Sports, and that I stuck it out through some rough patches to enjoy the good times. To mark the occasion, I’ve decided to rank my Top 25 favourite basketball video games. This being my 22nd Anniversary as webmaster/admin of the NLSC, I was originally going to pick my Top 22 games. Top 25 has a better ring to it though, and it also serves as a belated 25th Anniversary celebration for the site itself!

Before we get to the countdown, let me emphasise once again that it is a Top 25 of my favourite basketball video games; not the Top 25 best hoops titles. That’s a different list, and if I were being more objective, there are games I’m listing here that wouldn’t make the cut. Because I haven’t spent as much time with certain NBA 2K, College Hoops, or NCAA Basketball/March Madness titles, I don’t have as much of an affinity for them, though that may well change in the future. I haven’t “forgotten” about those great basketball video games, but they haven’t become one of my personal favourites (as yet, anyway). With that being said, here are my Top 25 virtual hardwood classics!

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Wayback Wednesday: Inaccuracies in Basketball Games

Wayback Wednesday: Inaccuracies in Basketball Games

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 noteworthy and recurring inaccuracies that we’ve found in basketball video games over the years.

Licensed sports titles are judged differently to other genres of video games. Because they’re aiming to depict a real sport played by real athletes, we expect accuracy. Even in arcade games with all of their breaks from reality, there’s an expectation that the players will resemble their real life counterparts, and that their ratings will reflect their strengths, weaknesses, and overall style of play. The bar is set much higher in sim titles, especially as technological improvements have led to increasingly realistic graphics and gameplay. Above all, we expect attention to detail.

Of course, none of us are infallible, and thus human error is inevitable. As anyone who’s ever worked on a roster mod can attest, it’s all too easy to overlook a jersey number, neglect a needed ratings update, or forget to double-check the spelling of a newly-added player’s name. That’s not even getting into leaving a necessary file out of the update, or any other technical mistakes! Still, it’s interesting to discover some of the inaccuracies that made it into the default rosters, especially before official roster updates were commonplace. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Monday Tip-Off: Keep Those Old Saves

Monday Tip-Off: Keep Those Old Saves

We’re at midcourt, and the ball is about to go up…it’s Monday Tip-Off! Join me as I begin the week here at the NLSC with my opinions and commentary on basketball gaming topics, as well as tales of the fun I’ve been having on the virtual hardwood. This week, I’m tipping things off with a PSA to hold on to your old saves whenever possible.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that more recently, I’ve preferred to stick with an old favourite – or new favourite old release, as is the case with NBA 2K14 for PS4 – rather than play the latest NBA 2K. It’s not just a matter of liking the gameplay better in older games, though admittedly that is a key factor. To be blunt, I’m tired of grinding and starting over from scratch every year, knowing that I won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of my labour when the servers are shut down. And yes, the use of the word “labour” is deliberate here, because it does end up feeling more like work than play.

And so, I’ve gravitated towards games that hold up well, and I can continue to dust off and play for years to come. Reaching my sixth year in NBA 2K14 MyCAREER is far more rewarding than anything I could achieve in NBA 2K23’s mode, which will one day be inaccessible. Retaining access to my Chicago Bulls Dynasty in NBA Live 06 PC holds far more appeal than any cards that I could collect in NBA 2K23 MyTEAM. With care, I can preserve those experiences and revisit them whenever the mood strikes, which isn’t the case when live service content is involved. However, thanks to a lack of foresight, there are long-lost saves that I’ll never be able to revisit.

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