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The Friday Five: 5 Reasons to Mod Old Games

The Friday Five: 5 Reasons to Mod Old Games

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 to mod old games.

I remember a conversation with a long-time member of the community many years ago, when we were reflecting on the earliest NBA Live games fading into obscurity. This was around the turn of the millennium, and modding for titles earlier than NBA Live 99 was definitely slowing down and going out of vogue. With that being said, I did release a 2001 season update for NBA Live 96 PC, which at the time was meant to be a farewell to an old favourite. Little did either of us know that retro gaming would one day see a number of old releases find their way back into people’s rotations!

Granted, it’s not for everyone, but I’ll always advocate for retro gaming, basketball or otherwise. Moreover, I’ll also encourage anyone to mod old games if they’re inclined to do so. I can understand if some gamers balk at that idea. While there are people that turn their nose up at the suggestion of playing anything other than the latest release, they can at least see the nostalgic appeal of quickly throwing on a classic game. A modding project can take a lot of time and effort though, and mods for an old title may not seem worth all that trouble. I understand that point of view, but I strongly disagree! In that spirit, here are five reasons why it’s a great idea to mod old games.

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Monday Tip-Off: Next Gen NBA’s Greatest

Monday Tip-Off: Next Gen NBA's Greatest

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 an attempt at crafting a Next Gen NBA’s Greatest mode in a future NBA 2K.

Although the original Jordan Challenge was the catalyst for a new era of historical content in NBA 2K, NBA’s Greatest was an innovative follow-up. Many of the classic teams that were added as part of NBA’s Greatest are still in the game today, setting a precedent for expanding the roster of retro squads to celebrate a variety of players. It wasn’t the first basketball game to feature throwback presentation – NBA Jam 2004 had utilised the concept almost a decade earlier – but NBA 2K12 did a spectacular job with it, ultimately paving the way for what we now have with MyNBA Eras.

As a game released in 2011, NBA’s Greatest celebrated fifteen of the most prominent players in league history to that point: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Julius Erving, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Oscar Robertson, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Scottie Pippen, and Isiah Thomas. Needless to say, those players still deserve to be celebrated today, but after all these years, there’s a new class of all-time greats that a future NBA 2K could build a Next Gen NBA’s Greatest around. With that in mind, here are fifteen players that should be celebrated in such a mode, as well as my picks for their games.

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NLSC Podcast #561: Gifts & New Year’s Resolutions

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From courtside of the virtual hardwood, it’s Episode #561 of the NLSC Podcast!

With the 2024 holiday season drawing to a close and a new year almost upon us, this week we’re joining the community in sharing the basketball and basketball gaming gifts that we gave and received for Christmas, as well as listing some of our resolutions for both real hoops and the virtual hardwood in 2025. We also recap a couple of co-op games with the PC versions of two titles released some twenty years apart: NBA Live 95 and NBA 2K15. In addition to reflecting on two very different but nevertheless enjoyable sessions, we discuss how great of a sim game NBA Live 95 was for its time, and the ruthless AI that makes NBA 2K15 suitably challenging.

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!

2005 Roster for NBA 2K6 (Xbox 360) Released

2005 Rosters for NBA 2K6 (Xbox 360) Released

At long last, and more than a couple of teases on the NLSC Podcast, I’ve put the finishing touches on my 2005 season roster for the Xbox 360 version of NBA 2K6, and it is now available to download!

This is a minimalist project in that it’s limited by what can be edited in the Xbox 360 version of NBA 2K6, but the roster includes final 2005 season lineups with twenty missing players added, a few ratings updates, and fixed dunk ratings and accessories for the Legends on the All-Decade teams.

The roster is the result of an extended retro kick with NBA 2K6, and a renewed interest in minimalist modding. Inspired by revisiting basketball video game manuals for Wayback Wednesday, the readme file is also a labour of love, with some extra information about the 2005 season and tips for achieving maximum accuracy with the roster.

Download the roster here, and check out the release and support topic here in the Forum. Please see below for more information, including installation instructions. Huge thanks once again go out to wiscard_rush for helping out with some final pre-release testing, to make sure that the file can be re-signed and transferred to another Xbox 360! I do have some other ideas for minimalist rosters for NBA 2K6 in the pipeline, so stay tuned for them coming in 2025, along with some other projects for old favourites on PC.

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Monday Tip-Off: Takin’ It To The Streets

Monday Tip-Off: Takin' It To The Streets

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 how my basketball gaming has increasingly involved hitting the streets to virtually hoop.

One of the most valuable life lessons I’ve learned is the importance of remaining open-minded, trying new things, and being willing to step outside your comfort zone. As someone who was a picky eater growing up, it’s been a delight to give new cuisine a chance, and discover that I have a taste for foods I was once intimidated by. Meeting new friends has introduced me to hobbies, interests, and experiences that I might not have tried otherwise. As for basketball gaming, I’ve been able to shed brand loyalty and established habits to find new retro kicks, and different ways of enjoying them.

Case in point: my recent appreciation for virtually balling in the streets! There’s plenty of irony here. First of all, playful jabs at JaoSming and his enthusiasm for Blacktop mode were running gags on old episodes of the NLSC Podcast, yet here I am enjoying the type of virtual streetball gameplay that he championed! Second, I’ve been highly critical of NBA Live’s focus on The Streets, particularly in NBA Live 19, so the last thing I expected was to get hooked on the Pro-Am Tour in NBA Live 18. I do still stand by many of my previous criticisms, but like a dish I swore I’d never eat, I’ve developed a taste for – with apologies to the Doobie Brothers – takin’ it to the streets.

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Wayback Wednesday: Was 2008 The Weakest Season For Basketball Games?

Wayback Wednesday: Was 2008 The Weakest Season For 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 the basketball games of the 2008 season, and explaining why I believe it was the weakest lineup to date.

As much as I miss having multiple annual releases in the basketball gaming space – especially when we had at least three or four companies throwing their hat into the ring – it clearly wasn’t sustainable. The quality of those games was inconsistent across the board, and it didn’t help that some of them were console and regional exclusives. To that point, it’s no wonder that many series didn’t last nearly as long as NBA 2K, or even NBA Live. Still, it was great having so many choices that brought their own ideas to the table, and there were usually at least one or two fantastic games each year.

Nominating the best or strongest year in basketball gaming is tough; in fact, that’s a topic that Dee and I might have to tackle on the podcast, with the community’s input. If we’re talking about the worst or weakest season for basketball games though, I do have an answer that – while obviously subjective – I am confident in. After going back and reviewing NBA Live 08, NBA 2K8, and Sony’s NBA 08, I believe that 2008 is the frontrunner for the weakest season for basketball video games. I certainly wouldn’t expect everyone to agree, but I have my reasons. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Monday Tip-Off: The Road Not Taken

Monday Tip-Off: The Road Not Taken

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 reflections on my retro basketball gaming habits in recent years, which have frequently seen me walking the road not taken.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both…I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference”. These are the opening and closing lines of Robert Frost’s most famous poem, “The Road Not Taken”. My first exposure to the poem was – as so many things were – via a scene from The Simpsons. In the years since then, it’s been interesting to read the entire poem, and also to learn that it’s commonly misinterpreted as championing the idea of “following your own path”. (Don’t worry; I do have a point here beyond pretentiously referencing poetry!)

In fact, “The Road Not Taken” is intended to be ironic, mocking that notion. In short, it pokes fun at indecisiveness, and overemphasising or romanticising our choices, as well as needlessly regretting the ones that we’ve made. To that point, revisiting games that we’ve overlooked is “The Road Not Taken”, both literally and in terms of Frost’s intended meaning. Obviously, we chose a different path – playing something else – and we may lament that, and try to retroactively justify our choices. However, not only did we walk that path for a reason, but with retro gaming, it is possible to go back and take the other route, as I’ve been doing (see, I told you we’d get there!).

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The Friday Five: 5 Overshadowed Games

The Friday Five: 5 Overshadowed Games

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 basketball video games that are somewhat overshadowed by their immediate successors, or even predecessors.

As I’ve acknowledged in previous articles, “underrated” and “overshadowed” are relative and subjective terms, as are “overrated” and “overexposed” for that matter. They assume some level of consensus, and to that point, once we start talking about how something is underrated or overshadowed, it often ceases to be either. With that being said, when it comes to basketball video games, there are some that always seem to fly under the radar. Even if they were well-received at the time, they still don’t get their due in hindsight, because another title from the same era is more acclaimed.

This can easily happen in the annual sim titles when they’re at their peak. While there may be several strong releases during a series’ golden age, we tend to focus on the ones that always land on lists of all-time great basketball video games. It can happen to arcade titles as well, even when the games were released a couple of years or more apart. I hesitate to declare all of them to be hidden gems as they were popular, and it might be swinging the narrative too far in the other direction. Nevertheless, in my opinion, these overshadowed games deserve some more love. I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking for some retro basketball gaming inspiration!

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Wayback Wednesday: Rolling Rosters Back One Year With Mods

Wayback Wednesday: Rolling Rosters Back One Year With Mods

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 reflecting on the long-running modding practice of rolling back rosters to the previous season.

Two of the most exciting modding ideas for basketball video games are bringing an old favourite up to date, and winding back the clock in new games with a detailed retro season mod. There’s something truly enchanting about a mod so comprehensive that you almost forget that several years – or indeed, decades – separate the game and the season that the roster mod is set in! In comparison, roster mods that just involve rolling the rosters back one year may seem like a more humble affair, particularly if they’re completely minimalist and don’t include any court, jersey, or logo updates.

And yet, these projects can be immensely satisfying to create and play with! There are reasons that for as long as we’ve been able to meaningfully customise rosters – with or without the aid of external tools – we’ve had the idea of rolling back a game’s rosters to the previous campaign. In short, it’s a combination of some of our favourite aspects of playing and modding basketball video games, to the point where a season needn’t be particularly old or established as nostalgic for us to want to re-create it. It’s a way of changing things up, so let’s look at a popular way to go back, that goes way back!

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Wayback Wednesday: NBA 2K8 Retrospective (Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3)

Wayback Wednesday: NBA 2K8 Retrospective (Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3)

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 the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of NBA 2K8.

The tagline of NBA 2K8 was “It’s like that”. I find it extremely appropriate, though I guarantee it isn’t for the reasons that the marketing department at Take-Two intended. Instead, “it’s like that” are the frustrated words that run through my mind whenever I give NBA 2K8 a chance, and it disappoints me once again. Not to spoil the entire retrospective before I get into it, but if NBA 2K6 or NBA 2K7 had been the games to get me into the NBA 2K series – and they may well might’ve been, had I given them a fair chance back in the day – NBA 2K8 could’ve turned me off of it again.

Indeed, I’m prepared to call it one of the most overrated games in the entire series. The only reason I hesitate is because after looking at some contemporary reviews, it seems that the criticisms and unfavourable comparisons to its predecessors were being made back then, too. GameTrailers’ review even went so far as to call it a serious step backwards, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s unfortunate because the game does have a lot of good bones and enticing features, but for me, it’s been a major retro basketball gaming disappointment. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Our Latest Basketball Gaming Highlight Reels

Our Latest Basketball Gaming Highlight Reels

As you’ve hopefully seen if you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel, Dee and I have uploaded several basketball gaming highlight reels recently. Between covering NBA 2K25 news and our other original content, I’ve neglected to share those uploads on the front page, so here’s a round-up of our latest work!

With my in-depth retrospective of 24/7 in this week’s Wayback Wednesday, it only made sense to share highlights from my playthroughs of the mode in NBA 2K6 and NBA 2K7. Both the Entertainer’s Basketball Classic and Legends Charity Tournament were fun ways to cap off a couple of modes that I was glad to finally delve into.

In my previous YouTube round-up bulletin, I shared Dee’s highlights from a game of NBA Superstars between the Celtics and Clippers. It wasn’t the only matchup that he played, as he also had a fun time showing out with Ja Morant and the Grizzlies, as you’ll see in this reel.

Dee and I have been making a point to connect on Parsec as often as possible as of late, and he’s compiled highlight reels from some extremely fun basketball gaming sessions. That includes a showdown of underdogs in NBA ShootOut 2004, and in a nod to the new Steph Era in NBA 2K25’s MyNBA Eras, a game between the Cavaliers and Warriors in NBA 2K17.

I’ve also uploaded highlights from a game of NBA Live 09 featuring the default placeholder Oklahoma City branding, and two games of NBA Street Homecourt: one between squads of WNBA stars, and one featuring the Coatesville All-Stars taking on the Baltimore All-Stars at Cloverdale.

Check out all of those basketball gaming highlight reels below! Don’t forget to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel if you haven’t already, and as always, be sure to hit us up with any suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play! We’ll do our best to get them into the rotation and share the highlights with you all.

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Wayback Wednesday: 24/7 Mode in NBA 2K

Wayback Wednesday: 24/7 Mode in NBA 2K

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 the various iterations of 24/7 mode in NBA 2K.

There are many features, modes, and concepts in basketball video games that are older than we may recall. To that point, MyCAREER has been a staple of NBA 2K since its debut as My Player way back in NBA 2K10; a game released in 2009. For that matter, the story-driven approach to MyCAREER has been the standard for over ten years now, debuting in NBA 2K14 Next Gen and appearing in almost three times as many games as the original version of the mode. In short, a single player career mode is nothing new at this point.

However, the concept is even older than that! While we didn’t get a fully-fledged NBA-oriented career experience until 2009, earlier games did experiment with single player campaign modes. Indeed, NBA 2K branched out into this area very early on in the series, introducing 24/7 mode in ESPN NBA Basketball (aka NBA 2K4). It was relatively short-lived as it was phased out after NBA 2K7, but it stands as a creative concept that undoubtedly paved the way for modern career modes. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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NBA Superstars & NBA 2K6 Highlights

NBA Superstars & NBA 2K6 Highlights

In case this week’s NLSC Top 10 Plays wasn’t enough exciting virtual hardwood action for you, Dee and I have uploaded another couple of videos! Dee has posted footage of a full game in NBA Superstars, while I’ve uploaded an NBA 2K6 Xbox 360 highlight reel featuring the 1992 Dream Team.

For those who are unaware, NBA Superstars is a new arcade basketball video game by Play Mechanix. It’s inspired by NBA Jam, right down to featuring the legendary Tim Kitzrow on commentary. Dee found the game at a local arcade, and took on the Los Angeles Clippers with his Boston Celtics. We’ll be talking about it on the next episode of the NLSC Podcast, so stay tuned!

Since I began my retro kick with NBA 2K6 for Xbox 360, I’ve been tinkering with some minimalist roster projects. I have a work-in-progress roster featuring 20 new Legends – that’s as many as you can create in the game – and that facilitated a re-creation of the 1992 Dream Team’s famous scrimmage. It’s another example of how minimalist modding can still set up fun new scenarios in a variety of basketball video games.

Check out our NBA Superstars and NBA 2K6 videos below! As always, be sure to subscribe to the NLSC YouTube channel if you haven’t already, and feel free to hit us up with any suggestions of games that you’d like to see us play.

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Monday Tip-Off: The Easiest Old Basketball Games To Get Into

Monday Tip-Off: The Easiest Old Basketball Games To Get Into

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 and advice on the old basketball games that are the easiest to get into.

If you’ve been around a while, reading my articles and listening to Dee and I on the NLSC Podcast, you’ll know that we’re enthusiastic advocates for retro basketball gaming. It’s not that we won’t play newer titles – and of course, the term “retro” is also subjective in that regard – but we love to revisit the classics, and encourage anyone who feels disappointed with modern games to do the same. Whether it’s a brief trip down memory lane or it becomes your primary means of hitting the virtual hardwood, there are many old basketball games that hold up and are still worth playing.

With that being said, some old basketball games are easier to get into than others. Needless to say, the further back you go, the more primitive the games, and everyone has a threshold as far as what’s too old to enjoy all these years later; at least on a regular basis. There’s also the matter of feasibility. You obviously need to be able to run the games, and that requires the necessary hardware, and sometimes technical savvy. There are ways to play pretty much any old basketball games that you can get your hands on, but some are definitely more accessible. To that end, here are my recommendations of where to begin if you’re interested in retro basketball gaming.

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Wayback Wednesday: NBA 2K7 Retrospective (Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3)

Wayback Wednesday: NBA 2K7 Retrospective (Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3)

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 the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of NBA 2K7.

As someone who grew up with NBA Live, my familiarity with the series and a sense of brand loyalty often made it difficult to give other games a fair chance. Over the years, I’ve become a fan of the NBA 2K series, and have also enjoyed collecting and revisiting other titles that were competing with the NBA Live games that I played. It’s been rewarding to give them a second look – or in some cases, a first look – with fresh eyes and more of an open mind. I’m far more willing to adapt to a different style of controls than I was when the latest NBA Live was still my game of choice.

It’s why all these years later, I found myself on an extended retro kick with NBA 2K6. Indeed, it’s retroactively become one of my favourite games, and to this day, I enjoy keeping it in the rotation whenever I feel like changing up what I’m playing. With that in mind, I’ve been giving other NBA 2K games from that generation another look, to see if any of them capture my imagination as NBA 2K6 did. To that point, has its immediate successor, NBA 2K7, also succeeded in becoming one of my favourites? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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