Wayback Wednesday: NBA 2K17 All-Time College DLC Revisited

January 3rd, 2018: The EA Graphics Editor

Although our modding community continues to produce excellent content for the most recent NBA 2K games, the process has become a little more difficult from NBA 2K15 onwards. While the decision to port the PlayStation 4/Xbox One version to the PC has allowed the platform to receive the best version of the current release, it has put a few limitations on what can be achieved through modding. At the very least, it's made the process a little tougher. This has led to people in the community expressing their frustration with the current state of modding.

I can certainly sympathise with that point of view, and I'd love to see future versions of NBA 2K be more modder-friendly. However, I also remember the early days of modding NBA Live on PC. I've talked about how difficult it could be in a previous Wayback Wednesday feature, though it's something that got better over time; not just because of changes to the games, but also thanks to the hard work and ingenuity of the people making the tools. Undoubtedly, one of the most impressive and important tools is the EA Graphics Editor. It's a modding tool that's served us well for a long time, so let's take a look back...way back...

January 10th, 2018: Street Hoop for Neo Geo

Growing up in Australia in the 90s, I have to admit that I was completely ignorant of the Neo Geo. The Super Nintendo and SEGA Mega Drive (known as the Genesis in NTSC regions) were the popular consoles, and as it stood, I was a Nintendo fanboy. As such, it wasn't until years later than I learned about some of the other consoles that were also vying for a share of the market back then, or the library of games that were exclusive to those platforms. Those games included several basketball titles, such as the one we're looking at today: Street Hoop.

In the wake of NBA Jam's success, several developers tried to emulate its style with their own arcade basketball games. In 1994, Data East threw their hat into the ring with Street Hoop, released exclusively for the Neo Geo. How does it stand up against NBA Jam and other arcade hoops games? Thanks to the recent re-release on PS4, X1, and Switch, we can take a look back...way back...

January 17th, 2018: Favourite Secret Characters in NBA Jam

January 14th marked the 25th Anniversary of NBA Jam, the game that truly set the tone in terms of the arcade basketball experience. In addition to celebrating its silver anniversary, NBA Jam has also been in the news as of late due to the possibility of a brand new game being released. Additionally, in a recent interview with Shack News, Tim Kitzrow confirmed that creator Mark Turmell still has the rare version of the game that includes Michael Jordan and Gary Payton. While there are several legal roadblocks that must be cleared, Turmell is investigating the possibility of releasing that rare treasure in celebration of the game's anniversary.

As a long-time fan of the series, I'd love to see a new NBA Jam game, as well as the release of the rare version of the original featuring MJ and The Glove. It's a situation we'll keep an eye on, but in the meantime, it's always fun to look back at the games that have already been released. I've posted a couple of retrospectives on NBA Jam Tournament Edition in previous Wayback Wednesday features, so this time I wanted to focus on a specific element of the original games: their secret characters. They're arguably as iconic as the high flying dunks, being on fire, and "Boomshakalaka!", so let's take a look back...way back...

When I was a kid, I had looked up cheat codes at the local library for raiden and jax for the arcade. That was what we did pre-internet lol

I would say my favorite codes were for NBA players that I liked to play as. That allowed me to team them up with other players that I liked

I used to have a copy of Nintendo Magazine System (the Australian version of Nintendo Power) with a bunch of codes for the SNES version of NBA Jam TE. That's where my codes used to come from, pre-Internet!

I never knew where I could find codes until one day I found the video game books at the back of the library. When I found books full of cheat codes, my mind was blown!

I remember those books, too. Some came as bonuses with magazines, but there were a few that were published somewhat regularly, as new games came out.

January 24th, 2018: Kobe Bryant's 81 Points in NBA Live 06

Monday marked the twelfth anniversary of Kobe Bryant's career high 81 point game against the Toronto Raptors. The Los Angeles Lakers legend's torching of Toronto put him in second place behind Wilt Chamberlain for the most points scored in a single NBA game. It was a spectacular feat, and I remember my jaw actually dropping when I checked the scores that day. Between Shaquille O'Neal's departure and the arrival of Pau Gasol, the Lakers languished in relative mediocrity in terms of the standings, but Kobe was putting up some numbers for the ages.

After his legendary 81 point game, NBA.com threw down a challenge for basketball gamers to try and replicate Kobe Bryant's performance in either NBA Live 06 or NBA 2K6. For this week's Wayback Wednesday, I decided that I'd dust off NBA Live 06 PC - one of my all-time favourite basketball games - and give it a shot myself, over a decade later. 81 points seems like something out of a video game, but just how easily can it be done on the virtual hardwood? Let's take a look back...way back...

Do you reckon that things would have been different if they weren't blowing them out?

I think Kobe was going off no matter what in that one.

January 31st, 2018: NBA Full Court Press

NBA Full Court Press is a game that I've wanted to talk about in detail for some time. I've mentioned it in passing in previous articles, but an in-depth retrospective is long overdue. Developed by Microsoft, the game is a forerunner to the NBA Inside Drive series, and was released in 1996 as a competitor to other sim-oriented titles such as EA Sports' NBA Live 97, and Sony Interactive's NBA ShootOut 97 (also known as Total NBA 97). During that era, a handful of developers were throwing their hat into the ring with NBA games, and most games had their own hook or feature that made them worth checking out.

Notably a PC exclusive release, NBA Full Court Press is a game with a certain amount of flair and a few concepts of merit, but one that comes up a little short as a sim title, even for its era. At the same time, it could still be enjoyable, and some of its better ideas and features wouldn't make their way into other NBA games for several years. Let's take a look back...way back...

This blog gives me life

Glad you enjoy the throwback content!

February 7th, 2018: The Forgotten NBA Jam

With NBA Jam celebrating its 25th Anniversary, there's been even more nostalgia than usual surrounding the classic series of basketball video games. For long-time basketball gamers, and for those who know their gaming history, the lineage of the series is well known. NBA Jam and NBA Jam Tournament Edition are hailed as classics, and rightfully so. NBA Hangtime - Midway's follow-up after Acclaim won the rights to the Jam name - is also a great game. Acclaim's titles, from Extreme to the sim-oriented releases, were generally lacklustre. The series was revived by EA Sports, with the 2010 reboot and subsequent On Fire Edition being quite successful.

Midway also produced spiritual successors in the form of NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC, and NBA Hoopz. However, between the five-on-five titles and the reboot by EA Sports, Acclaim released a game simply titled NBA Jam (identified as NBA Jam 2004 by the disc's digital label), which aimed to return to the series' roots of over-the-top arcade gameplay. It's become somewhat of a forgotten release, overshadowed by other titles that bear the NBA Jam name, but it has its good points and deserves a second look. Let's take a look back...way back...

February 14th, 2018: Simulating To Today in NBA 2K10

It's fair to say that the 2010 season marked a turning point for the NBA. Crossing into a new decade, it saw Kobe Bryant win the last of his five titles with the Los Angeles Lakers, as well as the final clash between the Lakers and Boston Celtics to date. It was also the season before a free agent frenzy that included LeBron James' infamous "Decision", and several other big names changing teams. Whether or not you like the current trend of superstars joining forces via free agency to form "super teams", or some of the other changes over the past decade, it's been an eventful era.

As it happened, it was also a turning point for NBA video games. NBA Live 10 was the last NBA Live game before the ill-fated rebrand to NBA Elite, making 2010 the final season to see two sim-oriented releases until NBA Live returned for the 2014 campaign. I thought it'd be fun to go back to one of those games and simulate through to the present, just to see how the sim engine would predict everything would turn out. NBA 2K10 is a game I haven't talked about all that much outside of one article, so it's the one I've settled on for this exercise. Let's take a look back...way back...and then bring it all back to the 2018 season.

February 21st, 2018: Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City

A few days ago, Michael Jordan celebrated his 55th birthday. As such, it seems only appropriate that this week's Wayback Wednesday takes a look back at a game starring His Airness. Given that he is my favourite player, and obviously a very prominent name in basketball, I've focused on Michael Jordan in more than a couple of previous Wayback Wednesday features, covering a variety of MJ-related gaming topics from his PC exclusive three-on-three game, to his inclusion in NBA 2K11 along with the Jordan Challenge. This time, I'm changing things up with a retrospective of a licensed platform game, namely Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City.

Developed by Electronic Arts back when the company still had an agreement to use MJ's likeness, it's a quirky and interesting relic of its era. Chances are if you grew up playing video games in the 90s, you've heard of, played, rented, or owned this game at some point. We don't usually cover platformers here at the NLSC, but as it stars one of the most recognisable names in the history of basketball, it's worth talking about. Let's take a look back...way back...

February 28th, 2018: College Slam

College Slam is a 1996 title that a lot of basketball gamers may not remember, if indeed they've ever heard of it. I personally wasn't aware of it until years later, since as is the case with all college basketball video games, it wasn't available in PAL regions. Essentially an NCAA version of NBA Jam, it was developed by Iguana Entertainment and published by Acclaim, the companies who brought NBA Jam to home consoles and PC. Unlike NBA Jam, it wasn't released in arcades, and never achieved the same level of popularity, largely due to its more limited release.

In many ways, College Slam is a re-skin of NBA Jam with NCAA licensing, but that is selling the game a little short. It did introduce a few new features that set it apart from its NBA licensed predecessor, and make it an interesting game to revisit. If the 2003 release from Acclaim is the forgotten NBA Jam, then College Slam is surely the forgotten spin-off. It's another game worth remembering however, so let's take a look back...way back...

March 7th, 2018: Investigating NBA Jam TE's Ratings

While playing College Slam for last week's Wayback Wednesday feature, I noticed something interesting about the individual player ratings. Since the generic players can be edited, there is a cap on their ratings to prevent you from maxing them out at nine in each category. Interestingly, the cap varies from player to player, which basically ensures that at least one player stands out as the star of the team with better all around ratings or high ratings in a few categories, while other players are capped at a lower amount of ratings points, establishing a hierarchy and balancing the squads.

Thinking back to some of the unusual ratings that I've noticed in the original NBA Jam games, I began to wonder if a similar approach had been taken in those titles, and whether it could account for some of the ratings that seemed too high or too low. I fired up the PC version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition to make a few calculations and comparisons, and what I discovered was quite interesting. There does seem to be a method to the ratings, and I'm not sure if it's ever really been explored, so let's take a look back...way back...

Very interesting findings. You mentioned Payton specifically, and I was a big fan of his but I had always felt his ratings were a bit low. I guess it makes sense to balance out Kemp's insane ratings and schrempf's above average ratings

I definitely feel like it isn't a coincidence, after seeing the ratings limits in College Hoops. It really does seem like they were trying to balance things out in previous NBA Jam titles, leading to quotas and some players being underrated or overrated when they were placed in the wrong tier, or there weren't enough high tiers to go around.

March 14th, 2018: Slam 'N Jam PC Retrospective

Back in the 90s, there were quite a few basketball video games that only licensed the name and likeness of a lone NBA star. Games like Michael Jordan in Flight, Barkley Shut Up & Jam, and David Robinson's Supreme Court, all featured their namesake player alongside fictional teammates and opponents. In 1995, Crystal Dynamics (the developer responsible for Gex and Tomb Raider) and Left Field Productions (makers of Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside) released a couple of games with the name Slam 'N Jam. The first game, Slam 'N Jam '95, featured only fictional players. It was followed by a sequel in 1996, titled Slam 'N' Jam '96 Featuring Magic & Kareem.

As the title would imply, the sequel licensed the names and likenesses of both Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. While the original game had been exclusive to the 3DO, the sequel was released for the original PlayStation and SEGA Saturn. It was also ported to the PC, simply under the title of Slam 'N Jam. That's the version I'm focusing on today, so let's take a look back...way back...

March 21st, 2018: Jordan vs Bird: One on One Retrospective

In my retrospective of Lakers vs Celtics last year, I took a look back at one of the most famous forerunners to EA Sports' NBA Live series. Although it was the first game in the NBA Playoffs series, and the oldest game in EA's lineage of five-on-five titles, Lakers vs Celtics was not the developer's first foray onto the virtual hardwood. That distinction belongs to the 1983 Apple II release commonly referred to as One on One, and alternatively as One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird, or Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One. Featuring Julius Erving and Larry Bird going head to head in a one-on-one match-up, it was one of Electronic Arts' early successes.

The game would pave the way for a 1988 release titled Jordan vs Bird: One on One. This time, Larry Bird was pitted against Dr. J's heir apparent, Michael Jordan. Not only did it build on the success of its predecessor by featuring more modes of play, it also enjoyed a wider release, coming out on the PC, Nintendo Entertainment System, SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive, Commodore 64, and Game Boy. We'll be focusing on the PC version for MS-DOS today, so let's take a look back...way back...

March 28th, 2018: NBA Live 2003’s Settings Myth

As I noted in my retrospective of NBA Live 2003, while the game was a landmark title in terms of introducing right stick dribbling controls, it came up short as far as the level of realism was concerned. Needless to say, despite our disappointment with that aspect of the gameplay, we did our best as a community to find ways of enhancing the experience. The most common was making mass tweaks to the ratings in order to alter the gameplay, but this had undesirable side effects in Franchise mode, especially when it came time for the game to generate a new class of fictional rookies.

Not long after NBA Live 2003’s release, a claim was made that a bug in the game’s settings was responsible for the lack of realism in the gameplay. This naturally led to a lot of excitement, with gamers enthusiastically trying out the suggested workaround, hoping that it would lead to a more desirable sim-oriented experience. Although the suggestion was quickly proven to be a myth, that didn’t stop gamers from insisting otherwise. It’s an interesting situation to reflect upon after all these years, so let’s take a look back…way back…

The EA Sports NCAA 2003 PS2 game had realism sliders. I remember reading a post here enquiring about the missing sliders the poster was sure the game had. He was probably thinking of the NCAA one.

And fortunately, they were added the following year in NBA Live 2004.