Running NBA Live 98 and 99 on modern PCs

Hey guys,

I've stumbled upon these two guides on running Live 98 and 99 on modern PCs when this guy named Matt posted his guide on running NHL 2000 on modern PC at an NHL forum.

http://classicgamefixes.wix.com/home#!nba-live-98/wqe99

http://classicgamefixes.wix.com/home#!nba-live-99/c1smk

It is a bit technical and does require a bit of tinkering. Reason for this is the setup programs for the games are 16-bit and can't be installed the conventional way.

Keep in mind that you still need the original CD to play as all this guide does is workaround the install process.

Credits to Matt of Classic PC Game Fixes for this guide.

Edit: Matt also has fixes for other games available if interested.

Last edited by formx on Tue Mar 01, 2016 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Live 99 Screens

Excellent! Good looking out. I've been using VMWare, but I'll have to give this a shot. It'll probably be a bit more convenient, especially in terms of grabbing screenshots and video.

Hi guys, this is my little site -- just wanted to thank formx for the shoutout here.

If anyone uses this to get Live '98 working, please tell me how the sound is. I've got some crackling/popping on my Windows 10 machine. Not horrible horrible, but it's there.

Good job on the workarounds, Matt! Nice to see you around here, too.

Got a chance to test it out for myself, and all working fine. Once again, good job! I'm also getting a bit of crackling sound in NBA Live 98 (Windows 7), but like you said, it's not completely unbearable or anything. The only other issue I've noticed is that the EA Sports and intro montage videos don't play properly, but that's not really a concern.

NBA Live 99 seems to be working perfectly. All we need now are some workarounds for NBA Live 2000 and NBA Live 2001!

Thanks, Andrew. Happy to give back a teensy tiny bit - I know I've downloaded a file or ten off of you guys over the years.

I still have a copy of Live 2001 and I know that won't play on Windows 10 because of the SafeDisc deal. I found a....thing that will make it launch, but it's pointless because the graphics are messed up.

At some point in the future it might be playable with the dgvoodoo DirectX wrapper.

Ah, of course. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, so I can re-enable that process to play the old games, but you're out of luck with Windows 10. I might have a shot at making workarounds myself then, since I do have both games installed in Windows XP under WMWare.

Copied NBA Live 2000 across from VMWare, and it works fine, though without entering any registry info and/or using nGlide, it's not using hardware acceleration. It's still playable though, something to work with.

I copied NBA Live 2001 across and after modifying your NBA Live 99 registry key a little, I got the game to fire up. However, it locks up when trying to display team logos, and although the faces are displayed properly in the menus, the in-game graphics are not rendered properly and it stops responding to the controller. Might mess around with it a little more, though.

Why can not download the file.
http://classicgamefixes.wix.com/home#!nba-live-99/c1smk
Download install.dat (for CD Drive Letter G) Please sign
thanks

Sorry about that mariulis, try it now.

matt1994 THANK everything is OK
I'll try to install.

Problem

NBA live 99

can not download the file.
Download the Registry Key for CD Drive G
Thanks

Grrrrrrr, my apologies mariulis. Try it now.

I added the G files last and forgot to "share" them so they could be downloaded. Thanks for telling me.

Thank corrected okay

I tried the NBA live 99 on Win 8.1.
GAME works. Continue composing.
THANKS

Damn, I loved Live 98 so much. I wish there was an easier way for me to play it.

This method is pretty much as easy as it gets. Copy the files manually, chuck an install.dat file in the folder, run nbawin.exe. Create a shortcut for added convenience, copy the icon file across from the disc to make sure it looks nice.

Incidentally, I'd forgotten to add 3DFX to the shortcut for NBA Live 98. Obviously looking a lot better now, and the intro videos are working.

Works great games NBA live 98, NBA live 99. Only NBA live 98 game hangs.?
I did everything well, installing NBA live 98. My windows 8.1.
Thanks

Couldn't help myself. Took a minute to jog my memory on how to do this.

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

It begins!

Just wanted to leave a note about Live 2001 here - I mentioned upthread that it might work eventually with the dgVoodoo DirectX wrapper, and there is in fact a new version of it out that has made 2001 playable for me. Here are the steps for using it:

(1) Download dgVoodoo v2.51 from here ---- http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2.html

(2) Unzip the following 4 files from this zip to your NBA Live 2001 game folder

dgVoodooSetup.exe
DDraw.dll (located in the MS folder)
D3DImm.dll (same)
D3D8.dll (same)

(3) Navigate to your Live 2001 folder and run dgVoodooSetup. You have to add the Live 2001 folder as a "running instance." All that means is you have to click the little backslash button - I have it circled in red here. Once you do that, your Live 2001 folder path should appear. Click OK to exit the configurator -- make sure a file named 'dgvoodoo.conf' has appeared in your Live 2001 folder. If it has not, re-run dgVoodooSetup as an administrator.



(4) Run Live 2001. Go to Options/Details, and set "Texture Detail" to Medium or lower. Otherwise the court graphics will be glitched.



(5) Play! Hopefully luck shines on you and everything works. Here are a few screenies:

Awesome, it works! Thanks once again.

Now I just need to get my gamepad working with it, as NBA Live 2001 (and only NBA Live 2001) seems to be having some problems in that regard.

What type of controller is it, Andrew?

Logitech Dual Action, released around 2005. As I said, no issues in any other games (though DOSBox doesn't really like it no matter how many times I calibrate it, so I disabled joystick support in my DOSBox config) and it recognises it properly when I run NBA Live 2001 under VMWare. I have a feeling it might be a problem with a config/settings file from when I copied the installation over from VMWare, as the controller selection screen shows four gamepads (none of which it seems to be assigned to) and no keyboard option, when there should be the one gamepad and the keyboard selectable.

I have the same gamepad - well, a few of them.

Hadn't hooked one up with this before - just did a test and it does act a little strange on mine, too. My controller select shows 3 gamepads and the keyboard, when it should only be showing the one pad and the kb. Gives no indication of which controller is the "real" one. Tried the middle controller "player 2" with the "generic" configuration and that got it to respond.

Installing the game natively inside Windows would be worth a try. I was able to run the setup.exe on my Win 10 here.