More outdated player portraits on ESPN NBA 2K5

[boxMAN29]

Man, ESPN NBA 2K5 has a TON of outdated player portraits when the game was released, this shows that Visual Concepts was very inconsistent with updated player portraits then, unlike EA at the time, this lead to players who participated in NBA Media Day 2003 having wrong team uniforms than the team they played for during the 2003-04 season, especially if the player was still on the team they played for the previous season, outdated hairstyles, etc. figured I should share these.

I already covered Jim Jackson's, which was his NBA Media Day 2000 portrait when the host of the Jim Jackson Show was still on the Atlanta Hawks when he had studio pics on NBA Media Day 2003 on the Houston Rockets where he's frowning in all of them, but this will be about others I have noticed.

I have personally never played an NBA video game with this many outdated player portraits until I played 2K5, Live 06 has outdated player portraits too but not as much as 2K5.

All but one have updated portraits in NBA Live 2005.

This will be a long post btw.

All are from either NBA Media Day 2002 or NBA Media Day 2001 and the full pictures are available to view on GettyImages (Except Radoslav Nesterovic's)

Take note of the uniforms in the portraits (Some you have to look very closely)

List:
1. Ira Newble (Media Day 2002, when he was still on the Atlanta Hawks)


2. Andre Miller (Media Day 2002, when he was on the Los Angeles Clippers, he doesn't have the 'fro)


3. Anthony Johnson (Media Day 2002, pic when he was gonna have a second run with the Cleveland Cavaliers)


4. Elden Campbell (Media Day 2002, when he was still on the New Orleans Hornets, now the Pelicans)


5. Antonio Daniels (Media Day 2002, when he was on the Portland Trail Blazers)


6. Radoslav Nesterovic (Unreleased NBA Media Day 2002 pic, when he was still on the Minnesota Timberwolves)


7. "The Mayor" Fred Hoiberg (Media Day 2002, when he was still on the Chicago Bulls)


8. Jeff Trepagnier (Media Day 2001, when he was on the Cleveland Cavaliers, he likes to call himself "cptrida" online and was playing in Italy when this game was released)


9. Iakovos "Jake" Tsakalidis (Media Day 2002, when he was still on the Phoenix Suns, sadly, NBA Live 2005 also uses this as his portrait)


10. Raja Bell (Media Day 2002, when he was on the Dallas Mavericks, very underrated during the 2000's)


11. Earl Boykins (Media Day 2001 when he was on the Los Angeles Clippers, his smile always reminded me of Tim Curry lol)


12. Brad Miller (Media Day 2002, when he was on the Indiana Pacers, must look very closely to see the uniform)


13. Darvin Ham (Media Day 2002, when he was on the Atlanta Hawks, the Hawks uniform is clearly seen, making this super obvious)


These are not all of them that are in the game, just wanted to share these ones.

Despite the game having massively outdated player portraits, this only affects the GUI and is still my favorite 2K

[Andrew]

It's certainly strange, as I'm sure updated assets would've been readily available to them, just as they were EA. It reminds me a little of NBA Live 96 PC, which was still recycling some headshots from Media Day 1993.

[boxMAN29]

It's certainly strange, as I'm sure updated assets would've been readily available to them, just as they were EA. It reminds me a little of NBA Live 96 PC, which was still recycling some headshots from Media Day 1993.

Yeah, this is probably the one NBA game I played that has a TON of outdated player portraits for the time the game has released, Funny thing is: The game's copyright screen has a disclaimer saying "All NBA photos and video used are from the 2003-04 NBA season.", it turns out that is untrue, as you see numerous player portraits from between the 2000-01 and 2002-03 seasons in the game.

[boxMAN29]

Here's the game's copyright screen with the disclaimer that turned out to be untrue, you know, thanks to PCSX2's Texture dumping/Replacement feature, I bet I could update these portraits with that using actual NBA Media Day 2003 photos. I'm considering doing that but haven't fully decided, stay tuned!

[Andrew]

That disclaimer hasn't been entirely accurate in a few games, for sure! I suppose it's basically to say that some photos and videos may be outdated relative to the season it's set in, but yeah, it's more a case of "last year at the latest" rather than "everything's been updated as of last year", as it would imply.