With GM Mode, EA Sports had experimented with altering the traditional Season experience. The expanded Season mode in NBA Live 99, with its multiseason play and dynamic features, laid the foundation for an even deeper mode. Come NBA Live 2000, basketball gamers wouldn't have to wait any longer for a multiseason mode that replicated even more aspects of the real NBA season, including free agency and the rookie draft. Needless to say, it isn't as deep as its successors, but looking back, it's still impressive to see just how much EA were able to accomplish with that first iteration of Franchise Mode.
From NBA Live 2000 through NBA Live 2003, Franchise Mode was definitely the centrepiece of NBA Live's game modes, and the most popular. It was an extremely important development in basketball gaming, so let's take a look back...way back...
Franchise Mode was one of the best additions in the NBA Live series, delivering a multiseason experience that gamers had been wanting for some time. By NBA Live 2003 however, it was unfortunately getting stale. Despite a few noteworthy new features and AI enhancements, the experience hadn't become much deeper over the course of four years. Franchise gamers still enjoyed the mode and it remained popular, but there was also a certain amount of frustration, as we wanted to see more innovation. Fortunately, by the time NBA Live 2004 rolled around, EA Sports were ready to deliver.
The introduction of Dynasty Mode in NBA Live 2004 was part of an effort to rebrand Franchise Mode throughout all EA Sports titles, but thankfully, it turned out to be much more than a name change. It marked the introduction of a deeper mode that continued to evolve through the years, until it too fell on some rough times. Let's take a look back...way back...
While NBA Live was offering multiseason management modes in the form of Franchise and Dynasty, NBA 2K was also providing basketball gamers with its own take on the franchise experience. The franchise modes in both games have had their ups and downs, but the 2K series has done a very commendable job from year to year, in many cases implementing features that have yet to be seen in EA's game. For those of us who were mostly playing NBA Live back in the day, we looked on in envy as 2K implemented several of those much-desired features in its modes.
As of now, NBA 2K has featured the deepest and most advanced franchise modes in basketball gaming. For many years, that franchise experience went by the name of The Association, and it admirably paved the way for MyLEAGUE and MyGM in recent games. Let's take a look back...way back...
There are a lot of reasons why it's fun to go back and play an old basketball video game. Even though our old favourites tend to be far surpassed by new titles, we can usually still find nostalgic enjoyment in the familiarity of the gameplay. It can be satisfying to dust off an old save file, and pick it up again for a while. Sometimes, it's interesting to just go through the rosters and be reminded of when a certain player was playing for a particular team. If you do that in NBA Live 2003 PC, you'll be reminded of when Michael Redd played for the Dallas Mavericks. Only, that never actually happened. Yet there he is, on the bench for the 2003 Mavs.
Did EA Sports mess up here? Was someone paying too much attention to those infamous Courtside Comedy cutscenes, and not enough to the default roster as it was being finalised? In truth, there's no error here; not at the time of the roster's creation, at any rate. Confused? Let's take a look back...way back...
Even though it's definitely not the pinnacle of the series, NBA Live 2002 is a game that I find myself thinking about and returning to every now and again. As I've mentioned before, it's a game that I'm oddly nostalgic for, in large part because of a memorable Sacramento Kings Franchise that I finally gained closure on years later. Of course, I also had a less successful Franchise experience with the Utah Jazz, in which things got a little too wacky. As I previously remarked, if I wanted to shake things up and do something a little unusual, it might've been more fun to try to reconstruct Michael Jordan's championship-winning Chicago Bulls.
It's not too late to explore that idea, though. Just as I recreated my Kings Franchise to finish it off all these years later, I thought that it'd be fun to attempt to reconstruct the core of the Jordan-led Bulls teams. Not all of the key players from those squads are still active in NBA Live 2002, but more than a couple are available to acquire. Can it be done? Let's take a look back...way back...
There's a distinct satisfaction that comes with mastering advanced moves in basketball video games. Whether it's pulling off the Dream Shake, or performing a beautiful combination of dribbling moves that leaves a defender stumbling, developing superior skills on the sticks is supremely satisfying. Sometimes, however, there's that one move that you're just never able to perform. You've seen it in trailers and other people's gameplay footage, but for whatever reason, you just can't perform the move yourself. Alternatively, it may be a contextual animation that very rarely triggers, even when you appear to do everything correctly.
For me, my white whale of basketball gaming is a post move that can be seen in the introduction video of NBA Live 2003. Try as I might, I've never been able to perform it in all the years that I've had the game (which is to say, since late 2002). What is this elusive post move? Let's take a look back...way back...
When you talk about titles that older basketball gamers are nostalgic for, NBA Jam will invariably be one of the most popular games to come up. It basically set the standard for what came to be known as arcade basketball games, with its over-the-top, high-flying dunks, relaxed approach to the rules of the sport, and simple gameplay. The original NBA Jam was a hit in arcades and with its home ports, appealing to basketball enthusiasts and more casual fans alike. It's since spawned sequels, spiritual successors, and more than a couple of imitators with varying degrees of quality.
The original game is considered a classic and for good reason, but personally, I've always preferred its sequel, NBA Jam Tournament Edition. It's a game I looked back at in the second ever Wayback Wednesday feature, around this time two years ago. Back then, I provided a few off-the-cuff thoughts on the game over some footage I'd been sitting on for a few years. I enjoyed doing that and it was a fun way to start getting into creating some video content, but I've always wanted to revisit NBA Jam Tournament Edition with a more fleshed out retrospective. That's what I'm doing today, so let's take a look back...way back...
While I still consider the PC version of NBA Live 06 to be the last truly well-rounded instalment in the NBA Live series, NBA Live 10 has to be given its due. It holds up quite well, and EA Sports definitely should've continued to build on it rather than changing directions with NBA Elite 11. Had EA not elected to take that risk, the series might be in much better shape, and the landscape of basketball gaming would likely have been very different these past seven years. In addition to its mechanics and overall gameplay being very solid, NBA Live 10 also featured some innovative modes and concepts, including the one we're looking at today: Dynamic Season.
Dynamic Season was an effective way of implementing an idea that basketball gamers had wanted to see for some time, and it's something that EA Sports should definitely consider bringing back in future NBA Live games. Let's take a look back...way back...
[Q] wrote:The problem is that once to play too far ahead and enough time has passed isn't there a big difference between your game and real life? Especially in the standings and playoff seeding
The rivalry between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics stretches back decades in NBA lore. It seems only fitting that as the latest chapter of their epic saga was drawing to a close in the late 1980s, Electronic Arts decided to name their new five-on-five basketball game after the rivalry that had produced so many memorable moments. A forerunner to the NBA Live series, Lakers vs Celtics and the NBA Playoffs was EA's first real effort to make a sim-oriented NBA title. Over the years, it's rightfully come to be considered a classic, introducing many features that have since become staples of basketball gaming. Let's take a look back...way back...
Instant replay is nothing new in sports video games. Bulls vs Lakers, the sequel to Lakers vs Celtics, introduced the feature to EA's original basketball series. Since then it's become a staple of the genre, one that we've used to re-watch our finest (or most frustrating) moments on the virtual hardwood. Although subsequent games have introduced welcome features such as multiple camera angles, the ability to manually trigger cinematic replays, and even video exporting functionality, not many games have had extensive replay editing tools. EA's Michael Jordan in Flight was an early title that did, but since then, it's generally been a rarity.
When the ability to save replays returned in NBA Live 09, EA Sports took things a step further and included replay editing tools, as well as sharing functionality. With some of the other improvements in NBA Live 09, such as the implementation of Dynamic DNA, it's a feature that is arguably somewhat overlooked. It's well worth revisiting however, so let's take a look back...way back...
If you've been around the community for a long time or perhaps read some of my previous articles, you may know that I used to run a site called the NBA Live Domain before I took over the NLSC in August of 2001. It started out as a place for me to host my own patches for NBA Live, but after a while, I felt like branching out with feature articles and the like. I experimented with the odd opinion piece and even created a subsite dedicated to covering the real NBA, but the columns that stuck were the Midweek Patch Report, and Webmaster News.
Both were regular weekly columns that became fixtures of the NBA Live Domain until I closed the site in December 2001, in order to properly focus on updating and developing content for the NLSC. They were instrumental in my development as a content creator though, so join me today as I take a look back...way back...
When Kobe Bryant played his final NBA game, I dedicated a Wayback Wednesday feature to his history in basketball video games. With his jersey retirement ceremony taking place this week, it seems only fitting that I look at one of those titles in more detail. Released for the Nintendo 64 in 1998, Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside was the first of three Nintendo-exclusive games endorsed by the Black Mamba, and one of two titles that featured the rising star on the cover that season. I've mentioned it in several articles to date, so an in-depth retrospective is somewhat overdue.
An article didn't feel like quite enough to mark the occasion, and it's long been my intention to get into the habit of creating more video content for my weekly features. With that in mind, I've put together a video retrospective of Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside, which you can watch below, or check out here over on our YouTube channel. Without any further ado, let's take a look back...way back...
Sony's NBA series was one of the last major competitors to the two big brands in sim-oriented basketball games, NBA Live and NBA 2K. The games are part of a lineage that includes the NBA ShootOut series, known as Total NBA in PAL regions. Being developed by divisions of Sony Computer Entertainment, the games were naturally exclusive to the PlayStation consoles, with the exception of NBA ShootOut 2000 which saw the series' lone PC release. Generally speaking, the games did receive some positive reviews, but over the years they were unable to best NBA Live or NBA 2K in terms of sales or overall quality.
Nevertheless, the NBA series did boast some innovative features, some of which have since been adopted by NBA Live and NBA 2K in some form. A prime example is the mode known as The Life, a narrative-driven experience that predates the use of stories in MyCAREER by several years. The mode and the story changed from year to year, but in this article I'm primarily focusing on the PlayStation 2 version of NBA 08, as it's the game I have in my collection. Let's take a look back...way back...
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