Wayback Wednesday is a weekly feature that comes out - as the name would imply - every Wednesday. It's your midweek blast from the past, inckuding features and retrospectives on old basketball video games, old NLSC feature articles and editorials published as-is with added commentary, and other flashback content. This is a central discussion thread for the feature, in which I invite you to post any feedback along with your responses to each column's topic. A link to the latest article can always be found here in the first post, along with a link to the complete archive.
Latest Feature
Wayback Wednesday: Alternate Venues in NBA Live
Whenever I revisit old games, whether it’s to produce a Wayback Wednesday feature or just for my own enjoyment, it’s always a delight to discover – or recall – a detail that I didn’t expect to see. After all, it’s easy enough to forget how long certain features have been around, or the lengths that games went to for authenticity even before the deep modes we now have were feasible. They’re great examples of how those classic titles were the products of developers pushing technology to the limit, while trying to make the best possible basketball game for enthusiastic hoop heads.
As far as the early NBA Live games are concerned, those details demonstrate why EA Sports’ series became the brand leader in the genre, and that being an authentic sim was absolutely the goal. There are numerous examples of this, many of which I’ve discussed in previous retrospectives, but a cool one that flies under the radar is the use of alternate venues in the Season modes of early NBA Live games. It wasn’t necessary to reflect this aspect of the NBA season on the virtual hardwood – especially as it’s easy to miss – so it’s awesome that the games did. Let’s take a look back...way back...