Wayback Wednesday: NBA Live 95 SNES vs. Genesis
This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m comparing the SNES and Genesis versions of NBA Live 95.
Part of me – specifically, my most nostalgic inner child – desperately wants to pretend that the console war between Nintendo and Sega in the 90s wasn’t as petty as the dust-ups over PlayStation and Xbox over the past two decades. I’d like to say that platform warfare in the 90s was all in good fun whereas all the bickering over the 21st century consoles is Serious Business, but that’d be a lie. Sega’s marketing infamously boasted that “Genesis does what Nintendon’t“, while Nintendo hyped up “playing with power” and even welcomed fan art of Mario humiliating Sonic in its official magazines!
Putting aside my own inherent bias as a Nintendo kid and accepting that it may sound wishy-washy, from the perspective of gamers, I think we all benefitted and had a great time regardless of which big corporation we flew the flag for. Both the Genesis and Super Nintendo have classics in their libraries that are still fun to play to this day. It’s also interesting to compare and contrast the different versions of games that appeared on both consoles (and sometimes, they were completely different games!). The SNES and Genesis version of NBA Live 95 are largely the same, but there are some key differences between these 16-bit releases. Let’s take a look back…way back…
First of all, although the title may suggest it, this isn’t one of my “Versus” articles where I compare games in five categories and pick an overall winner. When it comes down to it, the SNES and Genesis version of NBA Live 95 are extremely similar, and neither stands out as the superior release; that nod goes to the PC version! Instead, I’m focusing on comparing content and presentation, as well as some minor differences in gameplay due to the design of each console. Again, I was a Nintendo kid in the 90s, so I didn’t play the Genesis version of NBA Live 95 until many years later. I always assumed it was identical to the SNES release, so it was fun to discover that it wasn’t!
With that being said, I must begin this comparison with a correction to some previous articles where I’ve collectively referred to the SNES and Genesis versions of NBA Live 95 as the “16-bit version” of the game. They are indeed both 16-bit of course, but in lumping them together like that, I erroneously insinuated that their rosters were identical. That isn’t the case! The SNES version of NBA Live 95 is basically still set in 1994 with final rosters from that campaign, but the Genesis version features a few updates for the 1995 season, from the rosters to the schedule. However, it’s far from a comprehensive update, to the point where it probably should’ve kept the 1994 rosters.
Don’t get me wrong. When “95” is in the title, it’s nice to see actual 1995 season rosters, such as Horace Grant joining Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway in Orlando, Dominique Wilkins in his often-forgotten Celtics stint, Toni Kukoc starting in Chicago, and so on. To that last point, bench players in the SNES version who are now starters in the Genesis release have been given portraits accordingly. As someone who was playing NBA Live 95 on SNES back in the day, those brand new headshots are definitely a novelty! Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long to notice that the Genesis version falls well short of featuring a complete and proper roster update for 1995.
Finding an exact release date for any version of NBA Live 95 is tough, and there are conflicting sources. As noted over on The Cutting Room Floor however, there’s some helpful data buried in the ROMs. The SNES version includes a reference to July 4th 1994, while the Genesis version lists August 23rd 1994 as the date it was compiled (it also reveals that the game was originally going to be called NBA Showdown 95!). These dates certainly make sense for releases that feature final 1994 season and updated 1994 offseason rosters respectively, but can we pinpoint the cut-off date for the Genesis version? Thanks to the transactions list on Basketball Reference, we can!
Danny Manning is still on the Atlanta Hawks in NBA Live 95 for Genesis, which means the rosters were finalised before he signed with Phoenix on September 3rd. That lines up with the compilation date in the ROM, but how close to August 23rd was the cut-off? John Paxson retired on the 22nd, but is still on the Bulls, pointing towards the rosters being locked earlier than that. The last move accounted for appears to be Horace Grant’s signing with the Magic, which occurred on August 14th. I was initially confused as Basketball Reference lists it as September 19th – weeks after Manning joined the Suns – but Grant’s RealGM profile has the accurate date.
A mid-August roster cut-off date was clearly late enough to include some major offseason moves in the Genesis version of NBA Live 95, rather than being stuck with the final 1994 rosters of the SNES release. At the same time, it was much too early to account for all of the smaller signings that allow teams to fill out their rosters for the upcoming season, as well as some trades involving key rotation players. As a result, while every team fields a starting five comprised of real players, many benches in NBA Live 95 for Genesis are filled with Roster Players. Recent signees whose new uniform numbers were as yet unknown are also wearing placeholders in the 90s.
On top of that, the Class of 1994 rookies are still missing, and wouldn’t make their debut in NBA Live until the PC version of 95 was released. This means the Genesis version’s rosters are very much work-in-progress, being rather incomplete and filled with placeholders. That makes them far less polished than the SNES version, though once again, launching a game named after the 1995 season with final 1994 season rosters wasn’t ideal, either. In both cases though, I’d suggest that NBA Live 95 was carried by the inclusion of (almost all) the major names and well-known role players, as well as the much-improved gameplay compared to its immediate predecessors.
There is one gameplay mechanic that is superior in the SNES version of NBA Live 95, and that’s the ability to manually steal the ball. As in the PC version, steals are automated in the Genesis release when a defender is close enough to try for one. And, like the PC version, this design choice comes down to limitations in the controls. The standard Genesis controller featured three buttons, which were taken up by the turbo, shoot/jump, and pass/switch functions. Although the Genesis also had a six-button controller, not everyone had one – or enough for everyone when playing multiplayer – so automating steals solved the issue without forcing anyone to buy a new controller.
This wasn’t an issue with the Super Nintendo’s controller, so in that respect, it has the deepest controls out of all three versions of NBA Live 95. I also prefer the numerical ratings as opposed to the power bars of the Genesis version, though they’re functional and it makes for another interesting difference between the two. The different console hardware does result in slight differences in the graphics and audio, and while my nostalgia obviously favours the SNES, you can’t go wrong either way. It’s the same basic aesthetic from frontend to gameplay, and the same awesome soundtrack by composer Traz Damji. Most importantly, they both deliver the goods on the court.
Beyond the steal button (or lack thereof), gameplay is also more or less identical from moment to moment. The new dunks and layups, the faster pace and better freedom of movement, the deeper strategy…those enhancements are present in both of the 16-bit releases. In fact, the gameplay of the PC version is very similar to both – more so the Genesis due to the lack of a steal button – and I only consider it the superior release because CD-ROM technology and a hard drive allow it to do things Nintendon’t, and be what Genesisn’t. It may seem like I’m favouring NBA Live 95 SNES by pointing out some shortcomings on Genesis, but all things considered, they’re basically equal.
Touching on a few other noteworthy differences, the pre-game introductions are more detailed on Genesis. In that version, the starters are shown running out onto the court, in addition to their names and portraits being displayed. On Super Nintendo, only the names and portraits are shown. The Genesis version also recycles the music from the title screen while introducing the starting lineups, whereas the Super Nintendo version continues to loop the music that plays upon entering a game. The hidden golf game Easter egg is also exclusive to the Genesis version of NBA Live 95, as I found out when I tried in vain to get it to work in both the PC and Super Nintendo releases!
Once again, it wasn’t unusual for games back in the 90s – basketball or otherwise – to differ between platforms. At the very least, hardware differences resulted in versions that were superior or inferior to another platform, but other times, games released on different consoles bore little resemblance to each other beyond sharing a name. With basketball titles, developing for and porting to multiple platforms, and varying release dates, often resulted in differences in their rosters. What’s interesting about the 16-bit versions of NBA Live 95 is that they were developed and released around the same time, yet the Genesis version had the opportunity to receive a few updates for 1995.
It’s interesting that the SNES release wasn’t likewise delayed so that it could also be updated. Mind you, given how many placeholders the Genesis version ended up requiring, it arguably would’ve made more sense to stick with final 1994 season rosters for it, too. As I said, while the rosters in NBA Live 95 SNES don’t match the title, they’re far more polished since they’re not filled with Roster Players. I might have to reach out to some of the old developers to see if I can get an answer about that decision! In any event, while the SNES and Genesis versions of NBA Live 95 are largely the same, these key differences are interesting to reflect on thirty years later.
The post Wayback Wednesday: NBA Live 95 SNES vs. Genesis appeared first on NLSC.