Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five players that we’d generally overwrite when making rosters for NBA Live 95 PC.

When I chanced upon a copy of NBA Live 95 PC being sold at a local news agency of all places, I eagerly bought it. Our founders had already introduced me to modding NBA Live 96, so I was keen to tinker with NBA Live 95 as well. I’d soon find out that it wasn’t nearly as easy! Without an in-game create-a-player function, all new players had to overwrite original ones. This meant carefully choosing the right players and text strings to replace. If you were fixing up the rosters for 1995 – as was the natural inclination – there were five players in particular that you were likely to overwrite.

Now, just to be clear, not every single roster for NBA Live 95 PC overwrote these five players with the replacements I’m specifying. Depending on the season the roster was for and the personal choice of the modder making it, sometimes a different player would be used instead. However, when it came to 1995 season updates for NBA Live 95 PC, these are the players that were overwritten most frequently, as they tended to be the ideal candidates to become the missing players we wanted to add. Indeed, when it comes to the first two players, I tend to think of them more for their usefulness to modding than their real life careers! Without any further ado, let’s tip things off with…

1. Larry Krystkowiak, Chicago Bulls (Michael Jordan)

It may surprise you to learn that Larry Krystkowiak actually started 14 of the 19 games that he played for the Chicago Bulls during the 1995 season. Horace Grant’s departure left a big hole at power forward, and while Toni Kukoc did end up with the starting role a season before he became the league’s top Sixth Man, Krystkowiak had his chance early on in the year. Of course, in most 1995 rosters for NBA Live 95 PC, Krystkowiak ended up back in the starting lineup, albeit under a different name. With the return of Michael Jordan in March and no way to add new players to NBA Live 95 PC’s rosters except to overwrite them, Krystkowiak would become His Airness.

After all, he was the most logical choice. Krystkowiak didn’t play significant minutes after December 1994, with his final appearance coming on March 30th, 1995. With Corie Blount, Jud Buechler, and Pete Myers all on the Playoff roster, overwriting Krysto allowed for an accurate lineup. There was the slight issue of his portrait depicting a white player wearing an Orlando Magic jersey; something that could be remedied, though it caused issues with stat tracking in Season mode. An inaccuracy like that was far preferable to not adding MJ to the game, so Krystkowiak’s biggest contribution to the 1995 Bulls was being a roster slot for the GOAT in NBA Live 95!

2. Trevor Ruffin, Phoenix Suns (Charles Barkley)

While it wasn’t always possible to find players in NBA Live 95 PC whose portraits bore a resemblance to the player you wanted to add to the rosters – as evident from Larry Krystkowiak becoming Michael Jordan – it was always something you kept in mind. Indeed, it’s a philosophy that I tried to adhere to with my later season rosters for NBA Live 96 PC as well. To that end, while rookie Trevor Ruffin was hardly a dead ringer for Charles Barkley, his portrait was still a decent fit. Ruffin’s skin tone is fairly accurate, he’s got a shaved head and a visible moustache, and he’s wearing a Phoenix Suns jersey. At a very quick glance at least, it’s a better match than Krysto and MJ!

Furthermore, he’s one of the more expendable players on the Suns’ roster. Granted, he was still active at the end of the season and did play in the Playoffs, but look at his game log: it was all garbage time! Again, given the limitations of 12-man rosters and a need to overwrite existing players to add new ones, along with his status as a deep bench player, it was a preferable inaccuracy. Besides, with Danny Manning out for the postseason and Richard Dumas absent from NBA Live 95, complete accuracy would’ve meant losing a more important player. If you preferred you could overwrite Antonio Lang with Sir Charles, but Trevor Ruffin was definitely a popular choice.

3. Cedric Ceballos, West All-Stars (Charles Barkley)

Chuck’s absence from NBA Live 95 wasn’t just felt on the Phoenix Suns, but also the West All-Stars. Barkley played his eighth All-Star Game in 1995 – his ninth selection overall – and did so in front of the hometown crowd in Phoenix. As such, if you’re making an accurate 1995 season roster for NBA Live 95 PC, you’ll need to overwrite someone and get him into the West’s lineup! While there was actually a Roster Player available on the West All-Stars in NBA Live 95, they’re best used for someone else; more on that later. The obvious choice of player to overwrite on the West is Chuck’s former teammate Cedric Ceballos, who had made his first and only All-Star team.

That may sound unfair, but the catch here is that Ceballos – who had been traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in the offseason – ended up missing the 1995 All-Star Game due to injury. If for whatever reason you wanted to preserve the original lineups as selected, you could alternatively overwrite his replacement, Dikembe Mutombo. It would be an unusual move in a roster that’s meant to be accurate though, since Deke played in that game along with Charles Barkley. Since there are no inactive rosters in the game to allow users the choice, the most sensible move is to overwrite Ceballos. His portrait isn’t a match at all, but again, that’s less important than roster accuracy.

4. Moses Malone, San Antonio Spurs (David Robinson)

The late Moses Malone ending his career with the San Antonio Spurs is one of those interesting trivia facts that are handily preserved on the virtual hardwood. His prime was far behind him in 1995, but with David Robinson playing 38 mpg, Moses wasn’t being called upon to play a major role; at least in real life. In NBA Live 95 PC, he’s the starting centre for the Spurs, while The Admiral is nowhere to be found. This is because Robinson was the cover player of NBA Action ’95, or to use its full title, NBA Action ’95 Starring David Robinson. This rendered him exclusive to Double Diamond Sports’ game, and thus a missing player to add to NBA Live 95’s rosters.

As with Larry Krystkowiak and Trevor Ruffin, there are a couple of other players you could potentially overwrite with David Robinson, rather than Moses Malone. He’s the optimal candidate however, as the former MVP and NBA Champion played his final game on December 27th, 1994. Therefore, he doesn’t need to be on the Spurs’ 12-man roster in a 1995 end-of-season update, which was the most basic mod to create for NBA Live 95 PC. Incidentally, Moses hit his only career three-pointer in his final game, on a buzzer beater from behind his own free throw line! That cool moment aside, in NBA Live 95 PC, it made sense to overwrite him with David Robinson.

5. All-Star Center, West All-Stars (David Robinson)

Like Charles Barkley, David Robinson was named an All-Star in 1995, representing the West. While his removal from the game left Moses Malone to start in the middle for the San Antonio Spurs, The Admiral did have a stand-in on the West All-Stars squad. Indeed, All-Star Center is the only Roster Player in NBA Live 95 PC, and the only player to use the “No Portrait Available” portrait by default. As-is, he isn’t a perfect replacement for Robinson: he’s 6’11” and 225 lbs rather than 7’1″ and 235 lbs (or possibly 250 lbs, depending on the listing), and his placeholder name sticks out like a sore thumb. Overwrite him though, and he’s David Robinson without a portrait!

There’s another handy aspect of having All-Star Center on the West in place of The Admiral. In NBA Live 95 PC, players who didn’t play in the 1994 season – and thus don’t have a baseline for simulated stats in Season mode – instead have a value that points to hidden dummy stats to ensure realistic results. We can edit those stats to manipulate those results, though we have to be careful that they’re not being used by a player who shouldn’t put up those numbers! Thanks to All-Star Center’s “fake stats” – as they’re labelled in Brien’s editor – the version of David Robinson that overwrites Moses Malone on the Spurs’ roster can produce realistic numbers in simulated games.

Veteran basketball gamers, do you remember seeing these five players overwritten in rosters for NBA Live 95 PC? If you’ve ever tinkered with NBA Live 95 PC yourself, were they the players that you chose to overwrite, and who else did you replace? Let me know in the comments, and as always, feel free to take the discussion to the NLSC Forum! That’s all for this week, so thanks for checking in, have a great weekend, and please join me again next Friday for another Five.

The post The Friday Five: 5 Players We’d Overwrite in NBA Live 95 Rosters appeared first on NLSC.