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 reasons to mod old games.

I remember a conversation with a long-time member of the community many years ago, when we were reflecting on the earliest NBA Live games fading into obscurity. This was around the turn of the millennium, and modding for titles earlier than NBA Live 99 was definitely slowing down and going out of vogue. With that being said, I did release a 2001 season update for NBA Live 96 PC, which at the time was meant to be a farewell to an old favourite. Little did either of us know that retro gaming would one day see a number of old releases find their way back into people’s rotations!

Granted, it’s not for everyone, but I’ll always advocate for retro gaming, basketball or otherwise. Moreover, I’ll also encourage anyone to mod old games if they’re inclined to do so. I can understand if some gamers balk at that idea. While there are people that turn their nose up at the suggestion of playing anything other than the latest release, they can at least see the nostalgic appeal of quickly throwing on a classic game. A modding project can take a lot of time and effort though, and mods for an old title may not seem worth all that trouble. I understand that point of view, but I strongly disagree! In that spirit, here are five reasons why it’s a great idea to mod old games.

1. Nostalgia (To Mod & To Play)

I’m likely keener than most to revisit or stick with old favourites, but there’s definitely an enthusiastic retro basketball gaming scene. It’s been great to see people embrace a love of the classics without shame, and push back on the snarky comments that ask “why are you still playing that?” The simple answer of course is that we find it fun, and despite the smug psychobabble that’s tossed our way, it doesn’t have to be an unhealthy obsession or a case of arrested development. There have been many great basketball video games throughout the years, and revisiting favourites we still enjoy playing is no different to watching a timeless film, or listening to a classic album.

For those who of us who not only grew up with basketball video games but also downloading and making mods for them, that’s also part of our nostalgia. Just as memories of NBA Live 96 PC come flooding back whenever I fire it up and I’m greeted by its fantastic intro, opening the roster editor that our founders created takes me back to my first foray into modding. As such, as it’s a double dose of nostalgia whenever I decide to tinker with an old favourite that I used to mod. Furthermore, it sets up fun scenarios for future retro gaming sessions! If you’re a modder that enjoys some retro basketball gaming, I wholeheartedly endorse working on the classics.

2. Knowledge and Tools

From time to time, someone will ask why a particular old favourite didn’t ever see a huge multi-season roster mod, or some other huge project that was a hit for a newer title. There are a few reasons why that’s sometimes the case, with one being that when the game was new and the modding community was all over it, we didn’t have all of the tools or knowledge to create projects of that scope. This is particularly true of the early PC releases of NBA 2K. There are a couple of outstanding retro rosters for NBA 2K10 and NBA 2K11, but nothing compared to what was done for NBA 2K12, NBA 2K13, and NBA 2K14, since we had all of the necessary tools for them much earlier.

However, fortunately that doesn’t have to be the end of the story! Now that we have the necessary tools, there’s value in going back to mod old games that we still want to play, and can now do amazing things with. We don’t just have to mod the old games that missed out back in the day, either. With all the resources we have for old NBA Live games on PC, there are so many mod ideas that can breathe new life into them. Compare this to recent releases where we don’t have all of those tools, or the tools are broken by patches or interfered with by the anti-cheat measures, or the games are just harder to mod in general, and there’s incentive to consider tinkering with older titles.

3. Reaction to New Games

Contrary to what some people insist, new is not always better. It’s tough to say that without sounding old, grumpy, and stuck in the past, but that’s always been the case! NBA Live 2001 wasn’t better than NBA Live 2000. NBA Elite 11 was not set to be an upgrade over NBA Live 10. NBA 2K18 was a disappointing follow-up to NBA 2K17. Does anyone fondly remember Windows 8/8.1? You get the idea. The point is that not everyone enjoys the latest game, and while NBA 2K25 has been better-received than some of its recent predecessors – especially on PC, which finally received a New Gen port – not everyone loves it. Some people prefer to stick to an old or recent favourite.

To that point, if you’re keen to mod old games, you can still find an audience for your public releases. It may well be a smaller, more niche group than the one that’s seeking mods for the latest game, and some old games are more popular than others, but at the end of the day, you should mod the game that you most enjoy. Since modding should never be about fame or clout anyway, as long as you’re keen and feel that it’s time well-spent, there’s no harm in being niche. In fact, while we obviously encourage public releases, if you just want to mod old games with some personal projects for your own enjoyment, go right ahead! Play and mod what you enjoy, be it new or old.

4. Some Old Games Really Do Hold Up

It annoys me when praise for the past is dismissed out of hand as mere nostalgia. Yes, there can be myopia when nostalgia is involved, but there are great things in every era that hold their own against their predecessors and successors. To that end, just as there are films, TV shows, books, and other forms of art and entertainment that are timeless classics, there are video games that hold up years and even decades later. Sure, they may show their age in various ways; at the very least aesthetically, depending on their age and the technological advancements in the years since. As far as being fun on the virtual hardwood though, the gameplay experience still holds up as fun and satisfying.

Although I’ll once again advocate that you mod any old basketball games that you still enjoy, there are community favourites that are definitely worth keeping alive for retro gamers. There’s a reason that people are still playing games like NBA 2K13 and NBA 2K14, and want to see new mods for them. It’s not because they’re stuck in the past. Some games are milestone releases that remain fun, predate the greedy nonsense of newer titles, and can be updated for the modern day to give us the best of both worlds. People still mod Tecmo Super Bowl, the original Doom games, and other favourites from decades ago. There should be no stigma against doing the same for hoops titles.

5. Unfinished Business

Ultimately, we mod old basketball games for the same reasons we play them. To that end, a factor that motivates us to revisit old favourites is unfinished business: a mode we never completed, a season still in progress, content we never unlocked, and so on. We can have unfinished business with modding as well, from projects that we never quite completed or would’ve liked to have updated, to ideas we wish we explored but never got the chance to. Whether it’s retro gaming or retro modding, that unfinished business needn’t remain a What If, so by all means scratch that itch and find closure! As I said, even if a mod is only for your own personal use, it’s still worth finishing.

While I have some new ideas for old games that I’d like to mod, and hope to make at least a few of them a reality in 2025, I’m eager to go back and polish up some of my old releases as well. I’m proud of the work I’ve done, but I know that some of my old rosters could’ve been better. In some cases I did the best I could with the resources I had at the time, but with that in mind, I can go back and fix them now. One of the advantages here of course is that I’m not starting from scratch, so a lot of the tedious work has already been done. Even when it comes to new ideas I never got around to back in the day however, the prospect of finally giving them a shot is motivating!

Do you have any inclination to mod old games? If you’re a retro gamer, what mods would you like to see, and which games are you most interested in? Have your say 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 Reasons to Mod Old Games appeared first on NLSC.