Wayback Wednesday: Updating NBA Live 96 PC Before Modding

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 reminiscing about my experiences updating NBA Live 96 PC before discovering the NLSC, and subsequent entry into modding.

There are a few reasons why NBA Live 96 PC remains one of my all-time favourite basketball video games after almost three decades. It was the newest NBA Live as I was really getting into basketball, set in the memorable 1996 season. Along with the PC version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition, it’s one of the very first basketball video games that I owned; indeed, I still have my original copies of both titles! It was also the game that ultimately led me to discover the NLSC when I finally had access to the internet, and thus was my introduction to modding, then called patching.

Of course, even before I learned about the modding/patching scene, I’d developed an interest in updating NBA Live 96 PC. I’d suggest that whenever a basketball game has roster editing functionality, at some point most of us get the idea to update it. Whether it’s making moves from the current year, or updating it for a new season, there’s an interest in playing a game we like with the latest rosters. There was only so much that we could change in NBA Live 96 PC’s rosters within the game itself though, which is what made modding such an exciting discovery! Let’s take a look back…way back…

A later release than its 16-bit counterparts allowed NBA Live 96 PC to avoid being saddled with lockout-afflicted rosters. As such, it includes some major moves from the 1996 offseason like the Dennis Rodman for Will Perdue trade, and the Glen Rice for Alonzo Mourning swap that went down just as the season was tipping off. Still, as the 1996 season progressed, there were some major moves that made the rosters in NBA Live 96 PC further outdated, encouraging updates. This included Tim Hardaway being traded to Miami, Kenny Anderson going to the Hornets, Shawn Bradley and Derrick Coleman being swapped, and Christian Laettner ending up with the Hawks.

Several players also needed to be added, including Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and a returning Magic Johnson. Thankfully, the new Create-a-Player function meant that unlike NBA Live 95 PC, any new players could easily be added without having to overwrite existing ones. Because created players used the same set of head models, they also blended in nicely on the virtual hardwood. However, they lacked a portrait and bio data, so they definitely still stood out. I remember wishing that I could give MJ, Chuck, Magic, and other created players a date of birth and draft information, and not have them be listed as rookies. Since I couldn’t, I learned to ignore those details.

Mind you, in the process of updating NBA Live 96 PC with further moves from the 1996 season, there were inevitable inaccuracies with the original players too. When Shawn Bradley was traded to the Nets, he switched his number from 76 to 45. As we didn’t have the ability to edit original players, he was stuck with his old number. The same went for Kenny Anderson, who wore his #12 from college after being dealt to the Hornets. There were also a couple of teams with duplicate numbers, such as Chris Gatling and Jerome Kersey both wearing #25 for the Warriors, while Matt Geiger and George Zidek are both #52 in Charlotte. A handful of positions were also inaccurate.

Again, before I had a way of externally modding NBA Live 96 PC – indeed, before I even knew such a thing was possible – these were details I just had to ignore. Sure, I wished that I could change those numbers and positions, and give created players their proper bio data, but the mere fact that I didn’t have to be stuck with outdated rosters was already exciting. At the time, that was a new luxury that not all basketball games afforded. The only way to change the rosters in NBA Jam TE was to unlock the extra players by beating the tournament, while the Super Nintendo version of NBA Live 95 only allowed starters to be traded in Season mode. Thus, NBA Live 96 was a step up.

Towards the end of 1996, my attention turned towards updating NBA Live 96 for the upcoming 1997 season. Needless to say, this was more challenging. Several players changed teams during the 1996 offseason, as well as their jersey numbers. One of the biggest moves of the summer was Shaquille O’Neal signing with the Lakers, which saw him switch to #34 as #32 and #33 were obviously unavailable. It was no trouble putting Shaq in LA in NBA Live 96 PC, but again, updating his jersey number was out of the question. It was still novel to play with makeshift 1997 lineups in a game I enjoyed, but I was really beginning to wish that I could do more with the rosters.

Also, it was one thing to overlook a minor detail like an incorrect jersey number, but there was a much bigger problem: the rosters were getting full. There are 31 slots for created players in NBA Live 96 PC. Once I’d accounted for MJ, Chuck, and a handful of other returning veterans that needed to be created, there were a limited number of slots to add the Class of 1996. The Free Agent Pool was basically a 30th team with 14 player slots, which quickly filled up with retired players I wished I could either delete or overwrite. As my cousin Clinton and I worked on updating NBA Live 96 PC for the 1997 season, we found ourselves grappling with a roster that had reached its limit.

In fact, because I was young and hopeful, I even tried selecting those players in the Set Rosters screen and pressing the Delete key, to no effect (hey, worth a shot)! Youth and a lack of readily-available resources such as the ones we have now also meant that my early attempts at updating NBA Live 96 PC were not as well-crafted as my later rosters. A 1997 season preview from Beckett listed the Class of 1996 Draftees, but didn’t mention which of the later picks had actually signed. I ended up creating a few players that I definitely didn’t need to. Since I didn’t have photos of all of them to refer to, I had to make up a few faces, and yes, some of them were wildly inaccurate!

That’s just how it went before we had access to the internet, and all of the resources we now have. Magazines, trading cards, and whatever news and games we were able to catch, were the only ways to stay up to date on the league and research players. On top of that, I got the idea in my head that the team rankings in my 1997 roster needed to match the rankings as suggested in that preview from Beckett. Yes, I was far less experienced with roster editing then, not to mention far more trusting of sports media! In any case, it led to me fudging the ratings of created players as much as possible, in order to influence the team rankings so that they looked better; a definite rookie error.

It’s embarrassing now, especially when that obsession with “correct” team rankings carried over into some of my early public releases after I discovered the NLSC and the modding scene! However, I was twelve when I first started messing around with rosters for my own benefit, and around thirteen or so when I began releasing my work to the community. I was still figuring things out; still learning how to analyse hoops, and employ that knowledge in roster mods. Making sure that the team rankings were accurate seemed logical, and arguably, there’s some merit in it. In hindsight though, focusing on it too much definitely led to overcompensation in some of the ratings.

Not long after my family got online in August 1997, I was eagerly scouring the Web for content related to basketball and video games. I discovered a track editor for the original Need for Speed, and a hack that unlocked the Warrior car without beating all of the races. I finally got to browse NBA.com, as Jim Fagan had been advising me to do all season long on NBA Action! And yes, I discovered a site called the NBA Live Series Center, which provided editors, current roster updates, and other downloads for NBA Live 95, 96, and 97. It truly was mind-blowing to discover that there was an easy way to do so many things with NBA Live 96 PC’s rosters that I’d long dreamt of!

Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley no longer had to be listed as created, undrafted rookies with unknown dates of birth. Shaq could have his #34, and Mark Price could be #25 again (or #5 in a 1998 roster, as the case may be). Original players who had retired could be overwritten as needed. Previous season statistics could be updated, or added for created players and anyone else who didn’t have stats from 1995. My efforts before discovering the NLSC and its modding scene were admirable, but the editors allowed me to do so much more; even bypass height and weight limits! The rosters that other people had made also inspired me, providing excellent examples to follow.

Those rosters impressed upon me the importance of accuracy, and putting aside any personal bias (i.e. in 1998, MJ shouldn’t have a dunk rating of 99!). They taught me useful practices, such as trying to overwrite players with ones who at least somewhat resembled the old portrait (right down to the jersey they were wearing, if possible). I learned how to make additional changes with a hex editor, such as altering the 94/95 label for the previous season’s statistics to 96/97 in my 1998 roster. Once again, my early mods don’t represent my best work as I had more to learn and needed to mature in my thinking, but it truly was a joy to discover the NLSC and the modding scene.

Still, for me it all began with updating NBA Live 96 PC with only the customisation functions that the game provided. As I said, I have no doubt that basically everyone who’s ever played a basketball video game that allows roster editing has thought about updating it. I’m hardly a visionary here; especially when others were making all those wonderful modding tools! My point is that that’s how an interest in modding begins, with the desire to change something about a game you love playing. In a basketball title, that usually means updating and fixing the default rosters, though in time that interest may expand to retro season, collegiate, foreign league, and other such mods.

Indeed, after attending an NBL game here in Australia and taking home a programme that included roster listings for the entire league, my cousin and I dabbled with the idea of an NBL mod for NBA Live 96 PC! It didn’t get very far – it was a lot of work and we realised there’d be a ton of assets we couldn’t update – but that still inspired me to tackle bigger projects in future games, and look beyond current rosters. Moreover, it was an undeniable sign that I’d been bitten by the modding/patching bug. If I didn’t find so much satisfaction in tinkering with my favourite games and finding ways to keep them fresh and fun, I wouldn’t have remained so keen on the hobby for so long!

My early forays into modding are undoubtedly why I remain so fond of minimalist projects nowadays. I can enjoy creating a 2005 roster for NBA 2K6 for Xbox 360 that’s missing some players, and is also stuck with a few details that I can’t change, because of the fun I had doing as much as I possibly could with NBA Live 96 PC all those years ago. I’ve had a blast playing with makeshift classic teams in NBA Live 10, because I started out updating games where we couldn’t easily mod all the art assets. I don’t mind a missing portrait, or a placeholder face when necessary. It’s about the joy of creating new virtual hardwood experiences, and making the most of what we have.

Needless to say, I’m grateful that over the years, we’ve had the tools to create better roster mods, complete with custom art. As I said, discovering what was possible even way back in 1997 was mind-blowing, and it inspired an enthusiasm for modding that persists even today. To that point, those initial attempts at updating the rosters in NBA Live 96 PC, and my subsequent discovery of the modding scene that our founders pioneered, both solidified the game as a personal favourite, and added an extra layer of nostalgia for it almost thirty years later. I couldn’t have known that would happen when I clicked on Set Rosters for the very first time, but I’m incredibly thankful it did.

The post Wayback Wednesday: Updating NBA Live 96 PC Before Modding appeared first on NLSC.