Wayback Wednesday: Dennis Rodman & Changing Hair Colour

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 taking a look back at Dennis Rodman and his changing hair colour on the virtual hardwood.

For decades now, it’s been common to see NBA players with prominent tattoos. Other players have made fashion statements through their hairstyles, sometimes bleaching or colouring their locks in some way. Jeremy Sochan is an example of both, sporting ink and adopting some very colourful looks during his three year NBA career. To that point though, Sochan brings to mind another power forward that once played for the Spurs, wore #10, and was infamous for his numerous tattoos and ever-changing hair colour. I am of course referring to Dennis Rodman!

The Worm’s unique style and unapologetic self-expression at times overshadowed his brilliance on the court, but there was no denying his popularity in the 90s; especially after he was traded to the Chicago Bulls and became an integral part of their second threepeat. Naturally, Rodman’s counterpart on the virtual hardwood was expected to capture this look, which was indeed achieved through unique textures and models. Quite impressively however, several old games also went so far as to give Dennis Rodman changing hair colour as well. Let’s take a look back…way back…

As you’ll see in footage and photos from early on in Dennis Rodman’s career – as well as contemporary video games and the 1989 Pistons in NBA 2K – The Worm wasn’t always known for an outlandish style. He had a few tattoos, but it wasn’t until he hit an extremely low point in 1993 that he came to make some bold changes in both his look and attitude. Rodman recalled this turbulent period of his life and subsequent epiphany in his book, Bad As I Wanna Be; a book that I definitely shouldn’t have been reading when I was twelve, particularly the parts about dating Madonna! In any case, this change established him as one of the NBA’s prominent personalities of the 90s.

Rodman’s new style wasn’t immediately reflected on the virtual hardwood. The Super Nintendo version of NBA Showdown, which featured final 1993 season rosters, still places him on the Pistons with a familiar head model. Likewise, while you’ll find him on the San Antonio Spurs alongside David Robinson in the arcade version of NBA Jam Tournament Edition, The Worm’s portrait and in-game face are sporting black hair. It didn’t take too long for games to catch up, though. In NBA Showdown ’94 and NBA Action ’94 for Sega Genesis – both 1994 season titles – Dennis Rodman has a bleached-blonde Mohawk, a look that he sported early on in his tenure with the Spurs.

This made Rodman immediately identifiable in an era where most games still featured player faces with minimal detail. He kept the blonde Mohawk in the Genesis version of NBA Jam TE and likewise has a bleached ‘do in the SNES release – although it’s admittedly more of a brown – while the hair in his portrait has been re-coloured white. Oddly, the PC version brought back Rodman’s original portrait and head model with black hair, seemingly restoring some of the outdated assets from the SNES prototype. Incidentally, The Cutting Room Floor’s article on the prototype also provided insight as to why Kevin Edwards ended up with Blue Edwards’ portrait in NBA Jam TE PC.

Although the PlayStation version of NBA Jam TE retained the outdated portrait for Dennis Rodman (and Blue Edwards’ portrait for Kevin Edwards), it did add some new functionality to his in-game model: changing hair colour. Whenever the Spurs were selected or encountered as an opponent, Rodman’s hair would be one of a handful of colours that was chosen at random. However, it wasn’t the first game to do this. NBA Live 95 PC, released some six months earlier, gave Dennis Rodman a unique head model with changing hair colour. He also had multiple portraits matching all of the available colours, thus providing a pre-game hint as to which one would be chosen.

It was one of those details that made the basketball video games that I grew up with so special. After all, it would’ve been sufficient if virtual Dennis Rodman simply had colourful hair based on one of his well-known looks of the era, such as bleach-blonde, green, red, purple, blue, and so on. It was going the extra mile to have Rodman sport different colours at random in order to represent his proclivity for changing things up, particularly when his portrait also matched the in-game model. Sure, there were more impressive features in those early games, but it was still one of those little things that you noticed and appreciated. It shows the love that went into developing those titles.

Of course, it wasn’t just NBA Live and NBA Jam TE that had virtual Dennis Rodman changing his hair colour from game to game. Konami’s NBA in the Zone and NBA in the Zone 2 also featured alternating colours for The Worm, and in the latter’s case, red hair with a Chicago Bulls logo on the back, inspired by an actual look from the 1996 season. He didn’t have multiple portraits that changed to match the randomly-chosen hair colour, but while that was indeed a cool idea in NBA Live, the in-game model was what really mattered. Obviously it was a logical detail to include, but still, it was great that several games from different developers gave him dynamic hair colours!

Mind you, it wasn’t always left up to chance. NBA Hangtime was yet another game that randomly selected a hair colour for Dennis Rodman, and indicated which one it would be via his portrait on the team selection screen. However, by pressing the pass button while the Chicago Bulls are highlighted and Rodman is one of the players, we were able to cycle through all of the colours and pick the one we wanted him to use. It wasn’t a secret – at least, it didn’t remain one for very long – but I remember it being a staple of books and magazines listing Nintendo 64 tips and secrets, as well as online code listings. In a time before we could even select team jerseys, it was a nifty trick.

That brings us to the technical details behind the ability for Dennis Rodman to have changing hair colour in video games. It isn’t exactly a mysterious secret, and even if this is the first time you’re hearing about it, you can undoubtedly guess what’s going on. It isn’t the hair alone that dynamically changes colour, but rather the entire model and face texture. In games where Rodman’s hair changes, he has multiple faces – and in some cases, multiple portraits to match – and the game will load one at random (or as selected, in NBA Hangtime’s case). It’s a solution that would’ve been obvious even if we hadn’t been able to confirm it with modding tools for a number of those games.

However, there are still a couple of interesting points to note here. As I mentioned, in those early NBA Live games on PC, Dennis Rodman’s model – or rather, models – were unique. The rest of the players made use of different combinations of skin tones and generic head models featuring a range of hair styles and facial hair in a number of colours, as well as a couple of rarely-used models featuring goggles or a headband. When NBA Live 96 PC added Create-a-Player, we were able to choose these same combinations for our custom players. A couple of the models aren’t selectable though, and that includes the one with changing hair colour that’s used for Dennis Rodman.

Thanks to the editor that our founders created however, it is possible to assign that model to any player, along with some of the other hidden faces and bio data. As such, if you wanted to create a 2025 roster for NBA Live 96 PC, you could give Jeremy Sochan his colourful, Rodmanesque hair! In fact, if you overwrote Dennis Rodman and replaced his portraits with ones in which Sochan has the appropriate hair colour, you could even achieve the same effect of having the currently-chosen portrait and in-game model matching! Back then of course, it was just a way of creating a duplicate Dennis Rodman for roster mods, or giving someone else changing hair colour as well.

NBA Live 98 PC made the jump to 3D acceleration and individual face textures, but the same technique allowed Rodman to continue switching up his hair colour. NBA Live 98 PC includes seven different faces for The Worm, though while each has its own portrait texture, it’s the same one. NBA Live 99 upped the ante with eleven faces for Rodman, though still with only the one portrait that rather oddly appears to be the headshot he used in NBA Live 95 and 96 PC, with his hair coloured black. NBA Live 99 also added separate left and right arm textures, which allowed Rodman to finally accurately sport his ink. This wasn’t possible when both arms used a mirrored texture.

These multiple Dennis Rodman face textures were implemented as follows. There was a primary texture with a filename matching his PLAYERPKG value in the roster database: DERODMA. The additional face textures all replace the A with a number: DERODM0, DERODM1, DERODM2, and so on. The games are programmed to load these variants that match the first six letters of his PLAYERPKG. As I mentioned, in NBA Live 98 the face textures are accompanied by a portrait, while in NBA Live 99 the file includes left and right arm textures. They’re all identical in the original files, but in theory, they could also be made to alternate along with the different faces.

Long-time fans of the NBA Live series may recall that this technique was also used to give other players alternating faces around that time. For example, in NBA Live 2000, Allen Iverson has two faces with different styles of cornrows. Wilt Chamberlain has four alternating faces: one without a headband, and three with headbands of different colours (white, gold, and purple). While it wasn’t widely-used by default, the fact that the game would recognise additional faces and alternate between them was something that modders could take advantage of. Whether it was Dennis Rodman or someone else, if the textures were there and correctly named, they’d automatically switch up.

Interestingly, this functionality has since disappeared from basketball video games. Since NBA 2K11, we’ve had the young Pistons Rodman and at least two versions of Bulls Rodman with different hair. While it’s still great that we have that variety with virtual Rodman, it’d be even cooler if they could alternate between hairstyles as in those older games. It’s not absolutely necessary, and there are other aspects of NBA 2K’s historical content in greater need of attention. However, it’d still be a fun detail, just as it was all those years ago. With MyNBA Eras switching out some of the faces to allow players to age into the next era, it’s a concept that they could bring back.

Something for the Wishlists perhaps, but even if we don’t see it return, it stands as a great little touch in some classic basketball video games from the 90s. Once again, it was exciting to discover details like that. It’s in the same category as the generic court that stood in for alternate venues in Season mode in NBA Live 95 through 97, the 50-game schedule added in the patch for NBA Live 99 PC that reverted to an 82-game campaign from Year 2 on in multi-season play, and the more recent inclusion of the Christmas jerseys for all 30 teams in NBA 2K16 and 2K17 for that matter. The games wouldn’t be ruined without these details, but their inclusion is most definitely a treat.

As for Dennis Rodman, he remains one of the most colourful personalities in NBA history, both figuratively and in a very literal sense when it came to his hair. He stood out, not only with his outlandish style, attitude, and off-court antics, but also his focus on defense and rebounding, and his vital contributions to championship teams. I long feared that he’d be snubbed for the Hall of Fame because of the controversy, and was very pleased when he did get the nod. As far as video games are concerned, he had an impact there too, paving the way for other players to have tattoos and alternate faces. Rodman truly was one of a kind…much to the relief of the late David Stern, I’m sure!

The post Wayback Wednesday: Dennis Rodman & Changing Hair Colour appeared first on NLSC.