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 aspects that made season modes in old school basketball video games so much fun.

Being a keen retro gamer, one of my least favourite phrases in gaming discourse these days is “I can’t believe we used to think this was good”. It’s a myopic statement that forgets that we needed generations of technological improvements to get to where we are today. Moreover, just because graphics, mechanics, and modes have since been surpassed, it doesn’t mean that they’re retroactively terrible. Putting aside the fact that many classics do hold up on the sticks years later, they represent important stepping stones that ultimately led to major developments and improvements in the genre.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that modern games should be as basic as their more primitive predecessors. Just because I’m praising something in an old game, it doesn’t mean that I think it should be in a new one; at least, not in the same form. Once again though, games didn’t get to where they are now without those early attempts at modes and features that we enjoy so much, and indeed take for granted. Furthermore, beyond being nostalgic and worthy of appreciation for their innovation, there’s definitely an appeal to certain aspects of old school season modes. With that in mind, I’m not just reflecting on how those modes paved the way, but how their ideas are still fun today.

1. Simplicity

It may sound strange to say this when I’ll readily praise the depth of franchise and career modes. It’s also not as though I’ve forgotten how much we desired to see season modes become deeper and run for multiple years, and how exciting it was when those wishes were finally granted. To that point, I certainly wouldn’t want to be stuck with only having those old school season modes in a modern title. However, there’s also enjoyment to be found in the simplicity of a straightforward replication of the NBA season, without all the bells and whistles or in-depth management features. It’s better when we have the choice of course, but old school season modes were still a blast!

If you wanted to make some wild trades, you didn’t have to worry about salaries or a team declining the offer. Again, it was fantastic when franchise mode came along and provided that depth, but there’s no doubt that many of us enjoyed the freedom to do whatever we liked. Beyond tinkering with our lineups, it was all about the on-court experience. You took control of your favourite team – or whichever one appealed to you the most – and guided them through the season and Playoffs, tracking stats and making memories along the way to ultimately winning a virtual championship. Old school season modes needed to evolve, but there’s undoubtedly fun in their simplicity.

2. Managing Other Teams Without Controlling Them

This one is mostly about the PC versions of early NBA Live, but other games did offer this functionality as well. While we could only choose to control one team in a game like NBA Live 96 PC, we could still trade players and change the lineups for CPU-controlled clubs. Obviously it comes down to personal preference, but it paid not to get too silly or outright cheat here. It’s definitely not sporting to remove your opponents’ best players from the active lineup when it’s time to play them, and making a bunch of wacky trades can quickly upset the competitive balance as well as realism. Used carefully though, the ability to manage other teams’ rosters added to the fun.

When I began a season in NBA Live 96 PC with my 1998 roster shortly after the real campaign tipped off, I was keen to mimic what was happening to some extent (and even lost the season opener as the real Chicago Bulls did). This meant reflecting all of the lineup changes as I heard about them. I kept Scottie Pippen inactive for the first half of the season, had Karl Malone miss a game due to suspension, moved Charles Barkley to the bench when he became a sixth man, and made all of the trades. I like letting an alternate reality unfold in franchise play, but following along with a real season was special, and control over the entire league’s rosters made that possible.

3. Championship Cutscenes

There’s an old video game trope that TV Tropes has dubbed “A Winner Is You“, after one of the most infamous examples. During the infancy of video games, the quality of game endings was generally disproportionate to their length and how difficult it was to beat them. There were seldom any elaborate cutscenes due to technical limitations, so the reward was undoubtedly in the journey. Old school season modes in basketball titles didn’t have the same difficulty as other genres, but this trope was still present. You wouldn’t see any on-court celebrations and trophy presentations, banners being raised, or anything like that. At most, there’d be a simple sequence, or a generic video.

Like so many other improvements, it’s obviously for the best that basketball games have evolved beyond that trope, and that winning a virtual championship now feels like a much bigger deal. Technology had to reach that point first though, and there’s still a charm to the simple championship cutscenes and videos that we’re shown upon winning a title in old school season modes. The journey truly was the reward here, with the satisfaction of winning games with your team of choice, tracking your stats throughout the year, and seeing the campaign through to the end. It also helps that they were usually a bit better than a black screen with “An NBA Champ Is You!”

4. More Attainable Completion

As I’ve pointed out before, completion is what you make it on the virtual hardwood. You don’t have to finish every single season in a franchise or career mode game to have played it “properly”. For that matter, even if you never finish a single season or achieve some other goal, as long as you enjoyed your time with a game and feel as though you got your money’s worth, that’s what’s important. With that being said, it is incredibly satisfying to play through a season from start to finish if you’re keen on the traditional virtual NBA experience, so I absolutely recommend it! I can also attest to the joys of multi-season play, whether it’s a franchise or single player career mode.

Of course, completing multiple seasons before the next game is released in a year’s time is quite a commitment; especially if you like to play full-length seasons and with regulation quarter lengths! It’s still a long journey if you want to play a single season on those settings, but it’s far more doable within the space of a year, even if you can only play a few games every week. Getting through multiple seasons usually requires keeping a game in your rotation or coming back to it, or simulating. There’s nothing wrong with doing either, though the latter is something you may have to make peace with! Still, attaining completion in old school season modes was far less daunting.

5. How They Inspired Our Imaginations

Look, as much nostalgia as I have for old season modes in basketball games and the other classic titles that I grew up with, I also appreciate how far gaming has come. I’m not suggesting that we need to return to primitive graphics and barebones releases! I’ll always appreciate how old games encouraged us to use our imaginations, though. The way that I followed along with the 1998 season in NBA Live 96 PC using my current roster update is a prime example of that. I had to make all of that happen; to immerse myself in the fantasy of playing out the season on the virtual hardwood and injecting reality into the experience by replicating trades and injuries, even if it hurt my team.

The best old school season modes gave us tools to work with, such as stat tracking and roster customisation, but we also extended the experience beyond the game. On our podcast, Dee has fondly reminisced about creating articles based on events in his seasons, an activity that I can certainly relate to! When my cousin and I were playing a season and wanted to make a trade, we’d roll dice or flip a coin to simulate the other team accepting or declining. Again, I’m glad that games now have the kind of depth we once dreamed of and had to emulate, but those imaginative solutions added to the fun. They undoubtedly made seasons in games that we loved all the more memorable.

Do you have any fond memories of old school season modes that you’d like to share? Would you like to have that experience as an option in modern games? 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 Fun Aspects of Old School Season Modes appeared first on NLSC.