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 another list of things that you’ll see in games that are unpatched.

As I noted in my first article recalling things that you’ll see in unpatched games, official updates are a contentious issue. Day 1 patches do little to convince gamers that modern titles aren’t rushed out before they’re ready, and frequent updates can be annoying when they’re several gigabytes in size, essentially forcing you to download the entire game all over again. From the list of issues that they have to fix to some of the undesirable changes that are pushed through, the sight of a pending patch is one that makes many basketball gamers groan in frustration.

However, when we consider that we used to have to beg and plead for patches that barely fixed any issues, and for a long time weren’t viable on console, I’ve come to believe that having too many patches is actually the lesser of two evils. While there are times when foregoing an update or downgrading to a previous version is in fact preferable, you’ll also be reminded of some weird and bothersome issues when you play unpatched games. Of course, you’ll also see some interesting snapshots of the league when a game and its rosters are restored to their vanilla state. With that being said, here are five more noteworthy things that you’ll encounter without patches.

1. Luke Walton Coaching The Warriors (NBA Live 16)

When the Warriors began the 2016 season with a dominant winning streak, Luke Walton was coaching the team in Steve Kerr’s stead, as Kerr was recovering from back surgery. To that point, 39 of the Warriors’ record-breaking 73 wins that year came under Walton’s watch, leading some to question how much credit Kerr truly deserved. That conversation will probably gain more traction now that criticism of Kerr is in vogue, though Walton’s subsequent record as a head coach of the Lakers and Kings has also begun to overshadow his success in Golden State. Indeed, I can’t recall the last time that someone gave him credit for that hot start while interim coach!

Of course, with the turnover on the sidelines and disinterest in knowing or researching NBA history, it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of people have straight up forgotten that Luke Walton was helming the Warriors early on in the 2016 season. If you fire up NBA Live 16 today without any of the roster updates though – which is what will happen if you reinstall the game, as they’ll no longer come through – you’ll see him in Kerr’s place. While this may seem like a short-sighted decision now, at the time it was accurate, and thus made sense. Besides, games have felt quite disposable beginning with the eighth generation, which is a shame because there are a few worth revisiting.

2. David Blatt Coaching the Cavaliers (NBA Live 16)

Luke Walton isn’t the only face that will appear on the sidelines when the original rosters are restored in NBA Live 16. In fact, all of the coaching changes that took place during the course of the 2016 season will be undone, but there is one that stands out as Walton does, namely David Blatt in Cleveland. That is of course because the Cavaliers met and ultimately defeated the Warriors in the NBA Finals, but neither Blatt nor Walton were the head coach of their respective teams by that point. If you were to stage that showdown in NBA Live 16 with vanilla rosters though, Blatt (or potentially Walton) will hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy in the presentation cutscene.

The decision to replace Blatt with Tyronn Lue in January 2016 – the same day Kerr returned to relieve Walton, coincidentally – ultimately wouldn’t stand in the way of Cleveland’s historic win, but it’s always felt shady. Not only had the Cavs made the Finals in 2015, but they were atop the East with a 30-11 record when Blatt was fired (they then proceeded to go 27-14 under Lue). GM David Griffin’s explanation of “a lack of fit with our personnel and our vision” smacks of covering up a power play behind the scenes, especially with Blatt declining to accept a ring at first (he later relented). In any event, you can play what could’ve been in unpatched NBA Live 16.

3. Static Nets (NBA Full Court Press)

While the graphics of 90s basketball games obviously show their age – after all, they were dated by the early 2000s, let alone the 2020s – they still represent the sport in a recognisable form. The ball bounces, players perform identifiable actions, and the net moves as the ball passes through it. That last one is significant, because Microsoft’s NBA Full Court Press was an exception to a visual norm. In the unpatched version of Full Court Press, the net is a static texture that the ball kind of disappears into when you make a shot, be it a jumper, layup, dunk, or free throw. The nets in other games of that era look primitive next to modern titles, but hey, at least they actually moved!

In fact, some games from the mid 90s have surprisingly good net animations all these years later, so the static twine in NBA Full Court Press really stands out as an oddity. It suggests that it ended up being rushed out the door, as does its early release date compared to contemporaries such as NBA Live 97. The final 1996 season rosters that you’ll find in the unpatched game also point to a development cycle that wasn’t quite long enough. Updated 1997 season rosters certainly remain the most exciting addition in the official patch for NBA Full Court Press, but hats off to the developers for being able to sneak in a couple of other enhancements, including nets that do actually move.

4. Faceless Renaldo Balkman (NBA Live 07)

NBA Live 07 is widely considered to be the worst game in the series, and one of the worst basketball video games, period. That reputation mostly comes from the Xbox 360 version, which was truly a disaster (for as maligned as NBA Live 06 for 360 may be, its gameplay and graphics were praised at the time, and deservedly so). We were more focused on the PC version in our community of course, and while it’s fair to say that that release is superior to the mess on Xbox 360, that’s clearing a low bar! As I noted when revisiting NBA Live 07, one of the biggest issues was a lack of fatigue. The official patch provided an insufficient fix, though it was still better than nothing.

Again, you’ll see that lack of fatigue and the buggy substitutions when NBA Live 07 PC is unpatched. Something else that you’ll eventually see if you play with or against the New York Knicks is a faceless Renaldo Balkman. That is to say, he has no proper face texture, so you’ll see the (potentially terrifying) placeholder texture instead. The official patch added a face, and of course we were also able to mod one in ourselves, but it was still a pretty sloppy effort. That basically sums up NBA Live 07 across all platforms! I don’t relish saying that as I met the developers at the game’s community event and I know they were working hard, but that was not a good year for NBA Live.

5. Missing Stats (NBA Live 2005)

Conversely, NBA Live 2005 was a fantastic year for the series! One might conclude that by looking at the release notes for the official patch, and noting that it included very few fixes. It would be fallacious reasoning, though. While NBA Live 2005 is one of the best releases in the NBA Live series and a standout game in the history of the genre, that’s just how patches were back then. We were lucky if we got one, and if we did, it would only address a handful of issues. Fortunately, in the case of NBA Live 2005, the small list of fixes that its official patch implemented was still sufficient. In particular, it was very welcome news for Dynasty and online/sim league enthusiasts.

That’s because a majority of the fixes in NBA Live 2005’s patch revolve around stats; namely, stats not carrying over year-to-year in Dynasty mode, stats not appearing on the substitution screen during games, and the lack of ability to save stats in exhibition and online games. If you forget to apply the patch when dusting off NBA Live 2005 today, you’ll encounter those bugs, so be sure to grab the necessary update from our Downloads database! Again, there were drawbacks to the lack of patches back in the day, but when it comes to releases like NBA Live 2005, I certainly appreciate that the game was in generally great shape out of the box, and wasn’t ruined by any updates.

Do you remember seeing these things in unpatched games, or have you noticed them during a retro gaming session? What other interesting things have you found when playing unpatched basketball video games? 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 Things You’ll See In Unpatched Games (Part 2) appeared first on NLSC.