Wayback Wednesday: Wizards MJ in NBA Live 96

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 going back to tinker with an old roster for NBA Live 96 PC to place MJ on the Wizards.

Although I’ve gone on to create a “Definitive” roster for NBA Live 96 PC that adds proper 1996 season rosters, the last current roster I made for the game was for the 2001 campaign. I dubbed that project a “Complete Update“, which was overselling it a little, but it did include portrait and logo updates; a rarity for NBA Live 96 rosters. Thanks to the contributions of Bobby H, it even included an updated gold Wizards wordmark for the team’s roster screen! I intended it to be my farewell to modding NBA Live 96 PC, and indeed I moved on to NBA Live 99 shortly afterwards.

While I’ve created a couple of other NBA Live 96 mods and even polished up the Complete Update, I never went back to make a 2002 season roster. As such, I’ve never created an NBA Live 96 roster featuring Michael Jordan on the Wizards! In fact, to my recollection, I’ve never done that as a quick modification for NBA Live 96; not even just to get a screenshot. With that in mind, it sounds like a fun retro gaming and modding exercise, perfect for Wayback Wednesday! I obviously have some assets to work with here, so let’s take a look back…way back…

The first step was to copy the patched 2000-01.exe file and custom rosters.r01 file, and rename them 2001-02.exe and rosters.r02 respectively. This is how we were able to use mods for multiple seasons with the same installation of NBA Live 96 PC. The nba96.exe file could be renamed anything we wanted – obviously, we had it match the season the mod was set in – and by editing the appropriate string in the executable, we could have it load and save a custom roster file with a unique extension, instead of the standard rosters.dat. With original player data being stored in the executable and no way to save and load individual rosters, it was the best workaround available to us.

Once those files had been prepared, it was time to start updating the NBA Live 96 rosters for the 2002 season, and get MJ on the Wizards. Originally, my plan was to update the Wizards and an opponent to face, and leave the rest of the roster alone. However, I ended up making loose preparations for a proper 2002 roster update! This was easier said than done, due to the 14-man Free Agent Pool being full, along with most of the NBA rosters. Because teams didn’t always have a free roster slot, I ended up making a lot of moves out of order. I also deleted some of the created players and re-added them by overwriting original players; something I should’ve done in 2001!

It reminded me of some of the tedious moments working on NBA Live 96 rosters all those years ago, such as realising I’d overwritten a couple of players that were now back in the league and thus needed to be restored. I also had to quickly create eight placeholders for the created players I’d deleted, in order to resolve an inconsistency that prevented the executable and roster files from being opened together in the editor. Naturally this all added to the workload, but after overwriting the necessary players and placing others on teams ready to be overwritten, in less than a day I’d prepared the framework for a 2002 roster for NBA Live 96, in which MJ would be on the Wizards.

Originally, I wanted to hold off on creating Michael Jordan for as long as possible, as it felt like that should be the culmination of the project. However, since putting MJ on the Wizards in NBA Live 96 was the main goal and there was still a lot of work to do, I decided that this was as good a point as any! I’ve added His Airness to NBA Live 96 countless times over the years, but there were some differences this time around. On top of placing MJ on the Wizards instead of the Bulls in this NBA Live 96 roster, he’d be a 13-year pro with lower ratings than usual, a small forward instead of a shooting guard, and listed as being signed as a free agent rather than acquired via the Draft.

Of course, creating Michael Jordan in games where he’s missing is never boring for me, but those differences undoubtedly made this project a novelty. Obviously I never had a need to add MJ to the Wizards in NBA Live 96 before now, seeing as how my roster updates concluded with the 2001 season. Nevertheless, it’s surprising that with the articles I’ve written and my penchant for tinkering with rosters whenever I revisit old favourites or get a new retro kick, I’ve never found a reason to set up that scenario. Then again, it did take me some time to truly develop an appreciation for his Wizards years, so it’s not altogether surprising that I stuck with rosters where he’s in Chicago!

While there are many games that I’ve never updated with MJ on the Wizards, there’s a reason I chose NBA Live 96. Beyond being an all-time favourite and my introduction to modding to boot, I had the aforementioned 2001 season roster to work from. Again, thanks to Bobby H, the Bullets have an updated Wizards logo, a new gold wordmark on their roster screen, and an outstanding re-colouring of their jersey palette that looks incredibly accurate given the limited detail in NBA Live 96. Not only is this adding MJ to the Wizards in a game where he was missing from the Bulls, but thanks to those updates, his second and final comeback can be replicated with impressive accuracy.

Mind you, I didn’t undertake this project just to capture some nifty screenshots; I was keen to actually play with the Wizards featuring MJ in NBA Live 96 PC! I updated the rosters for a few potential opponents, and perhaps not surprisingly, the Bulls were the first team that I completed. Considering that Michael Jordan actually reached the 30,000 point mark against his former team and beat them twice that year, it seemed only appropriate to face them. I started out slow as I was trying to force things too much with His Airness, but once I found my rhythm, he was getting buckets and I went on a run in the third to take firm control of the game, ultimately getting the win.

Obviously, this wasn’t the first time that I’d taken on the Bulls with a Wizards team led by MJ, as I was doing that in NBA Live 2002 over twenty years ago. Even now, it still doesn’t feel right given that I remain a Bulls fan. Then again, those Bulls teams are a lot more fun to face than to play with! Playing that matchup reminded me of how conflicted I felt during the 2002 and 2003 seasons. I wanted MJ to succeed, but I also wanted to see the Bulls drag themselves out of the basement and start winning again. It’s the only time that I’ve ever truly cheered for more than one NBA team, or against the Bulls for that matter. Well, apart from when they’ve been tanking, anyway.

Part of me wishes that I’d made a current roster for NBA Live 96 back in 2002. I still had great affection for the game and the process of modding it, and while I admittedly wasn’t thrilled about MJ coming back with the Wizards, it didn’t stop me from making a 2002 roster for NBA Live 99. Of course, it was a lot of work for a niche project, and there were far more people still playing NBA Live 99 at that point. There was a lot more to sink my teeth into with an update for a newer game, and fewer restrictions. I was reminded of several challenges while undertaking this project, so combined with the severely diminished interest in NBA Live 96, it made sense I moved on back then.

Besides, it’s given me a fun retro project all these years later, now that I’m sufficiently nostalgic for that era; not just in the NBA, but for the basketball games I was playing and modding, both new and old. I’m hesitant to label my retro gaming and modding as making up for lost time. That implies that I didn’t enjoy myself and regret my choices over the years, and that’s simply not true. More to the point, there’s no reason to get hung up on wishing I’d done something with a video game years ago, when I can go ahead and do it now! That’s the beauty of choosing to play and mod what interests and entertains you, rather than jumping on every fleeting trend in a desperate bid for clout.

To that point, part of me also wishes that I’d enjoyed the fruits of my labour with the Complete Update for the 2001 season at the time. Then again, I was looking to move on and it was more of a vanity project meant to bid farewell to NBA Live 96, so I did get what I wanted and needed out of it. Again, to my previous point, there’s nothing stopping me from playing with it now! I’m proud of how it turned out, though I will admit to seeing a few details that I overlooked. With that in mind, it’s tempting to make some further fixes! Whether it’s just for personal use or you think that your fellow retro gamers would like it as well, it’s never too late to polish up an old mod.

Needless to say, there are easier to ways to play with MJ on the Wizards than to mod NBA Live 96 PC. Aside from the Kobe Era rosters in NBA 2K25, NBA Live 2002 and NBA Live 2003 are right there if I want a retro gaming experience on top of the throwback rosters. However, what makes modding so fun is that we can manipulate our favourite games to feature content and experiences that they wouldn’t otherwise provide. Whether it’s updating an old game with current rosters or winding back the clock to a memorable season in a more recent release, we’re combining two things we enjoy to get the best of both worlds. Either way, we’re able to indulge our nostalgia.

By adding MJ to the Wizards in NBA Live 96 PC, it’s a triple dose of nostalgia for me: the game itself, the process of modding it, and a memorable season in NBA history (even if I didn’t truly appreciate it while it was happening). I can have a blast with NBA Live 96 no matter which roster I’m using – even the default lineups – but as someone who really got into basketball and the NBA in the mid 90s, the early 2000s saw a lot of familiar faces end up in strange places. On top of MJ on the Wizards, 2002 also brought us Hakeem Olajuwon on the Raptors, and Patrick Ewing on the Magic. It’s quite novel to see those weird stints represented in a game from 1996!

Indeed, it has me wondering what other scenarios I can create in NBA Live 96 PC, from a handful of classic pre-1996 matchups to more recent showdowns. Although modding the rosters can be tough with the 14-man Free Agent Pool and the need to overwrite original players, projects can also come together relatively quickly with fewer ratings to assign, the selection of pre-made player heads, and the convenience of the NBA Live 96 editor. It’s not exactly minimalist modding given the external editing and creation of new players, but with such a limited number of art updates at my disposal, it’s an interesting challenge to try to create teams with accurate branding.

As for creating a specific retro season roster, it’s a fun trip down memory lane. There’s usually at least a few transactions and lineups that I’ve forgotten about until I see them again. In particular, it’s interesting to see the players who latched on briefly with 10-day contracts, whether it led to them playing for a couple of teams or signing on with the club I remember them playing for that season. It’s extremely satisfying to see it all come together, especially in a game like NBA Live 96 that is very moddable, but does require you to juggle players and use some workarounds. This exercise brought back memories of facing those challenges, but also the satisfaction of overcoming them.

Even though my desire to revisit a specific season will lead me back to a game set in that year, there are times when I want to mix my nostalgia for a campaign with a title that’s from another era. It often goes hand in hand with a desire to pick up the tools and tinker with an old favourite again. As I’ve said before, my nostalgia for the 2002 season also involves finishing up high school, the early days of my tenure running the NLSC, and a love of basketball and basketball gaming that was still relatively fresh. I enjoy reconnecting with that period and there are several ways in which I can do that, but on this occasion, adding MJ to the Wizards in NBA Live 96 definitely hit the spot.

Wizards MJ in Action in NBA Live 96 PC

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