Wayback Wednesday: Can You Update 16-Bit NBA Live 96 for 1996?

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 revisiting the 16-bit version of NBA Live 96 – with a focus on the SNES release – and seeing if it can be updated for 1996.

Thirty years ago, the 1995-96 NBA season was in its early stages. It turned out to be one of the most iconic campaigns in league history, with the Chicago Bulls becoming the first team to win 70 games on route to their fourth championship of the decade. However, months earlier the season had been in jeopardy, owing to the lockout of 1995. That lockout is often overlooked as a new collective bargaining agreement was ultimately reached well in time to avoid losing any games. However, it led to various 1996 season video games launching with outdated rosters.

This includes the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive versions of NBA Live 96. While the PC and PlayStation versions were released later and thus weren’t affected by the lockout, the 16-bit versions had to ship with 1995 season rosters. This also led to that version including the Expansion Draft for the Vancouver Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors, as well as a bevy of unlockable players. With these features, as well as the addition of roster customisation outside Season mode, is it possible to properly update 16-bit NBA Live 96 for the 1996 season? Let’s take a look back…way back…

The first step in updating the 16-bit versions of NBA Live 96 is to hold the Expansion Draft. Indeed, it’s impossible to even play an exhibition game until you’ve done so, since the Vancouver Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors don’t have rosters. When players are selected in the Expansion Draft, they’re replaced on their original team by a Roster Player. In turn, these Roster Players are the created player slots. They can be traded as needed, but conveniently, selecting the actual expansion draftees adds created players to a few teams that will require them. Incidentally, you can automate the Expansion Draft for one or both of the new teams, but obviously I won’t be doing that this time.

So, let’s get started! While it’s tempting to carry out the Expansion Draft as it actually happened, there’s a good reason not to. The Grizzlies and Raptors made 27 picks, but in NBA Live 96 for SNES there are only 24 selections to make, owing to the fact it has 12-man rosters. Furthermore, a few of the higher picks – namely Rodney Dent, Keith Jennings, and Andres Guibert – didn’t ever play for the Grizzlies or Raptors after being selected by them. Therefore, it’s wiser to ignore them for now, and select the players who were active in 1996. Fortunately, the other 24 players are all present in NBA Live 96, so I was able to assemble the initial Raptors and Grizzlies squads.

Now it was time to start tackling the offseason moves that began on September 18th, following the end of the lockout. Already, I could see that it would be tricky, and that I’d be left with inaccuracies. Because the SNES version of NBA Live 96 featured 12-man rosters, any trades with a mismatched number of players on each side was going to require some juggling. There’s also no Free Agents Pool. Not only does this make it impossible to free up an empty roster slot, but retired and otherwise inactive players will be left at the end of benches. Still, every player in the game is tradeable – unlike in 16-bit NBA Live 95’s Season mode – so there’s still a lot that can feasibly be done.

It didn’t take long for inaccuracies to occur. Beyond players being left behind in deals involving uneven numbers, the lack of a Free Agents Pool meant that every free agent signing needed to be a trade. Inevitably, that meant sending players somewhere they shouldn’t be, if only temporarily. Going down the transactions in order, the first free agent signing to require a fictional trade was Dana Barros going to the Boston Celtics. I elected to swap him for Jay Humphries, who retired in 1995 and thus didn’t need to be placed anywhere else in the short term. Similarly, since the Cavaliers traded Mark Price to the Bullets for a draft pick, I had to swap him for Kenny “Sky” Walker here.

Since not all teams had an expendable player, I soon had to start getting creative by making moves out of order, skipping signings with the intention of coming back to them, and temporarily sending players to the wrong team until I freed up a roster slot for them on the correct one. The Roster Players helped out with some flexibility here, though I was reluctant to move any that were already on teams that I knew I’d have to add a player to. I had to trust that I’d be able to successfully juggle those placeholders between teams, and finally put them back where I needed them. It made it a sloppier process than updating the rosters in NBA Live 96 PC, but again, that was inevitable.

Once I reached October in the transactions listing, I was able to make my favourite move of the 1995 offseason: the Chicago Bulls acquiring Dennis Rodman from the San Antonio Spurs in exchange for Will Perdue. Sadly, there’s no ability to edit the jersey numbers of original players in 16-bit NBA Live 96, so The Worm was stuck with his original #10 rather than the #91 he sported for the Bulls. Mind you, he was hardly alone in having the incorrect jersey number for the 1996 season. We just had to weather such inaccuracies before roster customisation was expanded in future games, or the appropriate external modding tools were created. At least the swap was easy!

As I reached the end of the 1995 offseason, I realised that a few pre-lockout moves – including the Seattle Supersonics trading Kendall Gill to the Charlotte Hornets for Hersey Hawkins – were unaccounted for. Interestingly, many of those moves made it into NBA Jam Tournament Edition for PC – and a couple of other 1996 season titles that were also affected by the lockout – so I’m assuming that NBA Live 96 could’ve included them as well. In any case, they needed to be done, so I took care of them. After that, I backtracked to make a couple of moves that I skipped, and then started on the in-season transactions, beginning with the Alonzo Mourning for Glen Rice trade.

Other notable trades from the 1996 season include the Nets-Sixers swap with Derrick Coleman and Shawn Bradley as the centrepieces, Charlotte sending Kendall Gill to New Jersey for Kenny Anderson, Miami acquiring Tim Hardaway and Chris Gatling from Golden Sate for Kevin Willis and Bimbo Coles, and the Hawks trading Andrew Lang to the Timberwolves for Christian Laettner. Quite a few of the deadline deals involved an even number of players, making those trades easy to reflect in NBA Live 96 for SNES. After completing all of the trades and signings, it was time to make sure that I had Roster Players where I needed them, and start adding some missing players.

Thankfully, that’s a far quicker task than it normally would be, owing to the ability to instantly create those players by entering the correct names into Edit Player. Along with the Expansion Draft, it’s one of the most memorable features of 16-bit NBA Live 96, albeit one that EA Sports had to be more secretive about. As you might imagine though, the league wasn’t at all pleased that the unsigned rookies, unlicensed players such as Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, and a handful of NBA Legends, could all be easily added in this way! The developers were instructed to never do that again, but gamers still benefited from the secret in 1995, and it’s still handy 30 years later.

In addition to creating Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, I ended up adding Magic Johnson to the Lakers to reflect his return in 1996. I also used one of the player slots to add Arvydas Sabonis – who doesn’t have any hidden data – to the Trail Blazers. For the Class of 1995 rookies, I added Kevin Garnett, Joe Smith, Michael Finley, Brent Barry, Antonio McDyess, Bob Sura, Theo Ratliff, Shawn Respert, Alan Henderson, Rasheed Wallace, Travis Best, Tyus Edney, Bryant Reeves, Damon Stoudamire, Ed O’Bannon, Gary Trent, Greg Ostertag, Jerry Stackhouse, Kurt Thomas, and Eric Williams; in short, the biggest names and key rotation players among the freshmen.

At this point, all 29 teams had a viable starting lineup and at least a couple of accurate bench players. Compared to my efforts to update NBA Live 95 for SNES with 1995 season rosters, it was a far more successful effort! However, the limited number of created player slots does leave several rookies and a handful of veterans missing. The latter is definitely unfortunate, as missing players such as Alvin Robertson, Aaron McKie, Brent Price, Doug Christie, and Vernon Maxwell were all regular starters in 1996. Needless to say, you could always choose to create those players rather than some of the aforementioned rookies if you’d prefer to have more accurate lineups.

Arguably, the much bigger problem is all of the players who weren’t active in 1996 – either because they retired or played overseas – that remain on teams. Once again, there’s no Free Agents Pool to release them into in the SNES version of NBA Live 96, so the best solution is to stash them on the deep bench somewhere. I managed to have some of the players who ended the 1996 season as free agents on the team they last played for, but there are several misplaced players stuck wherever I could put them. That includes retirees such as Sam Bowie and Sleepy Floyd, and veterans who would return the following season, including Dominique Wilkins and Xavier McDaniel.

A few players who weren’t free agents are also nevertheless on the wrong team, as there’s simply no space for them on their real club due to the game’s 12-man rosters. One example is Jack Haley. He should be on the Bulls’ roster, but he doesn’t belong there ahead of John Salley, who actually suited up for the team in the Playoffs. As such, Haley replaces Salley in Toronto, where the latter originally went in the 1995 Expansion Draft. It’s an inelegant solution, but without a Free Agents Pool or an external roster editor to overwrite players, there’s only so much that can be done compared to the PC version of NBA Live 96, or even NBA Live 97 for the SNES.

This attempt to update the SNES version of NBA Live 96 for 1996 resulted in nine teams with 12 accurate players: the Hornets, Bulls, Cavaliers, Lakers, Heat, Knicks, Magic, Kings, and Jazz. The Celtics, Warriors, Clippers, Nets, 76ers, Blazers, Spurs, and Sonics all had 11 correct players, while the Mavericks, Nuggets, Pistons, Rockets, Pacers, Bucks, and Suns had 10. The Hawks, Timberwolves, Grizzlies, and Bullets ended up with nine players who were actually on their roster by the end of the 1996 campaign, while the Raptors have the fewest with seven. Those figures can change slightly depending on your choice of created players, but it’s about as good as it gets.

Although that may not sound impressive – and it’s far from ideal or close to complete – it’s honestly a fairly good result! Around 20 teams have their regular starting five, and a few more can at least field a lineup of five players that started for them during the season (if not necessarily a lineup they ever used). A number of marquee matchups can be played using accurate starting lineups, with at least four or five correct bench players. Several of the players who changed teams have incorrect jersey numbers, but plenty of others are accurate. A few of the rookies have the wrong number, but that’s an easy fix, and adding them is an extremely quick process thanks to the hidden data.

Once again, I conducted this exercise with the SNES version of NBA Live 96. The Genesis release actually has a 32-player Free Agents Pool, 14-man team rosters, and a few different players. Teams can also have a minimum of eight players, so you can discard unneeded ones into the Free Agents Pool. With that added functionality in mind, a glance at the rosters suggests that of the two 16-bit versions of NBA Live 96, the Genesis release can be more accurately updated for the 1996 season. It’ll still be a fairly minimalist update with incorrect jersey numbers and so on, but if nothing else, the inactive roster slots and Free Agents Pool can avoid having any misplaced players.

As I noted, the PC and PlayStation versions of NBA Live 96 came out later than the 16-bit releases, and thus were updated with the new rookies and player movement, though of course MJ and Chuck remained absent. The PC version is unsurprisingly the easiest to update, even without our founders’ tools. If you do bring them into the equation though, then it’s capable of featuring the most accurate 1996 season update, albeit with a few players in the Free Agents Pool due to its 14-man rosters. The PS1 version has the most up-to-date default rosters and includes a few players that were left out of the PC version, but it sadly doesn’t allow you to create any new players.

To that end, when it comes to the depth of the customisation features, the 16-bit versions of NBA Live 96 each fall somewhere between the PC and PlayStation releases. As far as the ability to update them for the 1996 season, it definitely is possible, though the results will be far from perfect; especially on Super Nintendo. The Genesis/Mega Drive version is capable of slightly more accuracy, though it still can’t compare to the modding capabilities on PC. You can whip up a 1996 season update for 16-bit NBA Live 96 in a few hours, though admittedly resources such as Basketball Reference make it much easier in 2025 than it would’ve been in 1995!

Basketball video games capture a snapshot in time, which is why I’ve come to refer to them as interactive almanacs. When they’re released in the midst of a lockout though, they preserve the image of a league in limbo. While releases such as NBA 2K12 and the PC version of NBA Live 99 ultimately received official patches, when it comes to NBA Live 99 for the Nintendo 64 or 16-bit NBA Live 96, the task of updating the rosters falls to gamers who care enough to do so. It’s not ideal, but there’s nostalgia in taking on that challenging task. The 16-bit versions of NBA Live 96 weren’t the best representation of a legendary season, but with some effort, they can get a little closer.

The post Wayback Wednesday: Can You Update 16-Bit NBA Live 96 for 1996? appeared first on NLSC.