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 ways that we misremember basketball video games.

Just how well do you think you remember all of the basketball video games you’ve ever played? I’d like to think that I have a pretty good memory – especially when it comes to my passions – but I’m hardly infallible in my recollections! Sure, I’ve made a lot of memories with basketball video games, and remember quite a few things off the top of my head. If it’s been a while since I played a game though, chances are some of the specifics will have slipped my mind. There’s a reason I have to do research for my features, because when I don’t, mistakes and omissions are inevitable!

To that point, there have definitely been times when I’ve trusted my memory when I shouldn’t have. I’d suggest that we’re all guilty of that from time to time. Indeed, based on comments about basketball video games that I’ve seen in various online spaces, it’s safe to say that a lot of people misremember them in some way. It’s usually an honest and understandable mistake, and it may only be a minor detail. Nevertheless, we’re all bound to misremember a thing or two about a game when it’s been a long time since we last played it. With that in mind – no pun intended – here are five ways that we commonly misremember basketball video games whenever we’re discussing them.

1. Nostalgia Goggles

Look, I’ll always defend nostalgia as something that’s fine to enjoy. I’ll also push back on the notion that everything always gets better, and that nostalgia is the only reason to prefer the old over the new. I’ve been pretty clear about where I stand on the whole Nostalgia Goggles vs. Recency Bias debate! Also, when it comes to things such as our favourite games, many of us do remember the annoyances as much as our enjoyment. With that being said, I can’t and won’t deny that nostalgia does smooth over some of the rough edges of old favourites. If it’s been a while since you dusted off some of the basketball games of yesteryear that you really loved, you might misremember them.

That’s not to say that your memories will be completely inaccurate. There have been several fantastic games that were not only great in their day, but hold up impressively well even decades later. You’ll still be able to identify their strong points when you revisit them; it’s just that you’ll also be reminded of the quirky, bothersome moments as well! You’ll remember the difficulty in grabbing rebounds, exaggerated shooting percentages, lapses in AI, and other frustrating moments on the sticks. They may not have stood in your way of enjoying a game at the time, and that game might still be fun today for that matter, but yes, nostalgia does make us forget some of the bad stuff.

2. Accepted Narratives (“Common Knowledge”)

As with any hobby or community, basketball gamers are never going to be in total agreement on every matter. There are popular opinions though, as well as accepted narratives that become “common knowledge”. This game is the best ever. That game is utterly awful. The downfall of the series began here. To this day, this was the peak of that series. Oftentimes, there’s a reason many people feel that way. As the years go by however, most of us start to misremember the basketball games that we haven’t played for a long time. It leads to inaccurate comparisons, and stubborn opinions that we refuse to hold up to scrutiny, all because we’re fairly sure we remember correctly.

This is how we’ll misremember certain sim basketball games are being significantly more or less realistic than they were. Games that were enjoyed at the time and should be remembered as good releases will be written off as terrible, or praise for them will be dismissed as misguided nostalgia. The meritorious aspects of flawed and mediocre releases won’t be given their due. I’m not suggesting all popular opinions are wrong seeing as I do agree with many of them, but unfortunately inaccuracies, ignorance, and a general lack of nuance, won’t stand in the way of a narrative being repeated and accepted as fact. It’s also how contrarian viewpoints end up gaining too much traction.

3. Mods

Whenever I produce basketball video game retrospectives, I do try to at least touch on a title’s modding scene (or lack thereof). Modding has obviously been a major part of our community since the very beginning, so it’s a relevant topic when discussing how a game was received, and the nostalgia surrounding it. However, when I go back and play games ahead of producing a retrospective, I make sure not to use any mods. This is because I want to evaluate the quality of the game as it was sold to us, without any of the fixes, enhancements, and additions that our modding community made. Again, that’s all important to recall, but for accuracy’s sake, I need to play the game vanilla.

After all, some mods are so well-made that they seamlessly blend in with the original content. This has definitely led gamers to misremember what basketball games were like out of the box! For a long time, the article about NBA Live 08 over on Wikipedia incorrectly listed the game as including two Dream Teams. This wasn’t the case. They were additions in my roster update for the game, but thanks to the quality of the faces and jerseys that other modders supplied me with, they could be mistaken for default assets. If you’ve spent a lot of time playing heavily-modded basketball games, it’s easy to misremember which bonus content is official, and what the community has added.

4. Volume & Similarity

At this point, there have been scores of basketball games and series that boast several entries, so it’s only natural that we mix up and misremember them. A good example has been provided in the responses to the footage of NBA Live 95 for Super Nintendo that I’ve shared on our Facebook page. More than a few people have fondly recalled how you were able to enter player names in Create-a-Player, and the game would automatically create them. In fact, you can’t do that in any version of NBA Live 95! You can however do just that in the 16-bit versions of NBA Live 96 to add Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, the Class of 1995, and a selection of retired NBA Legends.

I’m not saying that to make fun of their mistake. Bragging that I don’t misremember trivia about decades-old basketball video games would say a lot more about me than it would them! Rather, my point is that when it comes to basketball games with annual releases, they can very easily all run together, causing you to misremember whether a mode or feature was in this game or that game. The 16-bit NBA Live games also look very similar at a glance, so it’s easy to be mistaken if you happen to miss (or misread) the caption. Besides, it’s still remembering a cool bit of basketball gaming history, and getting the general era correct! But yes, with so many games, they can blend together.

5. Poor First Impressions That Unfortunately Lasted

The saying goes that “first impressions last”, and that is often the case. The catch here is that a first impression being a lasting impression doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s accurate. There are numerous factors that can lead to something or someone making a poor first impression, and it isn’t always their fault. Unfortunately, there won’t always be the opportunity to make a much better second impression. When it comes to video games making a poor first impression, giving them another look can be a tough sell; especially when we can easily move on to something else we know we’ll enjoy. We have to be motivated to give that second chance, and open-minded for it to succeed.

It helps if we recognise factors that may have clouded our judgement, such as feeling tired or being in a bad mood. In that case, if a game is actually good, that’ll quickly become apparent when we take a second look with a better mindset. A flawed game may still make a far better second impression when we revisit it with fresh eyes, and without the expectations that come with new releases. I’ve certainly experienced both when revisiting games I thought I disliked! You must be open to extending that grace to a game that failed to impress you though, and understandably, not everyone will be. And so, a poor first impression can leave us with an inaccurately unflattering image.

Have you ever been surprised by a basketball game that you revisited, either in terms of its quality or content? What are some other ways that we misremember basketball 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 Ways We Misremember Basketball Games appeared first on NLSC.