Best and Worst NBA Live editions?

[bangtango]

Up until a month ago, I had never played any of EA's NBA Live games. Recently, I ended up finding a whole bunch of them in the wild within a few days of each other. After playing a few games, I honestly don't know what I'd been doing all of these years. Well, I do know. I was playing Sega's various NBA games, which I still enjoy.

So in the past few days, I've played NBA Live 2002, 2003 and 2004 on the XBox. On the Genesis, I've played NBA Live 95 and 96. What amazes me about the games, particularly the Genesis versions, is how tight the gameplay is and how fun they are. While I was playing NBA Live 95 (Genesis) this week, I couldn't believe how well the game holds up even today. The graphics, the realism and the presentation. My first thought was how awesome it must have been for someone to bring home a brand new copy of it back in 1994. It must have been mindblowing for a fan of sports sims or the NBA in general.

There are a few other games in the series which I picked up and have yet to play, including 2002 on PS1 and 2005 on XBox. What I was wondering is what some of you would consider the best and worst editions of NBA Live, regardless of the system. EA's series is around a dozen years in, so I'd hope to hear a good variety of responses.

It seems funny that I never got around to playing any of the NBA Live games until this year. I guess you can consider me a convert.

[Steven]

From memory, NBA Live '96 and '97 on SNES were the very best of the series IMO. I've currently trekking through an 82 game season in SNES NBA Live '98, and somehow, while it's still very very good, it's not as great as I remember 96 and 97 to be. In fact, the graphics look slightly worse, which is very odd, but '98 was actually made by Tiertex, while 97 by NuFX, 96 by Hitmen Productions (who also developed NBA Live 95 -- the "one that changed the series")

[thetoxicone]

I haven't played many outside of live 95 for genesis and live 96 (i believe that is it whatever the first one was for playstation). I was such a dork that on nba live 95 I created a bunch of my friends and put them on various teams around the league so while I played my season I would end playing against likenesses of my friends on the other teams.

[DigitalSpace]

I have:

SNES:
NBA Live '96
NBA Live '97

Genesis
NBA Live '96

Gamecube
NBA Live 2003

My favorite is '96. I played it quite a few times with my brothers and cousin back in the day, and I still play through a season on the SNES cart every year or so. I usually put together a balanced team with some of my favorite players of that era (I was a big NBA fan back then) and I even printed out all the names of the hidden stars and rookies you can create in create a player mode (for example, if you enter "Jordan" it will automatically give you Michael Jordan's appearance and stats). I keep the other teams as close to their original rosters at the time as possible.

I got '97 cheap and wanted to compare it to '96. I'd say '96 is slightly better. I got the Genesis version of '96 for free earlier this month and one day I'll play it to compare it to the SNES version. I got 2003 last year after realizing I hadn't played a basketball game newer than '97, meaning I had never given any of the 3D basketball games a shot. I decided to get one of the older Gamecube titles, and picked 2003. Unfortunately, I have yet to play it, so maybe this thread will serve as some inspiration to do so.

[Anthony1]

I've said many times before, that my all-time favorite football game is Madden 93 (Genesis version), and my all-time favorite basketball game is NBA Live '95 (Super Nintendo version). I was actually one of those people that bought NBA Live '95 for the SNES on the day it came out in late 1994. Even thought I had an Atari Jaguar and Panasonic 3DO at that time, and was busying playing the most state of the art next-gen games on those systems, I still was compelled to play the hell out of NBA Live '95 for Super Nintendo. The graphics and sounds and playability in that game was just top notch. It was like EA somehow took the NBA and squeezed it inside a cartridge.

You know, if you really like NBA Live '95 on the 16 bit systems (I prefer the SNES version by the way), then you should really give NBA Live '96 for the Playstation a try. NBA Live '96 on the Playstation was the final sprite based basketball game that EA Sports made. It used sprites just like the 16-bit versions, the only major difference being that it had the sprites overlayed on 3D courts and arenas and had amazing CD sound quality. Most people remember when FIFA first was released on the 3DO and it got rave reviews. That FIFA game was the same type of thing. Sprites on top of a 3D background. That's the same way with NBA Live '96 for the Playstation.

NBA Live '95 for the Super Nintendo is more of a classic game, just because it was such a revolution for a 16-bit hoops game. Some people play it, and they aren't that amazed by it, but if you really knew the NBA, and the styles of the various teams and players at that time, then the game was damn realistic. Fun as heck! Because I made the transition to the Playstation version of NBA Live after playing the first SNES version of live, I didn't get a chance to play Live 96 or 97 or 98 back in the day. I've played them now, and they are very similar to 95. The core engine of the game really didn't change.

[xtremegamer]

I remember when NBA Live 95 was released and I was not able to pick it up right away since at the time I had no income. Finally when I had saved enough, I was fortunate enough to catch it on sale, but they where sold out! I did get a rain check for it, but it was like 3 or 4 months later that they got the game in again.

NBA Live 95 always holds a special place in my heart. My favorite basketball game of all time. Believe me at the time the only other basketball game I had was Bulls Vs. Blazers, so this was a huge step up. Oh btw, I had the Genny version.