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 secret courts that can be unlocked using cheats in various basketball video games.
Wasn’t it way more fun unlocking content in basketball video games by completing tasks or entering secret codes, than buying it with microtransaction-based in-game currency? I know, I know, more Grumpy Old Man griping about the Good Old Days, but come on, am I wrong? I mean, not everything was better “back in the day”, but bonus content that we could all enjoy without pumping more money into the game, or mindlessly grinding, was a far superior and way fairer approach. If you disagree, then I’m sorry, but you might just be too far gone as a shill!
Alright, alright, enough with the antagonistic commentary about microtransactions! That issue aside, basketball video games have had some cool secrets over the years, and it was always entertaining punching in codes to access them. Those secrets also gave rise to a number of urban legends and hoaxes, but some were legit, allowing us to change things up on the virtual hardwood. Indeed, some of those secrets and bonus content directly involved the virtual hardwood, as basketball games have included some secret courts that can only be unlocked via cheats. It was a fun way to alter the setting and atmosphere, and with that in mind, here are five of the best secret courts.
I’ve previously covered the many fun cheats that can be found in NBA Live 98, noting that the PlayStation version in particular was packed with secrets. The one that most long-time basketball gamers seem to remember best is the Aqua Court, and for good reason. Accessed by unlocking the Secrets menu and entering the code “Seaweed”, the Aqua Court takes the action twenty thousand leagues under the sea, on a virtual hardwood adorned by the aforementioned aquatic flora, with the view obscured by a water effect. Honestly, the only thing missing is some relaxing, water-themed video game music in the background. I suggest Aquatic Ambience, or Dire, Dire Docks.
Wacky content like this definitely wasn’t unheard of in sim basketball games in the mid to late 90s, as is evident from the other secret courts unlocked by cheats that I’ll get to momentarily. As I said when I looked back at those fun cheats in NBA Live 98, content like secret courts and codes that changed the players’ appearances offered the developers a chance to get more creative in a genre that requires them to adhere to stricter guidelines. In turn, that content becomes memorable to gamers because it was just too tempting to not punch in those codes and experience them for ourselves. Of all the secret courts in basketball video games, this one may be the most well-known.
In console games, the famous cheats involve combinations of button presses. Think of the Konami code, or the cheat that allowed you to dunk from anywhere in NBA Jam Tournament Edition. In PC games, the keyboard allowed us to type in cheats, from strings of letters (IDDQD for invincibility and IDKFA for all items in Doom II) to plain English (holding G-O-D for God Mode in Commander Keen). Some cheats were entered during gameplay, but others had to be typed in while the game was loading. Need for Speed III had several cheats – all entered on the loading screen – that replaced the cars with comical models. Other EA games borrowed this idea.
Typing in “playground” while a game is loading in NBA Live 99 and NBA Live 2000 will forego the NBA arena for secret street courts. Well, the courts themselves were readily accessible in Practice mode, but the ability to play a 5-on-5 game on them was a secret! The players will also wear matching generic practice uniforms, rather than their regular jerseys. I’ve noticed that accessing the street court in 5-on-5 gameplay crashes the game when trying to play with workarounds on modern hardware. I’m not sure why and it’s unfortunate as it’s a fun way to change things up, but in any event, secret courts and cheats remained in NBA Live PC up to the turn of the millennium.
As someone born in 1984, years after the rise and fall of Disco, I’m not sure when I was first exposed to it in pop culture. It might’ve been Disco Stu on The Simpsons, though thinking back, it was probably the disco scene in the first Leisure Suit Larry game that I was far too young to be playing! It definitely wasn’t the unlockable disco court in Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside for the Nintendo 64, though I do remember reading about the code in a book of cheats, and trying it out. It’s a cumbersome code: pause the game, and then enter A, C-Up, D-Pad down, D-Pad up, C-Down, R, R, B, C-Right, C-Right, and finally, Z. Do it right, and you’ll be on the disco floor. Groovy!
Honestly, it’s not a very fun way to play, especially compared to the secret Aqua Court or the street courts in NBA Live 98, NBA Live 99, and NBA Live 2000. As you can see, while it’s cool to have the virtual hardwood lighting up like a disco floor, it also removes all of the lines, making it easy to step over the three-point arc or out of bounds. Blacking out the crowd evokes the atmosphere of a nightclub, but it’s also disorientating. Those white shapes are meant to be light cast from an unseen disco ball; a creative idea, but also distracting. It’s one of those cheats that you’ll probably only enter once just to see it in action, before restarting the game to play properly.
I mentioned a book of Nintendo 64 cheats as the place I saw the code for the disco court in Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside. Before we were connected to the internet 24/7 and could look up cheats and other video game secrets in seconds, compilations of codes and the tip sections of gaming magazines were essential reading. I was aware of the codes for NBA Hangtime having already found them elsewhere, but the same book with the disco court cheat for NBA Courtside contained all of the secrets for Midway’s game as well. Obviously, one of those secrets was an unlockable court, specifically a rooftop blacktop that featured rainbow, shell-shaped backboards.
Notably, there are two ways to access the rooftop court in NBA Hangtime, though both are performed at the “Tonight’s Match-Up” screen. The first is via the numerical codes that you can openly enter by pressing the three action buttons the corresponding number of times; in this case, hitting turbo seven times for the code 700. The second (and arguably easier) method is to hold the D-Pad left and press turbo twice. Either way, the showdown is heading up to the roof! This is actually the code that I’ve used the most on this list, as I played a lot of NBA Hangtime on Nintendo 64 circa 1997, and enjoyed the change of scene while taking on every team in the tournament ladder.
Whether it was NBA Jam or Mortal Kombat, match-up screen cheats, button codes, and other secrets became staples of Midway’s games. NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC – the sequel to NBA Hangtime – continued the tradition of leaving the NBA arenas behind to play on some secret courts. And in this case, I do mean courts plural, as NBA Showtime included four different secret courts that we could unlock: a street court, an island court, a Midway court, and an NBC court. Compared to previous games however, you had to be quick, holding down the necessary combination of buttons as soon as you’ve selected the second player on the “Choose Team” screen.
As such, while the combinations aren’t difficult once you know them, it’s easy enough to forget and do it too late; especially when previous games conditioned us to enter codes on the “Tonight’s Match-Up” screen! With that being said, successful entry of those codes will have you balling out on some appealing secret courts, with the island blacktop in particular being a fun location. Also, while they don’t exactly count as secret courts, there are also codes to force the game to be played on the floor of the left or right team, irrespective of who’s been designated as the home squad. They may sound basic, but codes like these helped make older basketball video games special.
What are your favourite secret courts in basketball video games? Which of these has the best design? 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 Secret Courts Unlocked by Cheats appeared first on NLSC.
