Wayback Wednesday: Fun Cheat Codes in NBA Live 98

In this week's Wayback Wednesday, Andrew looks back at the array of fun cheat codes that were available in NBA Live 98.

The post Wayback Wednesday: Fun Cheat Codes in NBA Live 98 appeared first on NLSC.

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 taking a look back at some of the fun cheat codes that can be found in NBA Live 98.

For those of us who grew up in a time long before premium downloadable content and microtransactions, cheat codes are incredibly nostalgic. Whether they helped us to beat a difficult level, unlocked bonus content, or altered the gameplay in some way, cheat codes were fun and empowering. When you discovered a code or other secret, whether it was via word of mouth or printed in a gaming magazine, you couldn’t wait to try it out! Of course, there were also countless urban legends and hoaxes, as well as erroneous listings that weren’t properly vetted.

Indeed, I’ve previously debunked a handful of fake codes for NBA Live 2002. As I said at the time, while it was satisfying to do the research and get that confirmation, it’s disappointing that the game didn’t hold any cool secrets. Fortunately, there are other basketball games that have entertaining hidden content to discover! This does include sim titles, and one game with a number of fun cheat codes is NBA Live 98. Both the PC and PlayStation version of the game include bonus content and features that are hidden behind codes, and if you grew up with either release, you probably have fond memories of unlocking them. Let’s take a look back…way back…

First of all, there are the hidden teams. I’ve mentioned the unlockable developer teams in a previous article, as they were recurring bonus content in the early days of NBA Live. NBA Live 98 is one of the last games in the series to feature developer teams, but it probably also has the most unlockable bonus squads. There were nine teams made up of people who worked on the game in some capacity: the EA Europals, Hitmen AllSorts, Hitmen Coders, Hitmen Earplugs, Hitmen Idlers, Hitmen Pixels, QA Campers, QA DBuggers, and QA Testtubes. There was also the TNT Blasters, featuring Ernie Johnson and his family, as well as Verne Lundquist and Al Murdoch.

These teams are unlocked through the custom team function, specifically by entering those monikers as the city name and team nickname respectively. Although the secret players all have proper face textures (and in some cases, portraits), the squads just use the generic logos that are available for all custom teams, instead of custom branding related to their names. Interestingly, unlike other unlockable content – such as the unsigned rookies in NBA Live 2004 – they don’t appear in NBA Live 98’s roster files until the cheat codes are entered. This means that the only method of unlocking those teams is to enter the appropriate codes, as there’s no flag in the DBF file to modify.

Nowadays, the prospect of playing with teams made up of programmers, producers, testers, and other people involved with the development of the game might seem a tad unexciting. Even back in the day, I’m sure that most people didn’t spend that much time playing with those secret teams. However, there was novelty in unlocking any hidden content, seeing the nicknames for all the developers, and putting them on the floor at least once. The TNT Blasters are also a heart-warming tribute to EJ’s family in hindsight, as they include his adopted son Michael, who passed away back in 2021. I’m guessing most of us weren’t aware of his story when NBA Live 98 was released.

While the PC release was often the best version of NBA Live back in the 90s thanks to superior graphics, additional modes and features, a mouse-based UI, and of course modding, the console versions did have their share of exclusives. The cheat codes in the PlayStation version of NBA Live 98 are a good example of this. The PS1 version included all of the unlockable teams found on PC, but also a hidden cheats menu that is accessible on the User Setup screen. Entering “Secrets” as your user name unlocked the menu, where you could input all of the codes and then enable and disable their effects as desired. Saving your data ensured that you didn’t have to do this every time.

Out of all the cheat codes for NBA Live 98 PS1, the one that most people always seem to remember is the “Aqua Court”. Added by entering “Seaweed” in the cheats menu, as the name implies, it’s a court that’s under water. This custom EA Sports-branded court was adorned by seaweed, with players blowing bubbles and a watery filter distorting the view. It’s not surprising that anyone who grew up with NBA Live 98 PS1 and messed around with the cheat codes recalls this, as it’s a cool effect that injects some more fun into an exhibition game (or a Season game, if you’re not taking things too seriously). Cheat codes like this often become core memories for gamers.

In case changing up the environment wasn’t enough, there were also codes to alter the appearance of the players. In fact, you could even choose to have the players not appear, as there were separate codes to turn the home and away teams invisible. To say this added an extra layer of challenge to the gameplay, whether facing the CPU or another user, is a massive understatement! If silliness and spookiness were what you were after, there were also codes for Halloween costumes; specifically, clowns and mummies with their own special uniforms. This made all players identical, though you could still tell them apart by their numbers and the names in the player indicator.

This was taken to the extreme by a third costume code for “Pin the Teddy Bear” that must be entered after the ones that unlocked the aforementioned Halloween outfits. Once those codes had been entered, inputting the code “Pin rocks” presented the user with a dialogue box asking a question: “Is Pin loveable, or adorable?” This mini-game of sorts to unlock teddy bear outfits for all players was actually a trick question, as the correct answer was “He’s both”! It can get confusing when all of the players are teddy bears wearing the same green suit – once again, look out for the individual names and numbers – but it was all part of the silly fun that these cheat codes were aiming for.

If you were after a more subdued style of silliness, there were also codes that allowed created players to wear a monocle, eye patch, or an EA toque (or beanie, or wool hat, or whatever name it’s known by in your neck of the woods). Later games made those accessories available by default, though they were removed as the series focused on becoming a deeper sim title. The same goes for cheat codes in general, as they shifted towards being methods of unlocking shoes and alternate jerseys as they were unveiled in real life, rather than wacky bonus content. I don’t disagree with the tonal shift, and I’m glad that realism became a priority, but those old cheat codes were definitely fun.

Obviously, if you were playing a game like NBA Live 98 rather than an arcade title such as NBA Hangtime, you were probably more interested in a realistic depiction of the sport. To that end, it’s likely that you didn’t indulge in the silliness that these codes brought to the game all that often. Still, there’s a good chance that you tried them out at least once or twice! It was always interesting to see what secrets a game held, and experience them for yourself. If nothing else, you wanted to see if a code that sounded way too silly to be true was actually legitimate! As previously noted, there have been plenty of fake codes over the years, as even gaming magazines trolled their readers.

Even if most of us only used the cheat codes in NBA Live 98 and other sim games sparingly, it’s still unfortunate that they were phased out. Aside from being a fun thing to do every now and again, they also demonstrated creativity from the developers. The NBA has some strict rules about games that use their license, and on top of that, the nature of sim titles means that their tone and content must be serious. I’m sure that the developers really enjoyed breaking some of those rules – albeit with the league’s blessing – to get creative and silly with the bonus content. The implementation of the Aqua Court also showcases their talent, as those effects still look really cool today.

Of course, while it would be fun to have those old cheat codes in modern titles, it’s understandable that sim games began moving on from them as early as the turn of the millennium. In addition to having niche appeal, their assets also took up space on the disc; space that was better off being used to add historical players and teams. That sort of bonus content has much broader appeal, with NBA Live 2000 proving that it would be a strong selling point moving forward. There’d be some novelty in seeing them in a new release, though mostly only for older basketball gamers. With so much on offer in today’s basketball games, those Easter eggs would have even less of a practical use.

Still, even if there isn’t a huge need for new NBA 2K games to imitate an old practice from the heyday of NBA Live and other old school sim titles, I’m sure that the devs would appreciate the creative outlet. Unfortunately, providing content through cheat codes that anyone can use at any time doesn’t generate recurrent revenue. Some of the content and features that were unlocked via cheat codes back in the days of NBA Live 98 probably could make 2K money if they carried a price tag, or were offered up as Seasonal rewards in MyTEAM and MyCAREER. However, I’d hate to see a nostalgic concept like cheat codes be shamelessly exploited as part of such a soulless practice.

With that in mind, it’s probably best that they remain a part of basketball video game nostalgia, undisturbed by the greed that now permeates the genre and entire industry. As for NBA Live 98, the PS1 version is arguably the pinnacle of cheat codes in the series, as that content would soon give way to deeper modes and historical players. It was the right decision to include retro content and focus on the serious aspects, but there’s an undeniable charm to cheat codes that alter a game’s aesthetics in a silly way, and allow us to play with the people that made them. If you own NBA Live 98 and you’ve never entered those codes, make a point of doing so when you next revisit it.

The post Wayback Wednesday: Fun Cheat Codes in NBA Live 98 appeared first on NLSC.