NBA Live 99


NBA Live 99 is the 1999 installment of the NBA Live video games series. The cover features Antoine Walker of the Boston Celtics. The game was developed by EA Sports and released on October 31, 1998 for the Windows and PlayStation, then in November 4, 1998 for the Nintendo 64. Don Poier is the play-by-play announcer. It was the first NBA Live game released for Nintendo 64. NBA Live 99 was followed by NBA Live 2000.

Summary

NBA Live 99 is EA Sports' NBA release for the 1998–99 NBA season. Some of the major additions in Live 99 include Practice Mode and multi-season play featuring player development between seasons. Although it did not feature free agency or generated rookies, it would turn out to be the forerunner to Franchise Mode.
Live 99 shipped with 1997-98 season rosters due to the NBA lockout of 1998–99, putting a hold on player movements and rookie signings during the summer of 1998. Some prominent bugs led to the NBA Live Series Center fan site submitting a patch petition to EA Sports which resulted in two official patches which included roster update for the 98–99 season.
As Live 99 kept the same file formats as Live 98, patchers were able to produce the same wide variety of patches using an updated version of the EA Graphics Editor and the NBA Live 99 Toolkit.

Features

LIVE Hoops
LIVE Technology
LIVE Style
The Nintendo 64 version is actually an updated port of NBA Live 98, and not the same as the PC and PlayStation. The PC and PlayStation versions also featured a bug, out of the box, where players did not fatigue properly. While the PC version received a patch, it is unknown if, but highly unlikely, the PlayStation version was fixed in later production versions.

Reception

The game received "favorable" reviews on all platforms according to video game review aggregator GameRankings.