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by Lang Whitaker

For many years there were two NBA video games that battled for supremacy each fall: the NBA 2K series from 2K Sports, and the NBA Live series from EA Sports. Each franchise had fans, but there was no clear winner — no Madden, as it were. This proved healthy: both publishers were driven to innovate in an attempt to capture whatever unclaimed market share existed. The battle came to a head last summer when EA announced a franchise reboot, changing the name of the Live series to NBA Elite and promising entirely new gameplay. To generate buzz, EA released a playable demo of the game that turned out to have a devastating glitch — that is, if you consider a virtual Andrew Bynum turning into Jesus a glitch. Days before NBA Elite 11 was set to hit stores, with millions of copies presumably already printed, boxed, and ready to ship, EA decided the game wasn’t up to snuff and delayed the release, eventually making the rare decision to cancel the game altogether.

EA later announced that Elite wouldn’t be ready for a 2012 release, either. So, with the lockout in full swing, NBA 2K12 found itself released into a different kind of void, one without any other form of NBA basketball.

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