NBA 2K6

Losing a broadcast license is not usually a gameplay problem, but it was for this one. EA's exclusive deal with ESPN took the network's scorebugs, music and studio wraparound away from Visual Concepts just as that presentation had become the series' calling card, and the 2005 edition had to go out under plain 2K Sports branding. What replaced it was thinner on screen and more interesting in the hands.

IsoMotion is the reason to remember the game. Holding the right shoulder button and rolling the right stick turned dribbling into a continuous analogue act rather than a menu of canned moves, so a crossover could be started, stopped halfway and turned into a step-back depending on how the defender's feet were planted. It took real practice. Players who never got past mashing turnaround jumpers found the game stiff and unforgiving, and they were not wrong to, because the ball-handling engine was built for people willing to learn a vocabulary.

The other half of the package was 24/7, the create-a-player mode that sent your guard from pickup courts through a calendar of games, training and rest, with attribute growth tied to how you actually performed rather than to menu points. It sat somewhere between a career mode and a lifestyle sim, complete with an apartment to fill with trophies and gear. The writing around it was slight and the loop repeated itself well before the season ended, but the idea of a basketball RPG with fatigue and scheduling as real constraints was several years ahead of where most sports games were prepared to go.

Franchise play stayed deep, the animation set still had that weight and hesitation that separated 2K from the arcade competition, and the commentary without ESPN's furniture around it sounded oddly bare. It is a transitional record: a studio that had just lost its packaging and answered by putting more of itself into the controller.