7 screenshots of ook, taking off from just beyond the 3 point line, and slamming it over Iversion and Kidd. 358KB.
About 7 years ago, a friend of mine and I started playing basketball games on PC. We soon became semi-addicted to two particular titles, being NBA Hangtime and NBA Live '97. Apart from shooting in eachoter's face and performing dazzling dunks, we found great joy in the creation of custom characters.
Like most people would, we started out by creating ourselves — that is, something that would remotely resemble us, as I didn't have the knowledge and skills in game editing that I have now, nor was the technology of the games as advanced and detailed as they are today — but since we made ourselves so good, the other players on the court (NBA players, that is) would piss us off with their relatively poor skills.
This was asking for drastic measurements: we needed more custom players... and so it happend. We started to creating more and more custom players, increasing height and power with every one.
The first few were supercool tough guys, but we noticed that no matter how lean and mean we made those basketball machines looks... they would get boring. They were lacking something. They were lacking personality.
That is when we started making additions like odd (facial) hair, extreme heights (both ways), green skins and basketball/alien/cow/bloated heads. We also started giving them what appeared to be less cool names (especially my friend, I was sticking to fresh and cool names for a long time), and most importantly... background story.
While playing with out newly created characters, we would comment and joke on what was going on on the court constantly, and even when we were not playing video games, the various characters would be mentioned. We figured out the relations of the respective characters, with eachother, with us, and with the universe (and the creation there of).
The more we played the video games and talked about the characters, the more they seemed to be growing personality. They appeared to be doing stuff, that made them different from the rest. Wimpie would always get tons of assists, even when coming from the bench, Akeem Roberjanklaas would always do stuff unnoticed, and Judge Robert was a rebounding powerhouse (and hated Een Robert with all his heart), etc.
With one particular case it would get so obvious, it was no longer funny. This case was called ik ook, which is Dutch for me too
. Whatever my characters would pull off, ook would adopt that move, but with his own interpretation. Usually this meant less flare, but more unbelievable. He would also give us funny looks in the camera during his meany replays (scary), and then... then there's that time he stood in the half-court line, and his upperbody liften a few foot and turned, while his feet would stand still (freaky!).
We quickly came to conclusion that he was a god — perhaps even The God
. A weird thought maybe, but it would make us prophets, which didn't sound half bad.
We told our friends, parents, and classmates about ook, how increadibly special he is, and that he's real (and that we are prophets). Most people would think it was funny... Blasphemy!
Anyway, NBA live '98, '99, etc. would be released, and adopted as out main waste of time (more and more later in the day... later night), and characters would start to get more and more visual style to add to their personal expression — ook grew a beard, and an afro.
Then my friend and I started wasting time on more boring crap. Stuff like school, work, girlfriends, parties. We didn't play video games as much for some time.
Last year, we picked it up again, though. NBA Live 2003 was now the thing, and we played it many 'o night. We never really got to creating our beloved custom characters though. We returned to the franchise like we first started 6 years earlier — we created outselves, and put us in existing NBA teams, respecting the rest of their rosters. Sure, the other character were agonizing stupid, spare a player or two (I remember Kevin Garnett being particulary awesome), but it was fun nonetheless.
Since I've been sick the past few months (genetic manic depression, blah), I haven't been at his place much anymore, let alone played any video games at night, but since I now have this kickass motherboard to go with the rest of my kickass computer hardware, I can now play the games myself. This has recently set me to bring back to life our oldschool custom players, using my newly gained skills, knowledge, and resources (programming, graphic design, etc.)
Like always, I created myself, and a couple of my friends first, but now I got to creating the 100 Dimension players, as we call them. Most of them use the respective cyberfaces of NBA players of which I figured they remotely resemble our custom players, but Cornelius has his all-over green skin, Flash has his breads, and Ben Franklin Cow, a.k.a. Frankencow, has his huge bloated head.
Ofcourse, ik ook is also back in business. He's borrowed the face of some 60's legend for now, but that's no biggy, he's being 100+% ook.
That manifested in a game I played earlier today. I was playing versus the Eastern All-Stars with my 100 Dimension All-Stars. We were in front with more point than the opposing team could ever recover from as I was running a fast break with ook. Come to think of it, it wasn't a fast break at all, ook was just running fast and breaking stuff.
Anyway, as I came running towards the basket (with a rather crowded key), I hit shoot
at the 3 point line. Normally... normally, a player... any player would jump and go for the shot. Not ook. Noooo, not ook. ook decided to take another step and go for the dunk.
Yeah, and? ... Wait, dunk? You said you hit
Yes, indeed. One step beyong the 3 distance... and he decided to ignore the opposing team's defense, Allen Iversion's head, common sense, and gravity.shoot
at 3 point range...
7 screenshots of ook, taking off from just beyond the 3 point line, and slamming it over Iversion and Kidd. 358KB.
The same thing, but from a different angle. 472KB.
I believe in ook, and you should too.
1 comments so far.
=| I always stay out of any kind of sport. I sux.
Posted by: Murdoink on March 16, 2004, at 22:52