Sports Games: Do You Play Them, Or Ignore Them?

[profholt82]

^Oh yeah, Super Monaco GP. I love that game.

[goldenband]

I started a topic about this a while ago on Atariage, and what I said then still holds. Basically it boils down to this:

I'm into tennis games, love to play them, and will actively buy and collect them. (I'm a big tennis fan in real life.)

I'm open to golf, bowling, and Olympic-style games (especially Winter Olympic events since track and field events are usually 100% button mashing). Boxing too -- I loved Punch-Out BITD. These styles of game are fun to play at parties or with my girlfriend, and generally work well on any system ranging from the Atari to the GameCube. If I happen to get one of these games for a 16-bit system in a lot, chances are I'll keep it.

I used to like baseball games a lot when I was a kid; not so much anymore, but I can still get sucked in by Bases Loaded and other 8-bit baseball games. 16-bit games, maybe, but I'm not really interested in more "realistic" baseball games and certainly don't collect them. Around here is where I start getting rid of sports games.

Hockey, basketball, wrestling: Not a fan of these sports in real life, but in their time I enjoyed Blades of Steel, Double Dribble, Wrestlemania on the NES. More recent games, from the 16-bit era on, tend to put me off, though I'll play a wrestling game just for laughs. I'll happily play the simplified Atari 2600 versions of these sports -- Basketball and Ice Hockey on the VCS are totally fun. The Intellivision games are OK too, but tend to drag.

Zero interest in football or soccer. The dynamics and culture of these sports are just not my scene, especially football.

Some people call chess a sport, but that's nonsense. I'll happily play any chess game, though.

I don't really think of auto racing as a sports game genre. Same with martial arts, snowboarding, skydiving, pool, target shooting, etc.

[DarkDragon]

Ive only bought a few sports game in my lifetime. For Genesis I bought Bulls vs Blazers, Double Dribble Playoff Edition, World Series Baseball. In general I think they are a waste of money unless I can get them at reduced prices. I have the beach volley game by Sega that came out on Gamecube and it was one of my favorite games on that system.

Btw I dont count wrestling games as sports games but I noticed a lot of people here do. I group them in with fighting games.

[StarMist]

I'm into tennis games, love to play them, and will actively buy and collect them. (I'm a big tennis fan in real life.)

To celebrate the US I was going to play through every tennis game I could find....but I couldn't find any good ones. They don't handle right to me. Or maybe I just suck. Like Andy Murray, fucking rotter.

Oh yeah, is there an indoor/gymnasium volleyball game anywhere? Damn I need some girls in gym shorts. Plus the team mechanic would be ages better than 2-on-2 crap.

[Ace]

I play racing games and hockey games only. The rest can go to hell.

[goldenband]

To celebrate the US I was going to play through every tennis game I could find....but I couldn't find any good ones. They don't handle right to me. Or maybe I just suck. Like Andy Murray, fucking rotter.

There are very, very few really good tennis games. Three of the better ones I've played are:

Championship Tennis (Intellivision) (buggy, brutal learning curve, but insanely ahead of its time)

Family Tennis (Famicom) (fantastic play control, and it feels and plays like real tennis, with real players from the 1980s! Cleverly disguised! And you can actually volley!)

Super Monkey Ball 2 (GameCube) (the Monkey Tennis unlockable minigame is, I kid you not, one of the best and most playable tennis games I've ever seen)

Others: Tennis for Game Boy is decent (it rewards attacking play, a real rarity in tennis games), and a million times better than Tennis for NES, which is one of the worst games I've ever played. There's an almost identical SMS game -- Great Tennis, I think? -- that's just as bad. There's also a Game Gear 4-in-1 title that includes a surprisingly good little tennis game, but it's not fully fleshed out.

Super Tennis on the SNES is OK but it's much too quirky, you have to resort to all kinds of weird tactics to keep the ball in play, and there's no net game at all. Jennifer Capriati Tennis on Genesis seemed like it might be pretty good, need to give that one some more time. Andre Agassi Tennis seemed horrible, and IMG International Tour Tennis is inexcusable.

Virtua Tennis and Tennis 2K2 on the Dreamcast -- I know some people like them, but to me, when you can chase down every shot and no one ever makes an error, it doesn't feel like tennis anymore, no matter how good the graphics and sound are.

And the less said about the Mario Tennis games, the better -- except for Mario's Tennis on Virtual Boy, which wasn't bad at all!

[OttawaJim]

I play racing games and hockey games only. The rest can go to hell.

This.

[QuickSciFi]

I most definitely do not ignore racing games, if those count. I also can see myself enjoying Olympic games and the sort. The same goes for fighting games that are of a sports-like variety (like wrestling). And who doesn't like NBA JAM!?!

I've also enjoyed various hockey, baseball, basketball and golf games. Heck, I'm pretty certain I can actually enjoy just about any sport title in my library...


...what I cannot, under any circumstances, bring myself to enjoy is a straight-up football game (i.e.-Joe Montana Football, John Madden, etc.). But even then, I'd still give each one a try before shelving them bad boys. I do dig the quirky variety, though, like Cyber Ball or Mutant League Football. Now, those are a treat to play.

[cowboyscowboys]

Post 16-Bit era the only games I have really played are sports games.

Back in the day... I devoted many days playing Sports Talk Baseball vs my brother Blue Jays vs. A's 2 stacked teams in the game fun as hell. I still think it's the best 16-bit era sports game.
Also shout out to... World Series Baseball series best sim style 16-bit baseball games by far. The football games (Madden and Montana/Sega) were sweet back in the day but haven't aged well at all. Almost forgot the EA NHL series which was amazing.

What did the Snes have? lame ass Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball and weaker EA sports ports.

[kool kitty89]

I've had at least some fun with video game versions of almost every major sports category except American football . . . granted some more than others. Soccer and hockey would be some of the lesser ones (unless maybe if you counted the first Mario Strikers -that could be pretty fun at times), most of the olimpic games would probably be below those even and baseball might be a bit higher than those. There's a few basketball themed gamesthat were OK fun (NBA Jam would be among those), though that's not really my thing either.

Some golf games are OK, probably more so than the others above personally. (at least when I have the time to sit down and play such games . . . I learned to like golf games back in the mid 90s on the NES with Jack Nicholas and later Nintendo's Golf)

Tennis games are OK, some more so than others. (as with some other games, I prefer the fantasy ones here too -like Mario Tennis . . . otherwise they're so so too)

I really like racing games (of almost any type -but 3D genres definitely more so) and if that's included as a sports category, I'd definitely have to pick that genre/group of genres as the top.

[TheRollingStoner]

Sports games are great for when you just wanna pick up and have some general gaming entertainment. I don't play them all that often, usually when I just wanna play a game but can't decide what to play. In those cases, I usually play one of the NHL games for Genesis, most often, '94.

[Obviously]

I like sports games when they have some gimmick or twist to them like NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, Daytona USA or even the Mutant League or Mario sports games. I tend to get bored of the serious stuff. I don't even like racing games much unless they're arcade style. I played more sports games up until the end of the 16-bit days. I've never played a modern Madden or anything like that so I honestly can't judge it.

I don't know if I count professional wrestling titles.

[TmEE]

I mostly ignore sports games, unless they got something extra in them that breaks them free from reality such as the nekketsu soccer game on famicom, super moves and such

[Clessy]

Ignore them.

[Devil N]

Ignore. The only sports games I found remotely interesting are NBA Jam and Smash Court Tennis, because they are very much not like real-life sports. Oh and I remember enjoying the FIFA Road to the World Cup '98 demo back in the day, because tackling the opponent's keeper would always trigger a hilarious motion-captured cutscene of your player getting a red card from the referee. That's about it.

If I'd want to play a sports game, I'd go outside on a field and kick a ball or something. But that doesn't interest me either, so yeah...