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

[Clessy]

Arent we on Virtural Tennis 4 now?

[tz101]

I think the key to enjoyment of the 16-bit sports games is having friends to play with and a 4 player adapter. I remember playing Montana 95 and the NBA live games on Genesis against my sons. Those were some of the more enjoyable times I remember from those days. Playing sports games against the system AI is alright, but there is nothing that quite compares to human opponents.

This, I believe, is why many classic sports games don't "age well". Not that they are any less of games after all these years, but the real enjoyment came from playing against friends and family.

Sad fact is that my sons moved onto other systems, and think any graphics less than PS3 are unplayable these days. Go figure...

[genesisguy]

I think the key to enjoyment of the 16-bit sports games is having friends to play with and a 4 player adapter. I remember playing Montana 95 and the NBA live games on Genesis against my sons. Those were some of the more enjoyable times I remember from those days. Playing sports games against the system AI is alright, but there is nothing that quite compares to human opponents.

This, I believe, is why many classic sports games don't "age well". Not that they are any less of games after all these years, but the real enjoyment came from playing against friends and family.

Sad fact is that my sons moved onto other systems, and think any graphics less than PS3 are unplayable these days. Go figure...

Ugh... I cringe when I hear "any graphics less than PS3 are unplayable these days."

A few years ago I finally bought a PS2. I don't "modern" game at all so I really had a lot of catching up to do. I kept hearing NFL 2k5 was the football game to have. I played one game and thought it was EXTREMELY difficult. Basically because the games have advanced so far in that you can really get into how you control your player and at the risk of sounding like an old fogge... there are too many buttons to remember what does what. I didn't want to give up on NFL2k5 so I tried the "training mode." To which I was greeted with what felt like 50 training drills to learn how to control my players on offense and defense. As a 29 year old I don't think I'll make it as a football player, but do kids today actually sit around and learn all these moves? At that point if I was a kid I'd rather just go out and play real football.

[Josh]

I don't really play sports video games nowadays, although I was kind of into hockey games for the SNES and Sega Genesis for a while.

[Baloo]

Ugh... I cringe when I hear "any graphics less than PS3 are unplayable these days."

A few years ago I finally bought a PS2. I don't "modern" game at all so I really had a lot of catching up to do. I kept hearing NFL 2k5 was the football game to have. I played one game and thought it was EXTREMELY difficult. Basically because the games have advanced so far in that you can really get into how you control your player and at the risk of sounding like an old fogge... there are too many buttons to remember what does what. I didn't want to give up on NFL2k5 so I tried the "training mode." To which I was greeted with what felt like 50 training drills to learn how to control my players on offense and defense. As a 29 year old I don't think I'll make it as a football player, but do kids today actually sit around and learn all these moves? At that point if I was a kid I'd rather just go out and play real football.

Agreed, that's why I find older sports games so fun. They didn't have any of the excess bullshit and focused the most on the gameplay, where it really mattered.

Guess that's why I'm still playing NBA Jam, Joe Montana Football, Tommy Lasorda Baseball, and all the others years later on my Genesis...

[Thenewguy]

Continuing with my habit of talking to myself -

Had trouble learning some of the US sports games, so I decided to go back to 8-bit and work my way up. Played Double Dribble on NES, was quite simple to play, after like 30 minutes I was able to thrash the computer player on level 1 and 2 difficulty, whilst uber simplistic the game is still fairly entertaining, I think 2 player would still be cool

After ages of trying to work out what the hell was going on I've kind of learnt how to play Tecmo Bowl on NES, turns out the game is a lot simpler than I thought and I was searching for a whole load of moves which didn't exist, still, its my first American Football game and I'm finding it playable, though I'm a long way off from coming anywhere close to mastering it.

I also played a bunch of NES Soccer games, and the ones I played actually were as bad as magazines of the day made out, I don't know what was up with the Japanese and their Soccer games (maybe the game was just low priority to them) but they tend to be very scrappy (loads of flicker, loose controls) and seem a little unpolished compared to those on SMS (Tecmo Soccer was a top down game and it looked and played like crap compared to Sensible Soccer and Super Kick Off, Konami Hyper Soccer had tons of flicker, iffy colision detection, and ran at an odd pace)

[TailsAlone]

Totally ignore them. Well, almost. Sometimes I fool around with one of the NFL 2Ks, but more to tinker with the teams and options than to actually play it. Sports games have gotten too complicated since the 16-bit days...I don't like them enough to keep track of all the controls.

I remember putting hours of thought into changing the team rosters on NFL 2K5, then watching the computer play itself. It was pretty embarrassing. The QB always makes ridiculous passes to a guy in the flat for no gain, if he's not throwing an interception. That's realistic? NFL 2K1 had better AI four years ago.

[16-bit]

I usually ignore sports title that aren't really arcade style. I'm not to fond of Madden, NHL, or Fifa series, but I love games like NBA Jam, Blades of Steel, Base wars, and Tecmo Bowl.