The Best Sports Games Ever
It’s that time of year again when millions of Americans huddle around local bars, family rooms, and man caves to apparently inhale a ridiculous amount of chicken wings and enjoy some football. Whether your really a Panthers or Broncos fan or you’re there to see how Universal shoehorns Matt Damon into another Bourne movie, odds are you’re watching the game today. As gamers we rarely plug in to whatever sports season is happening right now (though we will make time for football), after all the overlap of the Venn diagram of sports enthusiasts and gamers is slim. On occasion though the worlds do collide when a truly fantastic sports translation works in a video game. Rocket League, for instance, mashed up soccer and racing in an incredibly addictive formula though we’ve yet to crack it open. We do, however have several sports games we hold dear.
Tragically what most gamers experience
Here now are our favorite sports games:
Football – Tecmo Bowl (NES 1989)
The game that started it all for us. Tecmo Bowl was the first football we ever had to play at home and probably wins for the nostalgia alone. The game was so clearly broken in that you could always pick the 49s and have Joe Montana throw 100+ yards to Jerry Rice over and over again, unless your opponent picked the Bears and rushed Singletary up the middle. The sequel to Tecmo Bowl was fairly great too. We’ve tried since to pick up various Maddens at times but the time commitment to really start enjoying those games is insane. Blitz and Pigskin 621 AD almost made it to the top but they paled in comparison to Tecmo Bowl. Seriously check this out:
Basketball – NBA Jam
BOOM SHAKALAKA! Gamers of a certain age will remember just how big this game was when it first hit arcades. For once, gamers were no longer throwing away quarters non stop on Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, or Mortal Kombat and, for just a while, they were actually playing a sports game. NBA Jam’s tongue in cheek, seriously streamlined gameplay did a lot to make basketball fun. Pick and roll, five second penalty, fouls, screw that noise. Just shove and drive to the basket! The game continues to live a vibrant life on consoles for a while, especially thanks to the inventive assortment of hidden characters you could unlock – though sadly we could never find any code to let us finally play as Jordan. Runners up: Arch Rivals, Double Dribble, and NCAA Basketball on SNES
Yeah, you still hear that voice in your head.
Hockey – Blades of Steel
Ok, full disclosure, our awareness of hockey as a sport and as a game is remarkably superficial. The times we have enjoyed the sport meant we were usually fairly intoxicated and we haven’t really picked up a hockey game since the NES and Sega era. And while NES’s original Hockey title is still pretty special, it’s Blades of Steel that takes home the prize. It was a perfectly functional hockey game that included two key elements. First, if you body checked your opponent just right, you’d unlock the brawling mini game which, at the time, was awesome. Second, between periods you were greeted with a random mini game you could play which on occasion included the Konami classic, Gradius. A fighting and shooting game masquerading as a hockey experience? What more could we want?
I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out. BoS knew what we’d want to play.
Racing – Mario Kart
The list of viable racing games is actually quite long. We could go back to RC Pro Am or Off-Road (two of our absolute favorites) or even recent games like Gran Turismo and, yes, the Need for Speed franchise have consumed many of our nights. But no racing game has probably had the staying power nor garnered so much enthusiasm from us as the Mario Kart franchise. Mario Kart 8 is arguably the best title on the Wii U and almost alone makes the console worth it to us but our favorite ever was the N64’s Mario Kart game. There was something about the combination of Wario’s Stadium, Yoshi’s Valley, and that version of Rainbow Road that stuck with us all of these years. We hope Nintendo keeps up with this franchise and brings back the classic deathmatch mode in the next iteration.
Live long and prosper, and bring back deathmatch!
Unconventional – Deathrow
There are so many titles we could have listed here. From Twisted Metal, to Pit Fighter, to Carmageddon, to even Joust. There are so many fictional sports games out there but our standout favorite that has since been lost to time was Xbox’s combative hockey and basketball mashup, Deathrow. The game takes place in the 23rd century when organized crime and violence have seeped into popular sports (at least at a more pronounced level than today). You play as one of several teams of 4 in a no holds barred game to shoot a disc into the opponent’s goal. That’s all well and good but you can also win if you just flat out murder the other team. Yes, the rulebook is vague on the matter so beating the opposing team into a concussive stupor is a legitimate plan. Better yet, the game featured couch coop so we had many great afternoons with friends ignoring the score and just bashing the other team to the ground to win each and every round. Just awesome.
Oh, you guys practiced for this game? We just brought our iron toed boots.
What other games did you love that we forgot? Let us know in the comments below!
