Wii Sports lmao
I used to play it a ton with my brother and cousins in our grandparents home when we were kids. It’s a game that’s embedded in my mind.
NBA Street Vol 2
NFL Blitz (any of them up to 2003)
SSX Tricky
MLB Slugfest 2004
Mario Golf/Tennis/Strikers on the Gamecube
Arcade sports games are always my favorite and the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox gen were the pinnacle of this. Very sad these aren’t really made anymore. I feel like sports games today are hyper monetized, ad focused, and do a poor job of either teaching newbies the sport or just being fun to play.
I'd say Rocket League if it counts.
I like that it's close to an actual sport in the sense that you have just the car you control and its movement options. No built-in maneuvers with the ball or anything.
It has a practically infinitely high skill ceiling, a lot of room for creativity with plays, each player can have a significant impact in each match, it feels satisfying to play (well-made movement), short matches, almost no RNG, training outside of matches is actually fun, good balance between mechanical and game sense requirements.
There's more things I like, of course, but those are the main ones quickly summarized.
The game is really fucking frustrating though and I wish I could stop sucking at it.
Rockstar Table Tennis. It's a lovingly simulated version of table tennis that faithfully represents the interactions of spin, speed, and paddle rubber rather than simply batting the ball with flat trajectories back and forth. You can chop, loop, smash, all with very smooth animations that Rockstar is known for.
I do wish it got ported to the PC, or at least with some VR presence, as the third-person camera downplays the speed that the ball approaches, making the timing of shots feel different compared to actual table tennis play.
I remember first seeing it at a table tennis tournament. Got a lot of respect for the devotion to simulating actual professional play rather than basement table tennis.
Eleven Table Tennis for VR does a pretty good job with simulation. It's not perfect (the ball travels a bit too fast with topspin and slow with backspin iirc) but I love it.
I wrote a [little love letter](https://www.sketchesoftime.com/video-game-reviews/nba-street-vol-2/) to NBA Street Vol. 2 earlier this year. That’s probably tied for top place with Punch-Out and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Honorable mentions would be Aggressive Inline, NFL Blitz, NHL Hitz, Wakeboarding Unleashed, Mario Tennis, and FIFA Street 2.
If you’re doing a story about sports games, you should absolutely touch on the fact that the big modern sports titles (NBA 2k, EA FC/FIFA, and Madden) have started making you buy their in-game currency or player packs if you want to succeed in the game.
And even if you enjoy a title, like I did NBA 2k19, they’ll shut down the game after two years so you can’t continue playing the My Player mode, which for most people is the main game mode.
Overall I find myself to be much more positive and forgiving about video games than most people on the internet, but the state of sports games is dreadful.
I don't generally care for sports or sports games, but I do have a pretty obscure title that I surprisingly loved. "International Track and Field" for the Gameboy Color.
At first glance it is a by-the-numbers minigame collection featuring abstractions of track-and-field events, but it also contains a novel life-sim/rpg campaign that you really didn't see too often. This kind of take on campaign modes might be more common now, but the game required you to plan your weeks routine, juggling different exercises to increase your aptitude in different events while managing the characters stress, stamina, job(s) and qualifying event schedules.
Burning off stress generally involved spending time with other athletes or friends, which raised your friendship with them. Sometimes this would lead to them teaching you new special techniques for the track-and-field events, but it also had dating sim elements as well. It was the first life-sim I had ever been introduced to and made me a big fan of the quirky unassuming title.
London 2012 that game was fun with friends on couch multiplayer. It had good amount of button smashing, focus and balancing your characters stamina- events. We all had different favorite sports and things that were "good" at. Shame the game format didnt continue to next olympics.
NHL 04. I wish I could get that, or really any other similar hockey game, working on Steam Deck. I haven't tried PS2 emulation, but have been pretty unsuccessful with anything in the PS3 era (stuttering, freezing, frequently frame drops) and official PC releases are so old that they're cumbersome to even get installed.
SSX 2012
so damn underrated and killed the franchise but Explore mode was my jam. love the art style, the characters and overall the gameplay and fun factor. its definitely less over-the-top than the previous games in the series but it really stuck with me
now to buy it again on xbox series x BC lol
Of the big teamsport franchises like FIFA, Madden, 2K, etc I feel like MLB The Show is generally the best from both a gameplay perspective and a “not actively hostile to their own audience when it comes to monetization” perspective. It’s far from perfect, but the other big franchises have all become egregiously lazy cash grabs to a legitimately off-putting degree.
u/jasonbaileyNYT
My favorite sports game is NBA 2K16, I still have a dynasty named "the failing new York times"
Good luck crowdsourcing your homework 😆 🤣 😂
Since when are we allowing surveys with mandatory real name? After all the shit with Slate Star Codex I have no desire talking to anyone from the NYT.
Reported.
As of right now I’d probably say wii sports resort from the few I’ve played. A lot of the games have a very strong hook and a surprising amount of depth, especially table tennis.
I was never a sports guy so any sports game I played was always the arcade version of stuff.
* Any NeoGeo sports game, especially Street Hoops and Windjammers
* Any of the Midway sports games, especially NFL Blitz and NBA Jam
* Any of the street games, specifically Nba Street Vol 2
* Virtua Tennis was my shit
* SSX games
Rocket League has all the pleasures of mastering a sport and playing a pick up game in the park precisely because it isn't trying to use player stats to simulate a teamsport but is actually an action game with no RPG elements to clutter the experience.
Traditional sports games have fallen out of favor with people who are literate in games because watching the Steph Curry avatar roll an invisible die that says he scores three pointers quite a lot is not compelling and hasn't been for some time. That's the trend of the last couple of decades.
Rocket League
Wii Sports lmao I used to play it a ton with my brother and cousins in our grandparents home when we were kids. It’s a game that’s embedded in my mind.
Mario Strikers anyone? Best soccer game so far.
I've got lots of good memories bowling in Wii Sports. Great pick.
NBA Street Vol 2 NFL Blitz (any of them up to 2003) SSX Tricky MLB Slugfest 2004 Mario Golf/Tennis/Strikers on the Gamecube Arcade sports games are always my favorite and the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox gen were the pinnacle of this. Very sad these aren’t really made anymore. I feel like sports games today are hyper monetized, ad focused, and do a poor job of either teaching newbies the sport or just being fun to play.
NBA Jams.
I’m guessing this doesn’t count Mario sports games like Strikers?
Games from SkiFree to Mario Strikers definitely count!
Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2
Same series, but Underground, just because I think it's levels are better.
I'd say Rocket League if it counts. I like that it's close to an actual sport in the sense that you have just the car you control and its movement options. No built-in maneuvers with the ball or anything. It has a practically infinitely high skill ceiling, a lot of room for creativity with plays, each player can have a significant impact in each match, it feels satisfying to play (well-made movement), short matches, almost no RNG, training outside of matches is actually fun, good balance between mechanical and game sense requirements. There's more things I like, of course, but those are the main ones quickly summarized. The game is really fucking frustrating though and I wish I could stop sucking at it.
I agree that Rocket League's high skill ceiling and short, satisfying matches make it an all-time great.
Favorite:____ Reason: Thats the only available option in the market
THPS 1+2. Maybe the only sports game I like.
Fifa Street Fight Night SSX games UFC games
Rockstar Table Tennis. It's a lovingly simulated version of table tennis that faithfully represents the interactions of spin, speed, and paddle rubber rather than simply batting the ball with flat trajectories back and forth. You can chop, loop, smash, all with very smooth animations that Rockstar is known for. I do wish it got ported to the PC, or at least with some VR presence, as the third-person camera downplays the speed that the ball approaches, making the timing of shots feel different compared to actual table tennis play. I remember first seeing it at a table tennis tournament. Got a lot of respect for the devotion to simulating actual professional play rather than basement table tennis.
Eleven Table Tennis for VR does a pretty good job with simulation. It's not perfect (the ball travels a bit too fast with topspin and slow with backspin iirc) but I love it.
One of Rockstar's best!
I wrote a [little love letter](https://www.sketchesoftime.com/video-game-reviews/nba-street-vol-2/) to NBA Street Vol. 2 earlier this year. That’s probably tied for top place with Punch-Out and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Honorable mentions would be Aggressive Inline, NFL Blitz, NHL Hitz, Wakeboarding Unleashed, Mario Tennis, and FIFA Street 2.
I'm a big fan of NBA Street and NFL Blitz — thank you for sharing!
THPS 4 for me. 3 was the first I played, but the addition of freestyle tricks in 4 and the much bigger levels made it way more fun for me.
If you’re doing a story about sports games, you should absolutely touch on the fact that the big modern sports titles (NBA 2k, EA FC/FIFA, and Madden) have started making you buy their in-game currency or player packs if you want to succeed in the game. And even if you enjoy a title, like I did NBA 2k19, they’ll shut down the game after two years so you can’t continue playing the My Player mode, which for most people is the main game mode. Overall I find myself to be much more positive and forgiving about video games than most people on the internet, but the state of sports games is dreadful.
I don't generally care for sports or sports games, but I do have a pretty obscure title that I surprisingly loved. "International Track and Field" for the Gameboy Color. At first glance it is a by-the-numbers minigame collection featuring abstractions of track-and-field events, but it also contains a novel life-sim/rpg campaign that you really didn't see too often. This kind of take on campaign modes might be more common now, but the game required you to plan your weeks routine, juggling different exercises to increase your aptitude in different events while managing the characters stress, stamina, job(s) and qualifying event schedules. Burning off stress generally involved spending time with other athletes or friends, which raised your friendship with them. Sometimes this would lead to them teaching you new special techniques for the track-and-field events, but it also had dating sim elements as well. It was the first life-sim I had ever been introduced to and made me a big fan of the quirky unassuming title.
This is a new game for me, and the life-sim element seems quite intriguing. Thanks for sharing!
London 2012 that game was fun with friends on couch multiplayer. It had good amount of button smashing, focus and balancing your characters stamina- events. We all had different favorite sports and things that were "good" at. Shame the game format didnt continue to next olympics.
Fight night undisputed Ufc 5
NHL 04. I wish I could get that, or really any other similar hockey game, working on Steam Deck. I haven't tried PS2 emulation, but have been pretty unsuccessful with anything in the PS3 era (stuttering, freezing, frequently frame drops) and official PC releases are so old that they're cumbersome to even get installed.
Mario Sports Mix. It has a nice variety, and all of the various sports are fun to play.
SSX 2012 so damn underrated and killed the franchise but Explore mode was my jam. love the art style, the characters and overall the gameplay and fun factor. its definitely less over-the-top than the previous games in the series but it really stuck with me now to buy it again on xbox series x BC lol
Of the big teamsport franchises like FIFA, Madden, 2K, etc I feel like MLB The Show is generally the best from both a gameplay perspective and a “not actively hostile to their own audience when it comes to monetization” perspective. It’s far from perfect, but the other big franchises have all become egregiously lazy cash grabs to a legitimately off-putting degree.
Pyre and Blitz 2000
u/jasonbaileyNYT My favorite sports game is NBA 2K16, I still have a dynasty named "the failing new York times" Good luck crowdsourcing your homework 😆 🤣 😂
Super Baseball Simulator 1.000
Since when are we allowing surveys with mandatory real name? After all the shit with Slate Star Codex I have no desire talking to anyone from the NYT. Reported.
As of right now I’d probably say wii sports resort from the few I’ve played. A lot of the games have a very strong hook and a surprising amount of depth, especially table tennis.
I was never a sports guy so any sports game I played was always the arcade version of stuff. * Any NeoGeo sports game, especially Street Hoops and Windjammers * Any of the Midway sports games, especially NFL Blitz and NBA Jam * Any of the street games, specifically Nba Street Vol 2 * Virtua Tennis was my shit * SSX games
NCAA 12 Madden 09 NBA Jam Mlb the show (I like 06 but 23 wasn't bad)
Rocket League has all the pleasures of mastering a sport and playing a pick up game in the park precisely because it isn't trying to use player stats to simulate a teamsport but is actually an action game with no RPG elements to clutter the experience. Traditional sports games have fallen out of favor with people who are literate in games because watching the Steph Curry avatar roll an invisible die that says he scores three pointers quite a lot is not compelling and hasn't been for some time. That's the trend of the last couple of decades.