Arcade Sports, I miss you...

I miss the fun sports video games. I really do.





So news has it that there’s a new Tony Hawk game in development for the eighth generation. Maybe the comeback of the fun sports games is imminent.


For you folks that remembered the time period that was ruled by the Playstation 2, Tony Hawk Proskater was one of the greatest franchises in the business. What started out as a decent game emerged into a powerhouse with ProSkater 2. By the time we were treated with ProSkater 3 and 4, the gaming industry was pretty much in love with the skateboarding genre and arcade sports in general.


ProSkater was an example of a great blend of old-school simplicity with new-school depth that we saw plenty of amongst sports games in the PS2 days. The game was easy to pick up, but was still a serious piece of work for the hardcore crowd. NBA Jam was an excellent sports video game not because of its realism, but because it was smooth as silk, fun to play, and never demeans a person who isn’t knowledgeable of the NBA. It keeps the stats of the players simple, and keeps the game simple enough for anyone to follow and become a fan. That’s why skateboarding had its short run of fame in the early 2000s, the slew of kids, tweens, teens, and college peeps that were drowning their life in ProSkater.


Now remember what awesome sports games we had back in the day between 1998—2005 (Before the seventh generation): MVP Baseball, All-Star Baseball 2000, Ken Griffey Jr. Slugfest, WWF No Mercy, Tony Hawk ProSkater 2-4, Underground, Mario Tennis (Don’t laugh), Virtua Tennis, the ENTIRE sports catalog on the Sega Dreamcast, NFL 2K5 (We all remember this one quite, quite well), Madden 2004, 1080 Snowboarding, Excitebike 64, SSX 3, among others.


So what happened you ask? The sports games became far too serious for their own good.



Madden is a disaster, as the NFL’s grubby hands are tainting the franchise to a point in which concussions are knocking out players in the video game---just to avoid those lawsuits. And after EA pretty much eliminated any chance of competition, they became lazy and never took the Madden brand to new directions like in the PS2 days.


The MLB baseball games are becoming far too realistic to a point in which your pitching and hitting mechanics become a chore, as opposed to just depending on button-pressing and good timing. The baseball video games have wound up becoming just as lengthy as the actual thing----and back in the 90s this was never an issue.


NBA 2K has amazing, amazing attention to detail, but this abrasive amount of attention can really be jarring. Does it really require me to go through a chain of command just to take a shot? And don’t get me started on being forced to behave in order to succeed in the create-a-player campaign.


Remember NHL 94’? Yea, good luck gaining back the smooth flow of that classic on these modern-day NHL games.



Much like how sports are an escape from the real world, sports video games are supposed to be an escape from real sports. Your Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Cavaliers had a chance back in the 90s in a sports video game. But nowadays, good freakin’ luck. There are too many stats, too many factors, too many attributes that slowly drains the dream and converts it to reality. And although this new direction of sports video games is indeed hailed by most, I for one yearn for the days when the sports games had the arcade pick-up-and-play feel. Sports video games should be a 55/45 split in terms of realism/arcade. The best sports games are those that allow you to pick a horrible franchise and still think “…so you are saying that there’s a chance.”


This is why the Mario sports games had their thriving moments last decade; they were our last hope for the arcade feel. Mario Strikers Charged was a few cheap shots away from being the best soccer video game ever made. To this day I am shocked Nintendo didn’t attempt to do a soccer game for the WiiU in time for the 2014 World Cup. There is still not a single tennis video game that can top Mario Tennis for the N64. And lastly, Mario Golf for the Game Boy Color is one of the 25 most underrated games you’ll ever play, and one of the better examples of being a “Why has Nintendo not expanded upon this concept when its guaranteed quality gold!?!?!?” game. Nowadays, well, not sure why Nintendo hasn’t expanded on the Mario Sports brand. How the handheld games contained deeper than the console versions will never make sense to me….


Bottom Line: Current sports video games (normal sports, extreme sports, etc.) play like the equivalent of adding dozens of restrictive rules to a kid’s game of four square---it stops being fun when there are so many eggshells to avoid. Modern sports games don’t allow the product to breathe, to have some creative freedoms.

With Tony Hawk attempting a comeback, I would love to see a return to the arcade-style gameplay that gives novice gamers and non-hardcore players a chance to have just as much fun as the experts and the fanatics. Although I am usually against watering down hardcore products in the gaming industry, they actually help certain genres with sports games being the best example. This is why NBA Jam for the Super Nintendo still gets more play than sports games of this decade---the simplistic fun that defines the sport, but doesn’t squash you with technicalities.



You can keep your brutally realistic sports games; I just want them to be fun again.