4/8/2024:
Been planning to replay some of my favorite old sports games on my Steam Deck soon. Sports and video games have always been my two main hobbies, and the intersection is a natural one. I’ve never been a sports fan for the sake of cheering on a team, but rather just enjoy playing games and watching high level competitions. Also, as a person who started gaming around '92 and has followed all major US sports leagues since then as well, it’s been fun watching the evolution of graphics and other technical upgrades play out in sports games, along with the change in players and eras that populate them.
So when I think of my favorite sports games, it often has less to do with how close they came to perfecting that particular sport in video games, but rather what was fun to play and what little details/upgrades did the game bring to the table that grabbed my interest at the time. With that in mind, I’m curious how these games will hold up as I replay them decades later, and if they’re still fun or were just less bad than their predecessors at the time. I know for sure, I always found the sports games that straddled the line of arcade/sim the closest were the funnest. That usually manifested in a game that was meant to be a sim, but was not. To start, here are a couple of my past favs. I’ll probably add more later.
My mom randomly brought this game home from work one day along with a promotional Kobe Bryant bobblehead, that I still have. I think she saw it in Target or something and wanted to surprise me, idk, but we didn’t have much money back then, so my mom bringing home a new game on a whim was unheard of.
Anyway, as a huge bball nerd and Kobe fan at the time I was ecstatic. However, as a video game fan, I was not high on the Courtside series at the time. I was a PSX kid, and always preferred NBA Live. (Why I had a GCN after being a PSX kid is another story). So I popped in the game with very low expectations, and was immediately reprimanded by the sweet sweet gameplay and graphics. This was hands down the funnest and prettiest bball game to date at the time. Sure the players were a little too jacked and the game was too easy, but the players’ faces were mad accurate for the first time ever, dunking was fun for the first time ever, alley oops were easy and fun to pull off, and the ball/rim physics were impeccable. Also, this game still contains probably my favorite NBA roster of all time.
I first got into the Triple Play series with '99 after seeing a sick commercial featuring a polygonal A Rod at a press conference, and immediately asked my mom to buy me the game the next time I could get a present or something. She got it for me for Easter, and ever since then I love brining in the good feelings of spring time and baseball together with my newest favorite baseball game (currently having a good time doing this with The Show '24).
Triple Play was cool to me because it was the first series I remember having personalized batting stances for players. A lot were reused, not all were individualized, but the star players had very distinct batting styles that the game reflected well for the first time. Also, the graphics were sweet and still some of my favorite baseball player models. Just the right amount of accuracy and low poly blurriness that the PSX is known for. Hitting was fun and HRs weren’t common, but also weren’t hard. And most importantly you didn’t have to use that stupid hitting cursor that I still despise to this day (another conversation).
After recent replays:
- NBA Courtside 2002 holds up 10/10, visuals and gameplay wise. It looks like you'd think a Gamecube hoops game should look like (evolved N64 visuals), and plays as well as NBA Jam ever did.
- Triple Play '99 holds up 10/10 visuals due to the perfect execution of PSX baseball graphics. Not the best on the console, but the most aesthetically pleasing for sure. Sadly, only holds up for 5/10 minutes gameplay wise. It can be fun, but it's not tight enough to recommend going back to. Hit up TP 2000 or 2001 for that.
