Learn About Sports Simulation Games

What Are Sports Simulation Games?

A sports simulation is a video game modeled on a real-life sport. These include team sports such as baseball, basketball, and football, as well as a wide variety of other sports such as tennis, track and field, hunting, racing, bowling, rowing, and many more. Due to the nature of the sports on which they are based, sports simulations are often intended to be played by multiple players competing against one another, though many single-player sports simulations also exist in which the player competes against computer-controlled opponents or the clock.

The History of Sports Simulation Games

Because the field of sports simulation is so diverse, only a brief sketch of the genre’s history is offered here. Sports simulations have existed since the earliest days of electronic gaming. Popular sports provided a ready-made subject for video games, since players would typically already know the rules and have some experience playing the flesh-and-blood version of the game.

The first sport to be translated into video game form was tennis. In 1958, an American physicist named William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two on an oscilloscope. Only one version of the game was created, however, and it remained relatively unknown in its own time.

Not until the advent of arcade games in the 1970s did sports simulators become widespread. It was, in fact, another game inspired by tennis (through tennis’s cousin ping-pong) that launched the video game industry. Pong was an extremely simple game in terms of both graphics and gameplay, but it was also entertaining and addictive enough to become the first runaway hit in the video game field. In the wake of Pong, many new types of arcade games proliferated in the mid-to-late 1970s, including sports games. In 1978, Atari Football was released, representing an important advance in sports simulation. Despite the fact that the trackball control mechanism of the game was somewhat awkward, it became one of the most popular arcade games of its day and paved the way for the nascent sports simulator industry.

In the 1980s, home video game consoles went mainstream, and many sports simulators were created for them. Although Atari dominated the home video game market, the Intellivision by Mattel boasted of its superior sports offerings, including World Series Baseball, which marked a major leap forward in video game graphics. Every major sport was reborn in electronic-game form at some point during this period. Sports simulators, both original games and ports from the arcade, also began to appear on home computers.

In addition, Football Manager, released in 1982, launched a new subgenre of sports games that focuses on all aspects of managing a sports franchise rather than only playing and winning individual games. Another example of a successful game in this subgenre is the Baseball Mogul series of the late 1990s and 2000s, as well as later incarnations of John Madden Football, one of the most lucrative video game franchises of all time.

Over time, sports games have not only improved but also diversified. Video games have long simulated sports beyond staples such as football and baseball. Nintendo’s Duck Hunt (1984) for instance, is a simple and early example of a hunting game; it became familiar to a generation of gamers due to its being packaged along with the NES console. Hunting games continue to be published today, with ever-improving graphics and gameplay. “Extreme” sports, such as skateboarding (e.g. the Tony Hawk series), have also blossomed in the past decade or so. Bowling, golf, boxing, fishing, horse racing, and pool are among the many other sports hat have also been adapted into video games.

Today, sports video games are still strong sellers. The Nintendo Wii, for example, comes bundled with simple but popular sports simulators played with the Wii’s advanced motion-sensor controller. New incarnations of classic series such as the John Madden games continue to be released, as well.

Who Will Like These Games?

Sports fans are obviously the primary candidates to enjoy sports-based video games, although there is no absolute guarantee that fans of a sport will necessarily enjoy the experience of playing a video game based upon it, or that those who do not enjoy a certain sport will not like the video game adaptation of it, either. Those players who enjoy action-oriented games or other games that require quick and accurate hand-eye coordination, are likely to enjoy sports simulations as well. Strategy gamers, or those who enjoy business simulation games, may wish to branch out a bit by trying their hands at franchise-management games.