I was away from the community for a while, but now I will come back strong with the hype of PS4 behind me!

Anyway, I am not a huge sports game fan, even though I play a lot of sports and watch a lot as well.

I remember an NHL game called NHL Hitz 2003. I am not an avid follower of hockey, but I believe this game blended a simulation season experience with an arcade play style. As the name suggests, the game is similar to Blitz in the way you can cause big hits and has other fun aspects to it. I only played it for a week or two, as it was a rental from Blockbuster, but that playtime sticks in my mind so vividly.

Maybe a couple of you guys would want to try it out as it should be real cheap now as it is 10 years old.

Cheers,

Leucrota

When listening to the podcast this forum thread jumped into my mind straight away. My favourite football game is still Nintendo World Cup on the NES, which completely ignores most rules in football. But who cares, if you can play on ice or in the desert and beat the other team by knocking them all out? A golf game with alligators or a new version of Ninja Golf on the Atari 7800 would also be appreciated.

I definitely took the point you and Mike were trying to make there – I just had to do a bit of generalisation about arcade vs sim style or my post would have gone on forever. I agree with you mostly.

We had a discussion on the forum a while back and wondered why indie developers didn’t try and use the old sports games as inspiration for making fun, accessible games – a modern Sensible Soccer, or a golf game where you wrestle alligators during your round, or a Bowling RPG:

[quote]an amateur league bowling game that would incorporate rpg elements including, but not limited to: drunkenness, people hitting on your g/f or b/f, and social situations that would affect your skill and power. Plus, you could include old arcade cabinet games as minigames and have a jukebox [/quote]

Too busy making endless platformers and being precious, no doubt 😛

I did want to clarify one thing. I think we all tried to emphasize at one point or another (Mike and I in particular), we are not saying all sports games need to be more acadey. While we expressed fondess for the fun and accessibility of games like NBA Jam and Mario Sports games, it didn’t always work for us like NFL Street and at the end of the day (despite Mac always going for it fourth down), we are all huge sports fans and do appreciate the respective sports and want a large degree of realism.

The problem is that the developers only focus on the realism and don’t try to surprise us with perhaps something new and different that might appeal to us beyond just pure realism. I think a better balance between realism, gameplay and accessibility while lowering sales/marketing expectations would go a long way for many sports titles not named Madden.

[quote=Mike Bracken]Crofto,

Not sure if I ever said it or not, but I was planning to mention that we did a whole sports show without once mentioning soccer (sorry, there’s only one football, and that’s the kind played with the pigskin… :p). I knew with as many readers/listeners we have abroad that someone would mention it.

Sorry for the oversight. Soccer is not my bag at all. If someone said you can watch soccer or you can watch NASCAR, I’m looking for a gun. :p
[/quote] The irony is that we’ve had some serious football/soccer fans in our staff over the years. The first pro-soccer game I ever attended was with none other than Ben Hooper when we met at E3. We decided to catch a LA Galaxy game one evening after E3 ended for the day. Thom Moyles was also another soccer diehard.

Not sure if I ever said it or not, but I was planning to mention that we did a whole sports show without once mentioning soccer (sorry, there’s only one football, and that’s the kind played with the pigskin… :p). I knew with as many readers/listeners we have abroad that someone would mention it.

Sorry for the oversight. Soccer is not my bag at all. If someone said you can watch soccer or you can watch NASCAR, I’m looking for a gun. :p

I’m the same as Pedro in that I prefer more simulation above accessibility. Ironically enough, whereas you guys believe Madden and NBA titles etc. are getting more hardcore, I believe football titles like FIFA are still way, way off the pace as far as realism goes. As an avid football fan, I find the pace, fluidity, physics, animations, AI, and tactical and strategic elements of modern FIFA titles to be disappointing. If anything, FIFA still represents the kind of semi-realistic fully-accessible sports titles you guys seemingly want more of. It’s a shame that football is something that does not compute for you American folk ;p

But yeah, I think we need to be careful about potentially criticising titles like Madden for being too hardcore. At the end of the day, there are clearly enough sports fans and gamers who enjoy simulation-like titles, so it would do more harm than good to seek to ‘nerf’ such games in order to make them more accessible. I think the efforts being made with spin-offs is worth acknowledging (which Mike did), but I also appreciate the frivolity of such titles (e.g. FIFA Street being the football equivalent) being off-putting too. There is a middle-ground to be found, but compromising fundamental traits of modern sports titles is not the way forward, for me.

The world is football mad! Nudge nudge wink wink – get with the programme GC!

They are like the Xbone people – nothing exists outside of North America 😛