Gaming off the Beaten Path

  As much as I like sports games, I'm really not a fan of most of them before the 5th generation. However, I do have my share of exceptions. Of course, Tecmo Super Bowl is awesome. I don't really consider them true sports games, but I guess Punchout and Super Punchout are boxing titles. Exceptions like that are why I don't really like to make generalizations. But then again, those generalizations have to come from somewhere. It's a weird dichotomy. And fortunately, we don't have to explore it any further, because this week I want to talk about another, almost universal exception to this generalization, arcade style sports games. Maybe it's because they make absolutely no attempt to mimic actual sports at all, but I've always loved old school arcade sports games. NBA Jam is the first one that jumps to mind for a lot of people. I'm not a huge basketball fan...but I absolutely love NBA Jam. What other game allows you to have Hillary Clinton do a 360 flip du...

  My goodness, are technical difficulties annoying. I had my 5th anniversary final almost completely done, ready and scripted. The key word there is had. Thanks to some unfortunate computer issues, it got deleted, so I am going to have to re-write my entire 10 round fight. It's a lot of work to do those and I don't want to rush to try to get it done, I want to give Suikoden II and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne their due time in the spotlight. So, I am going to pivot and do that next week. Besides, it allows me to continue yet another Gaming Off the Beaten Path tradition: starting the year with an old sports game. I have already talked about Madden '04, it was actually the first 10s game I wrote about (I guess it was really about all the PS2 era Maddens, but '04 was the one I discussed the most). But again, that was the 6th generation version. Which I honestly thought was the only version. I didn't realize they were still making Madden games for the PS1 in 2004, so I ...

It's been a long time coming, but it finally happened. I finished franchise mode. I had heard for years that it was possible but had never seen it happen. The mode ends after 30 years and I don't think I ever got past 15. I would usually get bored once the actual players all retired and you were just left with randomly generated guys. But this time I threw in a twist. I would also play NCAA football side by side and import my draft class in each year. I decided on doing this all on the '08 version of both games. The reason? It's the only year I had both games. Nice and simple.  Full disclosure, I am not going to finish my NCAA dynasty through to the end, that runs 60 years and it's just not going to happen. Honestly, I just don't like the NCAA games as much as I do Madden. For one, I, like any good Northeasterner, don't really care all that much about college football. Who am I going to root for, Rutgers? I used to live about 10 minutes from High Point Solut...

It's time to continue our now-annual tradition of starting the year with an old sports game review. A few weeks ago, I talked about Cricket. Now it's time to talk about how we put bats on balls on this side of the pond. I can't, for the life of me, determine when this edition of Triple Play Baseball came from. A quick web search will show that it came out in 2001 and is the only game in EA's baseball sim series that doesn't have a year attached to it. You would think that you would just find the year that's missing, but the same search will also turn up information on Triple Play 2000, 2001 and 2002 and they all appear to be unique games. Maybe this is Triple Play 2001.5? I guess we shouldn't get that wrapped up in such things. I mean, does it really matter? Of course not. The quality of the game is what's important. And Triple Play Baseball has to be at least decent, right? I mean, EA was on fire at this point and with their quality control and attent...

So it looks like it's we're back into "this is totally and completely countercultural for me" territory. I'm just going to come out and say it, I know next to nothing about NASCAR. I know it's incredibly popular, but it's just not something I grew up with. I'm from the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line for that. But it's more than just regional. Racing just wasn't something my parents or anyone I knew paid attention to. As little as I know about NASCAR, I know even less about F-1 or rally racing or drag racing or whatever other competitive kinds of racing are out there. My extent of knowledge of the sport comes from not changing the channel when SportsCenter showed race footage between football highlights and coverage of MLB trade rumors. It's not that I don't have respect for NASCAR drivers, in fact I don't understand people that refuse to call them athletes. "They only make left turns!" Have you ever made a left turn go...