Rarely considered for overall video-game-of-the-year honors, the uncommon diversity of sports video games, and the unique demands placed on them to recreate both a real-world sport and the real-life experiences associated with ...
The Video Game Awards celebrated 10 years of giving out hardware on Friday. Bet you didn’t know, or at least you forgot, who was the first winner of its Game of the Year award. Madden. Specifically, Madden NFL 2004—...
More than a year ago, Abe Stein of the Game Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reached out to me about a survey he was conducting, an examination of sports video gamers. Stein, himself a committed sports gamer, wa...
With respect and admiration for, if not apologies to, the late Ernie Harwell, here’s something adapted from his famous Induction Day speech at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Aug. 2, 1981, which itself was adapted fro...
He renamed all his teammates for his friends, he put himself on the roster and took all of the best equipment. He rebounded from painful defeats—or, eh, restarted a few here and there—and scored fist-pumping victori...
The Wii may have been the worst console for sports video games ever—not “worst major,” not “worst of its generation,” flat out the worst console for sports video games. I know it had Tiger Woods PG...
The question was put forth this past week, in a podcast where I was a panelist: Are sports video games in a golden age? “No,” seems to be the most obvious answer. Ten years ago, we had competing simulation titles in...
Let’s be candid. As a licensed sports video game, when your series hasn’t been on shelves in three years—a gap not seen since the days games were played on cartridges—you really face just one expectation...
If you’re sick and tired of Madden NFL, or if you just don’t want to wait until the end of the month to complain about it, why not get a real downloadable roster update for a sports video game really released two ye...