We’ve seen multiple improvements during the evolution of the sports gaming experience, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg of what the future holds.
In case you cannot get enough of the countless sports on television, several sports video games can entertain you for hours on end. The sports gaming world didn’t begin with the lifelike facial features of real football players, so let’s look and see where the evolution of the sports gaming experience began.
Tennis for Two
Surprisingly enough, the first sports gaming experience happened when Mickey Mantle was the best player in baseball, and the Super Bowl wasn’t even a thing. William Higinbotham used his big physicist brain to develop the first game titled Tennis for Two using an oscilloscope.However, we know this game best as being Atari’s Pong. The tennis-like game took the world by storm in 1972. At the time, this game was a cutting-edge innovation. No players or detailed graphics were involved, but Pong was revolutionary at the time.
Atari’s Big Boom
Pong helped Atari get its name on the map, but it wasn’t until 1980 that Space Invaders made the gaming console a hot commodity in homes worldwide. Times were much simpler in the ’80s, when kids swapped game cartridges, went to war in games such as Combat, and brought the arcade classic Pac-Man to their television sets.Atari was still flying high in the sports realm by introducing new sporting games to its catalog. Most of their games were self-titled of the sport you played—Tennis, Golf, and Boxing. We didn’t see the first recognizable sports figure in the title of the game until 1987, with Electronic Arts’ Earl Weaver Baseball. The following year, we got an Atari staple, Pete Rose Baseball.
One must assume that the all-time MLB hit leader—who remains banned by baseball today—must collect a check to pay a debt. Thus, Pete Rose Baseball came to light.
Sweet 16-Bit
As technology is prone to do, the gaming world begins to improve as time progresses. Gone were the days of 8-bit gaming, and in came the 16-bit systems that were another integral part of the sports gaming universe.The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were gaining steam thanks to John Madden Football. It’s safe to say that the Madden football franchise is the sport’s gaming industry’s most financially successful game in history. Even with all the game studio’s flaws, people still want to take the snap with their favorite quarterback.
Beyond Madden, we played Ken Griffey Jr’s Major League Baseball, RBI Baseball, and NBA Jam.
The Golden Age of Sports Gaming
The 16-bit graphics of SNES and Sega were cutting the mustard as we were heading into the millennium, especially with the dot-com boom we were in the midst of. With the addition of current gaming regulars, Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox, and Nintendo’s 64, developers capitalized on their superior systems and rising demand for sports gaming. While other companies tried to go toe-to-toe with the big boys, they petered out and became distant memories. Yes, we’re talking about you, Sega Dreamcast.Fast-forward to now, and a handful of franchises have monopolized the sports gaming market for state-of-the-art consoles, such as the PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. We’ve barely scratched the surface of virtual reality and simulated sports games. Still, the evolution of the sports gaming experience proves it’s becoming more realistic that many homes will have a sports simulator, giving us a chance to literally get into the game.
