Back in the Genesis era, Electronic Arts would release a new version of its more popular sports games every year.Years later, this leaves us in an interesting philosophical question – if you could only have 100 Genesis games, how many of them would be different versions of Madden?Depending on how much you like football, your answer should be either one or zero.The same principle applies to pretty much all the other sports that EA made a new game for every year – hockey, baseball, basketball, and soccer.Therefore, we’re going to just lump them all together as one series per sport.After many cases of Miester-Brau and some bare-knuckle boxing amongst the staff, we decided our favorites were Madden, NHL, FIFA, their various NBA series,and Triple Play/Tony Larussa. We also decided to keep PGA European Tour but get rid of the other gold games.Therefore, go ahead and say goodbye to EA Sports’ also-ran games:
Bill Walsh College Football
Bill Walsh College Football ‘95
College Football USA ’96
College Football USA ’97
PGA Tour Golf
PGA Tour Golf 2
PGA Tour Golf 3
PGA Tour Golf ’96
Of course, EA wasn’t the only company putting out sports games.A lot of other publishers released sports titles in the hopes of coming out with an even better product than Electronic Art’s offering and wrestling away some of their market dominance.At least that’s what they claimed.Since almost all of these games were cheaply produced knock-offs of the EA versions,it seems more likely that the companies that made them were really just hoping that some kid’s parents would get confused and accidentally buy the wrong football game.Well sorry, other sports games, if your entire legacy is ripping off a more successful franchise and making children sad on Christmas, then you can’t have a Seal of Approval.Therefore, we are eliminating the following games:
Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf
AWS Pro Moves Soccer
Brett Hull Hockey ’95
Cal Ripken Junior Baseball
Champions World Class Soccer
Chi Chi’s Pro Challenge
Coach K College Basketball
College Football’s National Championship
College Football’s National Championship II
David Robinson’s Supreme Court
Dick Vitale’s “Awesome, Baby!” College Basketball
Double Dribble The Playoff Edition
ESPN Baseball Tonight
ESPN National Hockey Night
ESPN Sunday Night NFL
Frank Thomas’ Big Hurt Baseball
Hardball
Hardball 3
Hardball ’94
Hardball ’95
Head-On Soccer
Jack Nicklaus Golf
Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football
Joe Montana Sportstalk Football ’94
Mario Lemieux Hockey
Mike Ditka Power Football
MLBPA Sports Talk Baseball
NBA Action ’94
NBA Action ’95
NBA Action ’96
NBA All Star Challenge
NBA Showdown ’94
NCAA Final Four Basketball
NCAA Football
NFL Prime Time ’97
NFL Prime Time ’98
NFL Quarterback Club
NFL Quarterback Club ’96
NFL Sports Talk Football ’93 Starring Joe Montana
NFL Sports Talk Football ’94 Starring Joe Montana
NFL Sports Talk Football ’95 Starring Joe Montana
NHL All-Star Hockey ’95
Pat Riley Basketball
Pebble Beach Golf
Pele 2 World Tournament
Pelé!
Pete Sampras Tennis
Pro Quarterback Football
RBI Baseball 3
RBI Baseball 4
RBI Baseball ’93
RBI Baseball ’94
Roger Clemens’ MVP Baseball
Tom Lasorda Baseball
Troy Aikman NFL Football
Unnecessary Roughness ’95
Wayne Gretzky Hockey
World Championship Soccer
World Championship Soccer 2
World Cup USA ’94
World Series Baseball
World Series Baseball ’95
World Series Baseball ’96
World Series Baseball ’98
World Trophy Soccer
By the way, these are just the “simulation”-style sports games.The more arcade-style games, such as NBA Jam, will live to fight another day.
Also, as long as we’re talking sports, let’s thin out the ranks of the tennis games, shall we?IMG International Tour Tennis is our game of choice, based almost solely on the fact that it was the only one we played where we could hit the ball with any kind of consistency.Hey look, we like a challenge in our sports games as much as anyone, but Michael’s Chang’s Watch the Computed Controlled Guy Score a Bunch of Aces on You just doesn’t make for a very engrossing game.Anyway, the following largely unplayable games are now off the list:
Andre Agassi Tennis
ATP Tour Championship Tennis
David Crane’s Amazing Tennis
Davis Cup World Tour Tennis
Jennifer Capriatti Tennis
Wimbledon Championship Tennis
So this was a busy day. 105 games got eliminated.For those of you scoring at home, that means the total remaining games is now below 600.Next time, we’ll do a lightning round, knock off a bunch more games, and try to get things down close to 500.
