A Love Letter to Arcade-Style Sports Games

An opinion on why gamers need arcade-style sports games too.

I am a big fan of sports games.

I enjoy playing and watching people play all different types of sports games, and I love being able to build characters or assume the role of a superstar in sports that I enjoy in real life. There is a certain satisfaction in performing dunks, undressing goalies, and sending a soccer ball screaming into the back of the net. All without leaving the comfort of my couch.

Sports games are achieving a relatively high level of hyper-realism, and that’s thanks to the hard work of thousands of programmers, designers, and artists, as well as the evolution of technology.

And yet, here I am, looking for a used copy of Mario Strikers for the Gamecube.

Realistic sports games are great. You are able to play the game along side your favourite stars, for your favourite teams, and you can be the deciding factor behind attaining the victory.

I have no problem with that, at all.

There are just plenty of times, typically with friends, where I crave an insanely fast-paced, completely unrealistic style of gameplay. I want my guy to jump forty-feet into the air and set the hoop on fire after he slams it home. I want to pass it to Bowser and have him wind up and unleash a fireball at the goalie. I want my power-hitter to do some sort of charging animation before she jumps into the air and spikes it straight down into my opponent’s face.

Arcade-style sports games are tremendous fun, especially with groups of friends to play with, and are far more accessible when compared to the hardcore simulators. You won’t really need to rely on affiliations with professional organizations like the NBA or the EPL, because you’re banking on ridiculous (but fun!) gameplay to keep your players engaged and coming back.

In addition, not-so-popular sports, like volleyball, or handball, or rugby, or any of the other not-mainstream-in-North-America sports would have a great amount of creative space to build arcade-style sports games, while being able to expose their sport to more and more people.

I want to play more arcade-style sports games. I may have to resort to building one myself.

If you have any that you think are worth checking out, definitely tweet me @jonlim, I play anything and everything.