Saturday, June 16, 2007

Some issues with the All-time Greatest Sports Video Games list

I have no idea how old this article is from Boston.com (it seems to be from sometime during the NCAA Tournament this year), but it was an attempt to break down the greatest sports video games of all time into four brackets - NCAA style - to produce a champion. And in my mind, it's a poorly bracketed tournament. The champ was NHL '94 by the way.

Anyway, here are the games that were featured.

Left side, from top to bottom: Tiger Woods Golf, Duck Hunt, Double Dribble, Karate Champ, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, NBA Live, MVP Baseball, Blades of Steel.

Right side, from top to bottom: Madden, Atari Bowling (WTF?), Excitebike, Tecmo Bowl, RBI Baseball, Fight Night, RC Pro Am, NHL '94.

Although I'm no hockey fan, I loved NHL '94, but I'm not sure it's the best sports game ever. I also take umbrage with some of the selections. Golden Tee, Super Dodge Ball, Fifa World Cup 98 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater are just a few games that could easily replace some of the questionable choices on this list - like Atari Bowling, Tiger Woods Golf and Karate Champ. And is it just me, or aren't some of these brackets seriously weak? I mean Tiger Woods Golf, Duck Hunt, Double Dribble and Karate Champ? That's a horrible bracket. Plus, they threw two iconic games, RBI Baseball and NHL '94, into the same bracket. Those are two #1 seeds in my book. It's also rough that they put Tecmo Bowl and Madden in the same bracket.

Their Final Four is decent with the exception of Double Dribble. RBI Baseball should be there instead.

So I'm going to redo this with what we've got on the current board. My Final Four now looks like this. RBI Baseball v. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and Tecmo Bowl v. NHL '94.

My Final would be Mike Tyson's Punch-Out v. Tecmo Bowl.

Champion: Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.

If you don't agree with me, whatever, I could care less. But why get mad when you can play video games? We managed to track down links for some of the games on the list that you can play directly online. Enjoy staying inside and remaining pasty white.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
Tecmo Bowl
RBI Baseball
Blades of Steel
Double Dribble
RC Pro Am
Karate Champ



-WCK

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Listen - having been born in 1980 and coming of age for literally all of these games I feel it is my duty to point out that really, to be fair, none of these games stand up to any of the random sports games out this year.

Seriously - every one of them has a some random flaw you can use against it to score thirty times a game. I will grant they are classics and changed what we expect from the programmers, but be straight - Madden (btw - not a single Madden football?) 2006 drops all comers, and that's from someone who owned the original. Just the way it works.

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