Sports Simulation

A sports video game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with video games, including team sports, track and field, extreme sports, and combat sports. Some games emphasize playing the sport (such as ''EA Sports FC'', ''eFootball'' and ''NBA 2K''), whilst others emphasize strategy and sport management (such as ''Football Manager'' and '' Out of the Park Baseball''). Some, such as ''Need for Speed'', ''Arch Rivals'' and ''Punch-Out!!'', satirize the sport for comic effect. This genre has been popular throughout the history of video games and is competitive, just like real-world sports. A number of game series feature the names and characteristics of real teams and players, and are updated annually to reflect real-world changes. The sports genre is one of the oldest genres in gaming history.

Game design

Sports games involve physical and tactical challenges, and test the player's precision and accuracy. Most sports games attempt to model the athletic characteristics required by that sport, including speed, strength, acceleration, accuracy, and so on. As with their respective sports, these games take place in a stadium or arena with clear boundaries. Sports games often provide play-by-play and color commentary through the use of recorded audio.

Sports games sometimes make use of different modes for different parts of the game. This is especially true in games about American football such as the Madden NFL series, where executing a pass play requires six different gameplay modes in the span of approximately 45 seconds. Sometimes, other sports games offer a menu where players may select a strategy while play is temporarily suspended. Association football video games sometimes shift gameplay modes when it is time for the player to attempt a penalty kick, a free shot at goal from the penalty spot, taken by a single player. Some sports games also require players to shift roles between the athletes and the coach or manager. These mode switches are more intuitive than other game genres because they reflect actual sports.

Older 2D sports games sometimes used an unrealistic graphical scale, where athletes appeared to be quite large in order to be visible to the player. As sports games have evolved, players have come to expect a realistic graphical scale with a high degree of verisimilitude. Sports games often simplify the game physics for ease of play, and ignore factors such as a player's inertia. Games typically take place with a highly accurate time-scale, although they usually allow players to play quick sessions with shorter game quarters or periods.

Sports games sometimes treat button-pushes as continuous signals rather than discrete moves, in order to initiate and end a continuous action. For example, football games may distinguish between short and the long passes based on how long the player holds a button. Golf games often initiate the backswing with one button-push, and the swing itself is initiated by a subsequent push.

Types

Arcade

Arcade sports games have traditionally been very popular arcade games. The competitive nature of sports lends itself well to the arcades where the main objective is usually to obtain a high score. The arcade style of play is generally more unrealistic and focuses on a quicker gameplay experience. However the competitive nature of sports and being able to gain a high score while competing against friends for free online, has made online sports games very popular. Examples of this include the ''NFL Blitz'' and ''NBA Jam'' series.

Simulation

Simulation games are more realistic than arcade games, with the emphasis being more on realism than on how fun the game is to pick up and play based from the competitive seasons of each sport. The simulation-style tends to be slower and more accurate with normal rules while arcade games tend to be fast and can have all kinds of ad-hoc rules and ideas thrown in, especially pre-2000s. Examples of this include the ''EA Sports FC'', ''NHL'', ''EA Sports WRC'', '' F1'', ''MotoGP'', ''PGA Tour'', ''PGA Tour 2K'', ''MLB The Show'', ''Madden NFL'', ''EA Sports College Football'' and ''NBA 2K'' series.

Management

A sports management game puts the player in the role of team manager. Whereas some games are played online against other players, management games usually pit the player against AI controlled teams in the same league. Players are expected to handle strategy, tactics, transfers, and financial issues. Various examples of these games can be found in the sports management category.

Multi-sport

Since ''Track & Field'' (1983), various multi-sport video games have combined multiple sports into a single game. ''Wii Sports'' and ''Nintendo Switch Sports'' are recent examples. A popular sub-genre are Olympic video games, including ''Track & Field'' and other similar titles. Multi-sport tournaments are becoming the basis for computer games.

History

Origins (1958–1972)

Sports video games have origins in sports electro-mechanical games (EM games), which were arcade games manufactured using a mixture of electrical and mechanical components, for amusement arcades between the 1940s and 1970s. Examples include boxing games such as International Mutoscope Reel Company's ''K.O. Champ'' (1955), bowling games such as Bally Manufacturing's ''Bally Bowler'' and Chicago Coin's ''Corvette'' from 1966, baseball games such as Midway Manufacturing's ''Little League'' (1966) and Chicago Coin's ''All Stars Baseball'' (1968), other team sport games such as Taito's ''Crown Soccer Special'' (1967) and ''Crown Basketball'' (1968), and air hockey type games such as Sega's ''MotoPolo'' (1968) and ''Air Hockey'' (1972) by Brunswick Billiards.

The earliest sports video game dates backs to 1958, when William Higinbotham created a game called ''Tennis for Two'', a competitive two-player tennis game played on an oscilloscope. The players would select the angle at which to put their racket, and pressed a button to return it. Although this game was incredibly simple, it demonstrated how an action game (rather than previous puzzles) could be played on a computer. Video games prior to the late 1970s were primarily played on university mainframe computers under timesharing systems that supported multiple computer terminals on school campuses. The two dominant systems in this era were Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-10 and Control Data Corporation's PLATO. Both could only display text, and not graphics, originally printed on teleprinters and line printers, but later printed on single-color CRT screens.

Ralph Baer developed ''Table Tennis'' for the first video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972. While the console had other sports-themed game cards, they required the use of television overlays while playing similarly to board games or card games. ''Table Tennis'' was the only Odyssey game that was entirely electronic and did not require an overlay, introducing a ball-and-paddle game design that showcased the potential of the new video game medium. This provided the basis for the first commercially successful video game, ''Pong'' (1972), released as an arcade video game by Atari, Inc.

Ball-and-paddle era (1973–1975)

Numerous ball-and-paddle games that were either clones or variants of ''Pong'' were released for arcades in 1973. Atari themselves released a four-player cooperative multiplayer variant, ''Pong Doubles'' (1973), based on tennis doubles. In the United States, the best-selling arcade video game of 1973 was ''Pong'', followed by several of its clones and variants, including ''Pro Tennis'' from Williams Electronics, ''Winner'' from Midway Manufacturing, ''Super Soccer'' and ''Tennis Tourney'' from Allied Leisure (later called Centuri), and ''TV Tennis'' from Chicago Coin.

In Japan, arcade manufacturers such as Taito initially avoided video games as they found ''Pong'' to be simplistic compared to more complex EM games, but after Sega successfully tested-marketed ''Pong'' in Japan, Sega and Taito released the clones ''Pong Tron'' and ''Elepong'', respectively, in July 1973, before the official Japanese release of ''Pong'' by Atari Japan (later part of Namco) in November 1973. Tomohiro Nishikado's four-player ''Pong'' variant ''Soccer'' was released by Taito in November 1973,Chris Kohler (2005), ''Power-up: how Japanese video games gave the world an extra life'', p. 16, BradyGames, with a green background to simulate an association football playfield along with a goal on each side. Another Taito variant, '' Pro Hockey'' (1973), set boundaries around the screen and only a small gap for the goal.

Tomohiro Nishikado wanted to move beyond simple rectangles to character graphics, resulting in his development of a basketball game, Taito's '' TV Basketball'', released in April 1974. It was the earliest use of character sprites to represent human characters in a video game. While the gameplay was similar to earlier ball-and-paddle games, it displayed images both for the players and the baskets, and attempted to simulate basketball. Each player controls two team members, a forward and a guard; the ball can be passed between team members before shooting, and the ball has to fall into the opposing team's basket to score a point. The game was released in North America by Midway as ''TV Basketball'', selling 1,400 arcade cabinets in the United States, a production record for Midway up until they released ''Wheels'' the following year. Ramtek later released ''Baseball'' in October 1974, similarly featuring the use of character graphics.

In 1975, Nintendo released ''EVR-Race'', a horse racing simulation game with support for up to six players. It was a mixture between a video game and an electro-mechanical game, and played back video footage from a video tape.

Decline (1976–1982)

After the market became flooded with ''Pong'' clones, the ''Pong'' market crashed around the mid-1970s. Sports video games would not regain the same level of success until the 1980s.

In 1976, Sega released an early combat sport game, ''Heavyweight Champ'', based on boxing and now considered the first fighting game.

In March 1978, Sega released ''World Cup'', an association football game with a trackball controller. In October 1978, Atari released ''Atari Football'', which is considered to be the first video game to accurately emulate American football; it also popularized the use of a trackball, with the game's developers mentioning it was inspired by an earlier Japanese association football game that used a trackball. ''Atari Football'' was the second highest-earning arcade video game of 1979 in the United States, below only Taito's shoot 'em up blockbuster ''Space Invaders'' (1978), though ''Atari Football'' was the only sports game among the top ten highest-earners.

In 1980, Mattel's ''Basketball'' for the Intellivision was the first basketball video game to be licensed by the National Basketball Association (NBA). On home computers, Microsoft's ''Olympic Decathlon'' (1980) was one of the first sports-related programs to mix game and simulation elements, and was an early example of an Olympic track-and-field game. The first sports simulation game was most likely either Computer Baseball or Computer Quarterback, both released in 1981. The first association football management simulation, ''Football Manager'', was released for the ZX Spectrum computer in 1982.

Between 1981 and 1983, the Atari's VCS (2600) and Mattel's Intellivision waged a series of high-stakes TV advertising campaigns promoting their respective systems, marking the start of the first console wars. Atari prevailed in arcade games and had a larger customer base due to its lower price, while Intellivision touted its visually superior sports games. Sports writer George Plimpton was featured in the Intellivision ads, which showed the parallel games side by side. Both Atari and Intellivision fielded at least one game for baseball, American football, hockey, basketball and association football. Atari's sports games included ''Activision Tennis'' (1981).

Resurgence (1983–1985)

Sports video games experienced a resurgence from 1983. As the golden age of arcade video games came to an end, arcade manufacturers began looking for ways to reinvigorate the arcade video game industry, so they began turning to sports games. The arcade industry began producing sports games at levels not seen since the days of ''Pong'' and its clones, which played a role in the recovery of the arcade market by the mid-1980s. There were initially high expectations for laserdisc games to help revive the arcade industry in 1983, but it was instead non-laserdisc sports games that ended up being the most well-received hits at amusement arcade shows by late 1983.

Arcades

In March 1983, Sega released Alpha Denshi's arcade game ''Champion Baseball'', which became a blockbuster success in Japanese arcades, with Sega comparing its impact on Japanese arcades to that of ''Space Invaders''. ''Champion Baseball'' was a departure from the "space games" and "cartoon" action games that had previously dominated the arcades, and subsequently served as the prototype for later baseball video games. It had a split-screen format, displaying the playfield from two camera angles, one from the outfield and another close-up shot of the player and batter, while also giving players the option of selecting relief pitchers or pinch hitters, while an umpire looks on attentively to make the game calls. The game also had digitized voices for the umpire, and individual player statistics.

Sports games became more popular across arcades worldwide with the arrival of Konami's ''Track & Field'', known as ''Hyper Olympic'' in Japan, introduced in September 1983. It was an Olympic-themed athletics game that had multiple Olympic track-and-field events (including the 100-meter dash, long jump, javelin throw, 110-meter hurdles, hammer throw, and high jump) and allowed up to four players to compete. It had a horizontal side-scrolling format, depicting one or two tracks at a time, a large scoreboard that displayed world records and current runs, and a packed audience in the background. Despite the industry's hype for laserdisc games at the time, ''Track & Field'' became the most well-received game at the Amusement Machine Show (AM Show) in Tokyo and the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) show in the United States. The game sold 38,000 arcade units in Japan, became one of the top five highest-grossing arcade games of 1984 in the United States, and the top-grossing arcade game of 1984 in the United Kingdom. It was also the basis for an organized video game competition that drew more than a million players in 1984. The success of ''Track & Field'' spawned other similar Olympic video games.

Numerous sports video games were subsequently released in arcades after ''Track & Field'', including American football games such as ''10-Yard Fight'' (1983) by Irem and ''Goal to Go'' (1984) by Stern Electronics, boxing video games such as Nintendo's '' Punch-Out!'' (1984), martial arts sports fighting games such as Technōs Japan's ''Karate Champ'' (1984), the Nintendo VS. System titles '' VS. Tennis'' and '' VS. Baseball'', Taito's golf game '' Birdie King II'', and Data East's ''Tag Team Wrestling''. ''10-Yard Fight'' in 1983 had a career mode, where the player progresses from high school, to college, professional, playoff, and Super Bowl, as the difficulty increases with each step. Irem's waterskiing game '' Tropical Angel'' had a female player character, and was one of the two most well-received games at the September 1983 AM Show (along with ''Hyper Olympic'') for its graphics and gameplay. Another sports game with female player characters was Taito's ''Joshi Volleyball'' (''Big Spikers''), which topped the Japanese table arcade cabinet chart in December 1983. Kaneko

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