THROUGH THE AGES: SPORTS GAMING – SNEAK PEEK

Developer(s): Konami

Platform(s): Arcade, Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit, MSX, NES, Commodore 64, Game Boy, Amstrad CPC, Sharp X1, ZX Spectrum, Nintendo DS

Release: 1983

Track & Field is an Olympic-themed sports video game developed by Konami ahead of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. A hit in Japan, North America and Europe, the game became one of the most successful arcade video games of that year and led to a resurgence for the sports genre in arcades during the 1980s which had not been seen since the days of Pong a decade earlier.

Developer(s): Nintendo R&D3
Platform(s): Nintendo Entertainment System
Release: 1987

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!, is a 1987 boxing video game considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time. Tyson was rumoured to have been paid $50,000 for a three-year period for his likeness, something of a risk for Nintendo as the transaction occurred before his huge rise to fame in 1986. The risk paid off and by the end of 1988 more than two million copies of the game were sold in North America alone, with global sales totalling more than $1.7bn.

“Hey, that was a bad deal, but I don’t think it was 50 Gs,” Tyson said in 2022. “I think it was $1.2m or something in that range but it was just a really bad deal. I didn’t know nothing about business, what the hell.”

Developer(s): Rage Software
Platform(s): MS-DOS, PlayStation, Saturn
Release: 1997

Jonah Lomu Rugby was named after the legendary All Blacks winger Jonah Lomu, who bulldozed his way to becoming rugby’s first truly global star. The game itself puts the player in control of real-life national rugby union teams from the 1995 Rugby World Cup and is widely regarded as the best rugby game ever made.
The title, and its role in engaging a new fanbase, was subject of discussion in the build-up to the most recent election of a World Rugby Chairman in 2016. “All of the established sports markets are connected with digital games and that is a huge means of attracting a younger audience,” said former Argentinean scrumhalf Agustín Pichot. “Rugby hasn’t had decent game since Jonah Lomu Rugby.”

Developer(s): Midway, Acclaim, Electronic Arts
Platform(s): Arcade, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, 32X, PlayStation, Atari Jaguar, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS, Android
Release: 1994

NBA Jam Tournament Edition is an updated sequel to the 1993 game NBA Jam. The game became second best-selling home video game of 1994 in the United States, while the Genesis and Super NES versions sold a combined six million copies worldwide. The game had enormous popularity with fans and players alike. Famously, Shaquille O’Neal had his own arcade machine shipped from city to city for away games. “I’d bring the machine on the road every now and then just because I loved playing so much,” O’Neal admitted.

Developer(s): Extended Play Productions, Probe Entertainment

Platform(s): MS-DOS, 32X, Mega Drive/Genesis, Super NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, PlayStation, Saturn

Release: 1995

FIFA Soccer 96 is a football stimulation game released for the Mega Drive/Genesis, Sesa Saturn, Sega 32X, Game Gear, PlayStation, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and MS-DOS compatible operating systems. FIFA 96 is the third entry in the FIFA series, but the first in the series to use real player names and positions with ranking, transfers, and team customisation tools. With a development budget of $3m, the game was a commercial success and a best seller in the UK.

Platform(s): GameCube, Microsoft Windows, Xbox, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Mac OS X

Release: 2004

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 is the thirteenth release in the PGA Tour series and the sixth to feature Tiger Woods. Building on incremental improvements of the past, the 2005 version of the title is widely regarded as the peak of the series and was the first edition to feature an in-game course editor with a view to ‘Tiger-proof’ courses by making them more difficult.

Developer(s): Codemasters
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360
Release: 2007

Brian Lara International Cricket 2007 is a cricket video game and the sixth in a series of games endorsed by West Indian cricketer Brian Lara, who is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest batters of all time. The game is an evolution of Codemasters’ Brian Lara Cricket, which spent 10 weeks at number 1 in the UK games charts during the summer of 1995.

Developer(s): Nintendo

Platform(s): Wii

Release: 2006

Wii Sports is a collection of five sports stimulations including tennis, golf, baseball, bowling and boxing, that was developed by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. The games were designed to demonstrate the motion-sensing capabilities of the Wii remote. The aim of the Wii was to appeal to people who hadn’t played video games before and to do this Nintendo needed a game that let both experienced and new players play in a fun way. Wii Sports sold over 83 million copies by the end of 2017 making it the bestselling single-platform game of all time and went on to be named one of the most influential games of the 21st Century.

Developer: Sealost Interactive LLC
Platforms: Quest, Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro
Released: 2019

Developed by Ian Fitz, The Thrill of the Fight is a down-to-earth VR boxing game focused on authenticity and is notorious for its fitness factor. It’s also one of the most successful VR games ever released. On Steam, it has more than 3,000 ‘overwhelmingly positive’ reviews, and on the Quest platform, it ranks among the top 15 most popular premium titles by number of reviews.

Developer: Beat Games
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Oculus Quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro
Released: 2019

Beat Saber is a virtual reality rhythm game that is widely considered one of the best VR games of all-time. Developed by Ján Ilavský and Vladimír Hrinčár, and published by Czech game developer Beat Games, it became the highest rated game on Steam less than a week after its early access release and, as of October 2022, had achieved $255 million in sales.

Developer(s): EA Vancouver, EA Romania
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Release: 2023

EA Sports FC 24 is the inaugural instalment of the newly created EA Sports FC series following the conclusion of developer EA’s 30-year partnership with FIFA. Despite the split, the game has retained its licenses of more than 19,000 players, over 700 teams, over 100 stadiums, and over 30 leagues. The new title reached 11.3 million players in its first week and launched as the top-selling video game for physical copies in the UK.