Origins (1958–1972) '' (1972)
arcade cabinet 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. 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, with a green background to simulate an
association football playfield along with a goal on each side. Tomohiro Nishikado wanted to move beyond simple rectangles to character graphics, resulting in his development of a
basketball game, 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, 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, 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. 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). 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. 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. The game also had digitized voices for the umpire, 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. 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. 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. which topped the Japanese
table arcade cabinet chart in December 1983.
Kaneko's
Roller Aces was a
roller skating game played from a third-person perspective, while
Technōs Japan released the
wrestling game
Tag Team Wrestling. In the field of
association football games, Alpha Denshi's
Exciting Soccer (1983) featured digitized voices and a top-down overhead perspective, which was later popularized by
Tehkan World Cup (1985) from
Tehkan (later Tecmo).
Tehkan World Cup was a
multiplayer association football game with a
trackball controller, where a button was used for kicking the ball and the trackball used for the direction and speed of the shot, with gameplay that was fairly realistic. It was a landmark title for association football games, considered revolutionary for its trackball control system, its top-down perspective that allows players to see more of the pitch, and its trackball-based
game physics. It provided the basis for later
association football games such as
MicroProse Soccer (1988) and the
Sensible Soccer series (1992 debut). Several sports
laserdisc games were released for arcades in 1984, including
Universal's
Top Gear which displayed 3D animated race car driving, while Sega's
GP World and Taito's
Laser Grand Prix displayed live-action footage. Sega also produced a
bullfighting game,
Bull Fight, and a multiple-watersports game
Water Match (published by
Bally Midway), which included swimming,
kayaking and
boat racing; while Taito released a
female sports game based on
high-school track & field,
The Undoukai, and a
dirt track racing game
Buggy Challenge, with a
buggy. Other dirt racing games from that year were
dirt bike games:
Nintendo's
Excitebike and
SNK's
motocross game
Jumping Cross. Nintendo also released a four-player
racquet sport game,
VS. Tennis (the
Nintendo VS. System version of
Tennis). That same year,
ice hockey games were also released: Alpha Denshi's
Bull Fighter and Data East's
Fighting Ice Hockey. Data East also released a
lawn sports game
Haro Gate Ball, based on
croquet, while
Nichibutsu released a game based on
roller derby,
Roller Jammer. Meanwhile, Technos Japan released a game based on
sumo wrestling,
Syusse Oozumou, and the first
martial arts combat-sport game,
Karate Champ, considered one of the most influential fighting games. In 1985, Nintendo released an
arm wrestling game,
Arm Wrestling, while Konami released a
table tennis game that attempted to accurately reflect the sport, ''
Konami's Ping Pong''.
Homes '' (1983) On home consoles,
Mattel released
Intellivision World Series Baseball (
IWSB), designed by
Don Daglow and
Eddie Dombrower, in late 1983. It is considered the earliest sports video game to use multiple camera angles to show the action in a manner resembling a
sports television broadcast. Earlier sports games prior to this had displayed the entire field on screen, or scrolled across static top-down fields to show the action.
IWSB mimicked television baseball coverage by showing the batter from a modified "center field" camera, the
baserunners in corner insets and defensive plays from a camera behind the batter. It was also one of the first sports video games to feature audibly speaking digitized voices (as opposed to text), using the Mattel
Intellivoice module. The game was sophisticated for its time, but was a commercial failure, released around the time of the
video game crash of 1983 when the North American home video game market collapsed. Nintendo released a series of highly successful sports games for the
Nintendo Entertainment System console and the arcade
Nintendo VS. System, starting with
Baseball (1983) and
Tennis (1984). They played an important role in the
history of the Nintendo Entertainment System, as they were the earliest NES games released in North America, initially in the arcades and then with the console's launch. Nintendo's arcade version
VS. Baseball (1984) was competing with Sega's earlier hit
Champion Baseball in the arcades. On home computers,
Track & Field spawned similar hit Olympic games for computer platforms,
Electronic Arts produced their first sports game for home computers, the basketball title
Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One (1983), which was the first licensed sports game based on the names and likenesses of famous athletes; the inclusion of famous real world athletes would become one of the most important selling points for sports games.
One on One became Electronic Arts' best-selling game, and the highest-selling computer sports game, having sold 400,000 copies by late 1988.
Further growth (1986–1994) In the late 1980s,
basketball video games gained popularity in arcades. Konami's
Double Dribble (1986) featured colorful graphics, five-on-five gameplay, cutaway animations for
slam dunks, and a digitized version of "
The Star-Spangled Banner" theme. ''
Magic Johnson's Fast Break'' (1988) by
Arcadia Systems had detailed characters and audio clips of
Magic Johnson's voice. Midway, who had not released a basketball game in sixteen years since Taito's
TV Basketball in 1974, released
Arch Rivals (1989), a two-on-two game featuring large players with distinct looks, a
basketball court, a crowd,
cheerleaders, four periods, the ability to rough up an opponent, and big dunks capable of
backboard shattering. The success of the
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in North America led to the platform becoming a major platform for
American sports video games. Basketball games included a port of
Double Dribble, with a halo mechanic signifying the optimum release for shots, and
Tecmo NBA Basketball (1992).
American football video games included
Tecmo Bowl (1987), which was ported to the NES with the
NFL Players Association license, and
Tecmo Super Bowl (1991), which introduced a season mode with nearly the entire
NFL roster.
Tecmo Super Bowl is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential games of all time, as it was the first mainstream sports video game with both the league and player association licenses, with
ESPN ranking it the greatest sports video game of all time. Sega also developed American football games for their competing
Master System console,
Great Football in 1987 The late 1980s is considered the "Golden Age" of
baseball video games.
Namco's
R.B.I. Baseball (1986) and the
Atlus title
Major League Baseball (1988) for the NES were the first fully licensed baseball video games.
SNK's
Baseball Stars (1989) was a popular
arcade-style NES game, while
Jaleco's NES title
Bases Loaded (1987) was a
simulation game with statistics. The 1990s began in the
16-bit era, as a wave of fourth generation video game consoles were created to handle more complex games and graphics. The
Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in particular became renowned for its sports video games, as it was more powerful than the NES and with Sega targeting an older audience than Nintendo's typically younger target demographic at the time.
Basketball video games included EA's
Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs (1991), which launched the
NBA Live series.
World Series Baseball (1994) introduced the "catcher-cam" perspective, launching the
World Series Baseball series and becoming the first game in the Sega Sports line. In 1990, Taito released
Football Champ, an association football game that allows
up to four players in both competitive and
cooperative gameplay. It also let players perform a number of actions, including a back heel,
power kick, high kick,
sliding tackle, super shot, and
fouling other players (kicking, punching, and pulling shirts), which the player can get away with if the
referee isn't looking, or get a yellow or red
penalty card for if he is. In 1991, the American football game
Tecmo Super Bowl was the first mainstream sports game to feature both the league and player association licenses of the sport it emulated; previous titles either had one license or the other, but
Tecmo Super Bowl was the first to feature real
NFL players on real teams. Orr joined EA full-time in 1991 after the success of
Madden on the Sega Genesis, and began a ten-year period of his career where he personally supervised the production of the
Madden Football series. During this time EA formed
EA Sports, a brand name used for sports games they produced. EA Sports created several ongoing series, with a new version released each year to reflect the changes in the sport and its teams since the previous release. Sega launched its own competing
NFL series on the Sega Genesis. The gameplay of Sega's earlier 1987 Master System title
Great Football (1987) was the basis for
Joe Montana Football (1991), developed by EA and published by Sega for the Genesis. Sega then released their own sequel without EA's involvement,
Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football (1991), which became the first American football game with audio commentary. After Sega acquired the NFL license, they shortened the title to
NFL Sports Talk Football Starring Joe Montana, which later became known as Sega's
NFL series. Due to strong competition from
Madden, the series was cancelled in 1997. In its first twelve months of release,
NBA Jam generated over to become the
highest-grossing arcade sports game of all time.
FIFA International Soccer (1993), the first game in EA's
FIFA series of
association football video games, released on the
Sega Mega Drive and became the best-selling
home video game of 1993 in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the top-down perspective of earlier association football games,
FIFA introduced an
isometric perspective to the genre.
International Superstar Soccer (1994), the first game in
Konami's
International Superstar Soccer (
ISS) series, released for the SNES. A rivalry subsequently emerged between the
FIFA and
ISS franchises.
Transition to 3D polygons (1994–1997) In the 1990s,
3D graphics were introduced in sports games. Early uses of flat-shaded polygons date back to 1991, with home computer games such as
4D Sports Boxing and
Winter Challenge. However, it was not until the mid-1990s that 3D polygons were popularized in sports games.
Sega's arcade title
Virtua Striker (1994) was the first
association football game to use 3D graphics, and was also notable for its early use of
texture mapping. Meanwhile,
Sierra Online released American football title
Front Page Sports Football in 1995 for the PC. The following year,
Computer Gaming World named it twelfth of the Best 150 Games of All Time, the highest ranking sports game on the list.
Extreme sports enter into the mainstream (1996–2001) At the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century,
extreme sport video games began to appear more frequently.
Namco's
Alpine Racer (1994) was a
skiing winter sports simulator that became a major success in
arcades during the mid-1990s. This led to a wave of similar sports games capitalizing on its success during the late 1990s, from companies such as
Sega, Namco,
Konami and Innovative Concepts. In 1996, two snowboarding video games were released:
Namco's
Alpine Surfer in the arcades, and the
UEP Systems game
Cool Boarders for the
PlayStation console. The following year,
Square's popular
role-playing video game,
Final Fantasy VII, included a snowboarding
minigame that was later released as an independent snowboarding game,
Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding, for mobile phones. In 2000,
SSX was released. Based around
boardercross, the game featured fast downhill races, avoiding various objects whilst using others to perform jumps and increase the player's speed. In 1997, Sega released one of the first mainstream
skateboarding games,
Top Skater,
Top Skater served as a basic foundation for later skateboarding games. The following year saw the release of the console skateboarding game
Street Sk8er, developed by Atelier Double and published by
Electronic Arts. In 1999, the subgenre was further popularized by ''
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, an arcade-like skateboarding game where players were challenged to execute elaborate tricks or collect a series of elements hidden throughout the level. Tony Hawk's went on to be one of the most popular sports game franchises. while the PES'' series had sold more than units by 2002. The sales gap between the two franchises had narrowed by the mid-2000s. This was quickly followed with two deals in January 2008 securing rights to the
AFL and
ESPN licenses. This was a particularly hard blow to
Sega, the previous holder of the ESPN license, who had already been affected by EA's NFL deal. As the market for football brands was being quickly taken by EA,
Take-Two Interactive responded by contacting the
Major League Baseball Players Association and signing a deal that granted exclusive third-party major-league baseball rights; a deal not as restrictive, as first-party projects were still allowed. The
NBA was then approached by several developers, but declined to enter into an exclusivity agreement, instead granting long-term licenses to
Electronic Arts,
Take-Two Interactive,
Midway Games,
Sony, and
Atari. In April 2005, EA furthered its hold on American football licensing by securing rights to all
NCAA brands.
Motion detection Sega Activator: IR motion detection (1993–1994) In 1993, Sega released the
Sega Activator, a
motion detection game controller designed to respond to a player's body movements, for their Genesis console. The Activator was based on the Light Harp, a
MIDI controller invented by Assaf Gurner. He was an Israeli musician and Kung Fu martial artist who researched inter disciplinarian concepts to create the experience of playing an instrument using the whole body's motion. It was released for the Mega Drive (Genesis) in 1993. It could read the player's physical movements and was the first controller to allow full-body motion sensing, The original invention related to a 3 octaves musical instrument that could interpret the user's gestures into musical notes via MIDI protocol. The invention was registered as patent initially in Israel on May 11, 1988, after 4 years of R&D. In 1992, the first complete Light Harp was created by Assaf Gurner and Oded Zur, and was presented to Sega of America. Like the Light Harp, the Activator is an octagonal frame that lies on the floor.
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on the frame vertically project thin, invisible beams of
infrared light. When something, such as a player's arm or leg, interrupts a beam, the device reads the distance at which the interruption occurred, and interprets the signal as a
command. The device can also interpret signals from multiple beams simultaneously (i.e.,
chords) as a distinct command. Sega designed special Activator motions for a few of their own game releases. By tailoring motion signals specifically for a game, Sega attempted to provide a more intuitive gaming experience. A player could, for example, compete in
Greatest Heavyweights of the Ring or
Eternal Champions by miming punches. Despite these efforts, the Activator was a commercial failure. Like the
Power Glove of 1989, it was widely rejected for its "unwieldiness and inaccuracy". The game contained five different sports—
boxing,
bowling,
golf,
tennis, and
baseball—which could all be played individually or with multiple players. Players could also track their skill progress through the game, as they became more proficient at the different sports, and use the training mode to practice particular situations. As of 2013,
Wii Sports became the second-highest selling video game of all time. The popularity of the Wii and its bundled
Wii Sports opened the way for other physically reactive sports-based video games, including from third-parties, such as
Super Swing Golf and
We Love Golf! based on the sport of golf,
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis based on
table tennis,
MLB Power Pros based on baseball, and
Grand Slam Tennis and
Virtua Tennis 2009 both of which made use of the advanced
Wii MotionPlus remote. Nintendo themselves also pushed with further motion-based games such as
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, in which players used the Wii Remote to simulate running, jumping and other
Olympic sports. In 2008, Nintendo released
Wii Fit, which allowed players to do
aerobic and
fitness exercises using the
Wii Balance Board; third-party developers also designed games using the Board, such as the skiing game
We Ski. In a similar light, 2008 saw the release of
Mario Kart Wii, a
racing game which allowed the player to use their remote with a
Wii Wheel to act as a steering wheel, akin to those on traditional arcade racing games.
Sports games today (2010–present) '' video game series The most popular subgenre in Europe is
association football games, which up until 2010 was dominated by
EA Sports with the
FIFA series and
Konami with the
Pro Evolution Soccer (
PES) series. While
FIFA was commercially ahead, the sales gap between the two franchises had narrowed.
FIFA responded by borrowing gameplay elements from
PES to improve
FIFA, which eventually pulled ahead commercially by a significant margin in the 2010s and emerged as the world's most successful sports video game franchise. Racing games, due to the variation that the sport can offer in terms of tracks, cars and styles, offer more room for competition and the selection of games on offer has been considerably greater (examples being
F1 and the
World Rally Championship, and many unlicensed games). Sports management games, while not as popular as they used to be, live on through small and independent software development houses. Management titles today have transitioned to the very popular
fantasy sports leagues, which are available through many websites such as
Yahoo. Independent developers are also creating sports titles like
Super Mega Baseball,
The Golf Club, and Freestyle2: Street Basketball.
Nintendo has been able to make an impact upon the sports market by producing several
Mario-themed titles, such as
Mario Sports Mix,
Mario Golf: Super Rush,
Mario Sports Superstars,
Mario Tennis Aces, and
Mario Strikers: Battle League. These titles sell respectfully, but are only available on Nintendo's
video game consoles, for example
GameCube,
Nintendo 64,
Nintendo 3DS,
Wii,
Wii U and
Nintendo Switch. ==See also==