Game design History Beginnings of sports games

History

Beginnings of sports games

In 1958, William Higinbotham created a game called Tennis for Two, a 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.

Computer 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 teletypemachines and line printers, but later printed on single-color CRT screens.

In the 1970s, arcade video games began to appear, many of them centred around the sports genre, after it was popularized in 1972 by the commercial success of Atari's Pong, an early table tennisgame that had similar gameplay to Tennis for Two. The first racing game, Taito's Astro Race, was released in 1973, followed by Taito'sSpeed Race and Atari's Gran Trak 10 in 1974, with the subgenre later gaining further popularity after Atari's Night Driver introduced a three-dimensional perspective in 1976. Early hockey games were also released in 1973: Taito's Pro Hockey (which had similar gameplay toPong)^[5] and Sega's Hockey TV.^[6] The following year, Taito released an early contact sport game, Basketball, based on basketball.

In 1975, UPL released an early four-player multiple-sports game, Video Action, which featured tennis, hockey, and an early example ofsoccer football, each of which was a different variant of the Pong style popular at the time.^[8] In 1976, Sega released an early motorbike racinggame, Fonz, and an early combat sport game, Heavyweight Champ, based on boxing and now considered the first fighting game. In 1977, an early black-and-white football game, Sega's Super Bowl, was released by Gremlin Industries, followed in 1978 by Atari Football, which is considered to be the first video game to accurately emulate American football. Taito also released an early bowling game in 1978,Top Bowler, followed by an early baseball game in 1979, Ball Park.

1980s

Between 1980 and 1984, Atari 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, auto racing and association football.

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  Activision Tennis (1981)
  
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  Track & Field (1982)
  
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  Pole Position (1982)
  

In 1981, Taito released Alpine Ski, an early winter sports game. It was a vertical scrolling game that involved maneuvering a skier through multiple events: a downhill ski course, a slalom racing course, and a ski jumping competition. That same year, Sega's Turbo introduced athird-person perspective into the genre, with Namco's Pole Position then popularizing the now common rear-view racer format and introducing AI opponents the following year.

In 1982, Taito released an early golf game, Birdie King, while Data East released an early fishing game, Angler Dangler. That same year, ZX Spectrum released the first association football management simulation, Football Manager, while Konami released an early athleticsgame, Track & Field, which featured multiple Olympic track & 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. In 1983, EA produced their first sports game Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One, which was also the first licensed sports game based on the names and likenesses of famous athletes.

One of the various angles of Intellivision World Series Baseball, the first sports game to incorporate more than one camera angle.

Also in 1983, Mattel released Intellivision World Series Baseball (IWSB) by Don Daglow andEddie Dombrower, the first game to use multiple camera angles to show the action. 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 games to introduce audibly-speaking players (as opposed to text) using the Mattel Intellivoice module.

Another early sports game to show multiple camera angles in 1983 was Irem's MotoRace USA, a motorbike racing game that switched between vertical-scrolling and third-person views depending on the player's location on the map, switching to third-person view when near a city and to a vertical-scrolling view when on country roads. Another early sports game to feature digitized voices from that year was Alpha Denshi's Exciting Soccer, an early influential soccer football game, which let one or two players choose from six teams, featured a control scheme where they could tackle, shoot, short-pass, and long-pass, featured an overhead view, and had realistic touches like corner kicks, throw-ins, penalty shots, and cheerleaders. Another early soccer football game from that same year was Data East's Pro Soccer. Two early water sport games, both based on waterskiing, were also released that year: Taito's Water Ski and Irem's Tropical Angel, the latter also featuring a female player character. That same year, Taito released Joshi Volleyball, an early volleyball game, and they released Irem's 10-Yard Fight, an American-football game that featured an early career mode, where the player progresses from high school, to college, professional, playoff, and Super Bowl, as the difficulty increases with each step. Meanwhile, Kaneko released Roller Aces, an early roller skating game played from a third-person perspective. An early wrestling game, Technōs Japan's Tag-Team Wrestling, was also released that year, and was followed by another wrestling game, Sega's Appoooh, the year after.

In 1984, several early sports laserdisc video games were released, including Universal's Top Gear which featured 3D animated race car driving, and Sega's GP World while Taito's Laser Grand Prix featured live-action footage. Sega also produced a unique bullfightinggame, Bull Fight, and a multiple-watersports game Water Match (published by Bally Midway), which included swimming, kayaking andboat racing; while Taito released a fully third-person motorbike racing game Kick Start, an early female sports game based on high-school track & field, The Undoukai, and an early dirt track racing game Buggy Challenge, featuring a buggy. Other early dirt racing games from that year were dirt bike games: Nintendo's Excitebike and SNK's motocross game Jumping Cross. Nintendo also released an early four-player racquet sport game, Vs. Tennis (the Nintendo Vs. System version of Tennis), while SNK released an early horse racing game, Gladiator 1984.

That same year, early ice hockey games were also released: Alpha Denshi's Bull Fighter and Data East's Fighting Ice Hockey.' Data East also released a unique lawn sports game Haro Gate Ball, based on croquet, while Nichibutsu released a unique game based on roller derby, Roller Jammer. Meanwhile, Technos Japan released a unique game based on sumo wrestling, Syusse Oozumou,^[51] and the firstmartial arts combat-sport game, Karate Champ, considered one of the most influential fighting games.^[52][53] That same year, game designerScott Orr founded GameStar, a game publisher specializing in Commodore 64 sports games, and served as its lead designer. GameStar was the most successful sports computer game company of its era, until Orr sold the company to Activision in 1986.^[54]

In 1985, Sega released Hang-On, a popular early Grand Prix style rear-view motorbike racer,^[55] considered the first full-body-experience video game.^[56] That same year, Nintendo released an early arm wrestling game, Arm Wrestling,^[57] while Konami released a table tennis game that attempted to accurately reflect the sport, Konami's Ping Pong.^[58] That year, Tehkan also released Tehkan World Cup, the firstmultiplayer soccer football game featuring a trackball controller,^[59] where a button was used for kicking the ball and the trackball used for the direciton and speed of the shot, with gameplay that was fairly realistic.^[60] In 1988, EA released Earl Weaver Baseball again developed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, which for the first time combined a highly accurate simulation game with high quality graphics. This was also the first game in which an actual baseball manager provided the computer AI. In 1996 Computer Gaming World named 'EWB the 25th of its Best 150 Games of All Time, the second highest ranking for any sports game in that 1981–1996 period (after FPS Football).^[61]

1990s

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.

In 1989 EA producer Richard Hilleman hired GameStar's Scott Orr to re-design John Madden Football for the fast-growing Sega Genesis. In 1990 Orr and Hilleman released the game that is still recognized today as Madden Football, the best-selling title in the history of games in North America.^{[citation needed]} They focused on producing a head-to-head two-player game with an intuitive interface and responsive controls.

Also in 1990, Taito released Football Champ, an early soccer football game to allow up to four players in multiplayer mode, involving 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, but the referee will hand out a yellow or red penalty card if he spots foul play.^[62]

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.

Later in the 1990s began the 32 bit era, with the release of Sony's PlayStation and 3D graphics cards for personal computers (PCs). These updated systems allowed sports games to be made in 3D. The first game to exploit these updates was Gremlin Interactive's Actua Soccer, released in 1995 for the PlayStation.

Meanwhile, Sierra Online released 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 in the list.^[61]