why the hell are there so many sport games for the genesis!

[Poofta!]

so im weeding though ebay auction, and DAMN it almost seems that 90% of the multi game lots out there are shitty sport games. HOW MANY ARE THERE. i dont remember any system ever having so many freaking sport games.


(by a lot of sport games, i mean they released a lot, not that there are many diff titles.)

[Iron Draggon]

The Genesis was considered to be THE sports system, in its day. That's why.

[Poofta!]

well yeah, clearly, but why! damnit.

it just seems flooding a system with sport games makes it less appealing.
could be just me.

[Iron Draggon]

Well apparently, because all the stupid armchair jocks who will actually buy a game system ONLY to play sports games on it fluffed up Sega's installed user base very nicely, and drove sales hard enough to warrant such insanity. But I'm with you, sports games are a joke. Go out and play sports for real, if you really love them that much. Although I do own a few sports games for my Genesis myself, and my Game Gear and my SNES too, just for the sake of variety. They're a nice way to fluff up your collection quickly and cheaply. But yeah, every year a new game in the series that's exactly the same as the year before with only the tiniest minor little differences is retarded. It was stupid then, and it's stupid now. But that's sports, always totally stupid.

[imanerd0011]

I agree with you about there being too many sports games on the Genesis, and I think there are too many sports games on most consoles as well. I think sports games were what the Genesis had over the SNES, so they really ran with it to say the least!

[PDorr3]

I'm a proud owner of 0 sports games :)

[Kroogah]

Because Sega and Electronic Arts were both making yearly updates for nearly every major sport. Throw Accolade's crap in there too. And random U.S. Gold and Sony Imagesoft stuff.

This scares a lot of people away from the Genesis. Fine with me, that means I can buy all the good stuff.

This has been brought to you by the Redundancy Files.

[Poofta!]

i find it frustrating and dissapointing to tell you the truth. if for every 5 sport games 1 HALF decent shooter/sim/rpg came out, i think it wouldve done the console some good.


and as a collector's viewpoint, its just annoying to keep running into them hahah. i see it as a cheap way of replacing that broken genesis box. har har.

[Kroogah]

People that actually give a shit about the Genesis know that the ratio is more like 1 great game for every 1 sports game. 2 if you wanna be picky. And some of those annoying sports games are actually fun to play, too.

[Iron Draggon]

i see it as a cheap way of replacing that broken genesis box. har har.

Yes, they are great for that! It is a shame that so much time and money was wasted on such useless tripe when so many great games were either never released, or never released here in the USA. That's the worst thing about the damned things. They took up so much valuable shelf space that could've been used for so many much more enjoyable and entertaining games, and now that the 16BIT era is over, they're still flooding ebay and all the other markets, just sitting there taking up space, because nobody wants them now anymore than they wanted them then. They're just a waste of silicon.

[klausien]

I'm a proud owner of 0 sports games :)

Rock 'N Rolll! :rocker: (Gotta use my fave emoticon)

I only have a few, if you leave out racing games (which I do, unless you are taking about NASCAR & F1 games. I guess the Colin McRae and Gran Turismo games are technically sports too. Love the CMR though!) Virtua Tennis & Tennis 2K2 for DC & Tennis for the Atari 2600 are my only offenders. Sports games are bull$#@&.

Sorry for the useless post. Back on topic, Sports games put both Genesis (good) and EA (bad) on the map. Give and take. That's all I can say.

[classicb]

Well apparently, because all the stupid armchair jocks who will actually buy a game system ONLY to play sports games on it fluffed up Sega's installed user base very nicely, and drove sales hard enough to warrant such insanity. But I'm with you, sports games are a joke. Go out and play sports for real, if you really love them that much.

I like sports games and I use to play sports when I was younger. I don't understand that comment about going outside to play real sports. most pros play sports video games. I don't see the difference between playing a sports sim and a war sim. do you expect people to go outside and have real war. just because you don't get it I wouldn't call it a joke.

most collectors don't like all the sports games because they have some sort of Pokemon condition where they have to get them all.

[drummy]

It had some good sports games. I particularly enoy playing Super Baseball 2020, and enjoy playing the Mutant League games (if I only had copies of my own). Those count as sports...

[-hellvin-]

Yeah, unfortuneatly sega had the "go to" system for sports. I'm completing the entire library and am almost at 300 games so far and don't really have that many sports games. One of these days I'm going to have to make a sports list and hit all the gamecrazy's in town and grab a bunch of games for the boxes and manuals I have that are sports related :D. It really sucks on ebay, I do not even bother looking at genesis lots. I might make use of it when I'm down to about the last 100 games.

[SirDrexl]

The main reason why it became popular for sports games was because of the system's faster processor compared to the SNES. The Genesis could, at least for a while, handle sports games (which require fast action and many character sprites on the screen) much better than the SNES could. The first couple of Madden and NHL games on the SNES were awful, with very choppy animation. Eventually, the programmers did get the hang of programming sports games for the SNES (Madden '94 was the first with smooth framerates, I don't know about hockey), but by then, the Genesis was already much more popular for sports games. It's possible that some gamers didn't even give the later SNES games a chance due to bad memories of the earlier games.

Another thing that may have been a factor was Nintendo's licensing agreement for third parties. At first, they would only allow developers to make three games a year for the SNES. So, if EA wanted to put their games on the SNES, they had to pick three. Well, obviously Madden, NHL, and the basketball game would be the ones, so other sports games like FIFA and the mutant league games were developed and made available for the Genesis at first. I remember there was even a rugby game for the Genesis that was never on the SNES. This limit was increased to six at some point (when Nintendo was losing to Sega in software sales), but I don't know when.

Oh, and I know the yearly updates have been mentioned, but I'll expand on that a little. Not only do the yearly updates mean there are more games released period, but also the older versions essentially become worthless to those who bought them, and thus they get sold off. I know you'll find people who swear that a particular year's version was the best ever, but generally to most people once the new edition comes out, the old one doesn't have any appeal anymore.

[Richter Belmount]

i would feel better about sports games if they kept the tecmo football games = /

[sonic412781]

See, this is exactly why I started the "Old Game Project"; you can go to my GeoCities site for more info about it. It basically declares war on the multiple Genesis sports games, among others, and is a running total of how many sports and misc. crap games have been destroyed. The only thing valuable about the sports games on Genesis (to me, anyway) is that you can take the backup batteries out of them and use them in your VMUs and other things (provided they've still got juice in them).

[Arqueologia_Digital]

The Genesis was considered to be THE sports system, in its day. That's why.
Sure. But i think the 90% of sports game on the Genny...SUCKS!!!...

Matías

[Muscelli]

tony hawk is the only sports series that i would pay for yearly...

sports games are usually impulse buys for me (madden 2002 for 3 dollars!!) and i really dont keep track of the updated rosters, so i dont mind having an outdated sports game

[joshnickerson]

I've always thought it'd be hell of a lot better to just release a sports game every two or three years, and release roster updates on a memory card or something.

[jajaja]

haha i agree, alot of sports game. They are so boring, especaly NFL and PGA games. You cant even give them away :)

[chrisbid]

arcade sports games are great, simulations bore me

[Poofta!]

most collectors don't like all the sports games because they have some sort of Pokemon condition where they have to get them all.


no most collectors hate sport games cause its waste and is everywhere... kinda like digging through dogshit to find your car keys.

[NeoZeedeater]

i find it frustrating and dissapointing to tell you the truth. if for every 5 sport games 1 HALF decent shooter/sim/rpg came out, i think it wouldve done the console some good.

I can see sims and RPGs but shooters? The Genesis was flooded with good shooters.

[Poofta!]

by shooters i mean stuff like android assault, not stuff like contra. you can never have too many good shooters.

[ClubNinja]

It is a shame that so much time and money was wasted on such useless tripe when so many great games were either never released, or never released here in the USA. That's the worst thing about the damned things. They took up so much valuable shelf space that could've been used for so many much more enjoyable and entertaining games, and now that the 16BIT era is over, they're still flooding ebay and all the other markets, just sitting there taking up space, because nobody wants them now anymore than they wanted them then. They're just a waste of silicon.

I don't even know where to begin. Personally, I'm not a sports gamer. Personally, I'd much rather find dozens of shooters and action games instead of sports titles when I look for Genesis games. But realistically, I am the minority. You are the minority. Most of the DP crowd falls into the minority. We were the minority in the 16-Bit era, and we're the minority today.

Madden still sells ten zillion games. For every person who buys Gradius V for the PS2, fifty people buy the new Madden. That's how it works - sports games sell because sports games are popular, especially with the casual gamer. Consider this: I have a close friend who has a PS2 and an XBox. He has five PS2 games and two XBox games. With the exception of one war game on the PS2, all the others are sports. He comes home from work and plays a game of baseball to unwind. He's happy. The majority of the gaming population is happy.

That same majority of the population was happy in 1994 when the shelves were jam-packed with sports games. While you and I stood there wishing for some obscure space shooters to show up in stock, millions of others were gleefully loading their shopping carts. There are so many Genesis sports games out there now because so many people willingly and happily bought them when they were new. It's the same reason record collectors find the same damn albums over and over again (Frampton Comes Alive comes to mind...). Does that make Frampton a waste of a record? You may or may not think so, but millions of people would surely defend its worth. The thing still gets radio play, after all.

So what's my point? My point is that the millions of Genesis sports games reflect an important piece of gaming history. You may think Madden football is a waste of plastic, but it appears just as frequently as Sonic the Hedgehog, and is just as influential on the course of gaming history. No one is forcing you to buy them, so just ignore them if they're so offensive.

The holy attitude that many game collectors have when it comes to sports games is ridiculous. Just relax folks. They're only games.

[SoulBlazer]

And there there are those of us who enjoy and buy both hardcore AND casual games. :) Yes, I plunk down $50 for the new Madden each year, but I also buy Gradius 5, Metal Slug 3, and a lot of other smaller releases.

[Pantechnicon]

Ah, the Genesis sports glut.

My first Genny was actually a hand-me-down from a friend who is a big sports gamer (as I am not) and had upgraded to PSX. So in the course of trying to learn to appreciate this system I went looking for games more my style: flight sims, action, RPG's etc, only to be confronted by seemingly never-ending piles of sports titles and horizontal platformers. I think it might have had something to do with the part of the country I live in. Very frustrating.

It took a couple of years before I finally started to find decent titles in the wild: Dune, Herzog Zwei, General Chaos, Desert/Jungle/Urban Strike, Shining Force and an eventual acceptance of all things Sonic. Nowadays my "Sega Fanboy quotient" is 2nd only to my love for all things Atari. However, of my Sega systems the Genesis is probably the one I like least, and again that's owing only to the fact that it's so hard to find games for it that I really want to play in the wake of so many sports titles.