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Sports games... worth collecting ?


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Hey all,

 

Just wonderrting what fellow collectors are doing about older sports titles. Always seems when I got to these donation stores there is always assortted Wii, PS1/2 even Xbox of sport titles. I'll never really play them, as I rarely play newer ones but, some times I do, just to check how they progressed. I normally just skip over these, as even on ebay seeing sports titles dont really have a lot of value in the selections for each console.

 

As a collector, do you collect sports titles even if your not going play them ?

 

Just wondering other people's thoughts on this subject...

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Depends on why you collect...I have a Genesis Madden collection just because, well, because. Other titles may become very rare in the future (check out Master System boxing title James "Buster" Douglas where one copy sold for thousands even though it was "last man standing" in the stores at the end of that consoles life).

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I forgot the name but I tried a 4 player tennis game on NES during a retro meet up and it turned out to be fun, if only because we found unexpected depth to the moves one could pull off (like diving for the ball IIRC).

 

But in my experience those good fun sport games are rare, many go for "realism" which may have appealed at the time but end up being a bit tedious.

 

I tried to get recently into Riding Hero for NeoGeo because it has a bit of story mode, but I feel I'd rather play Outrun...

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As a former big time collector, if I needed to fill a hole and it was a dollar or two why not? With how it is now, unless they're an oddball one that has some monetary value to roll it for profit (worth at least $10 of profitable effort) I won't bother. Sports games are usually crap, and worse, outdated yearly crap. That said, if it's something unlicensed, unique but not weird out of left field bad I'm in. Neo Turf masters, Baseball Stars (nes or #2 on Neo Geo), Hot Shots Golf/Mario Golf and derivatives, a few racing games here or there even if cheap like R4 on PS1. That stuff is fine.

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I think individual sports games can be collectible if there's something unique about them. Stuff like the Mutant League series, to echo an earlier example, or EA's NHL 92 (the one with the fights and the blood, removed in the next iteration), or nowadays games that feature stadiums or arenas that are being torn down. This ended up not being an issue in the end but for a while I felt like I had to hold on to my MLB The Show 2013 because it had all these classic stadiums in it that Sony supposedly couldn't or didn't want to pay to get the licenses for in later versions. But then they did show up again in like 2016 or 2017. But that made me realize that there *could* be sports games that might be really interesting for historical purposes, because you could play either in arenas/stadiums that no longer exist and aren't in any newer games, or the same for hall of fame players and great historical teams in their prime.

 

The oldest sports game I probably personally own is Micro League Baseball for the Apple II, and it's definitely interesting to play with the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals - a team with some famous hall of fame players on it, but which nobody talks about as one of the great teams of all time. It certainly doesn't fit in with today's power hitting era, but that's what makes it fun to play.

 

Ditto for the original Madden Football, which I also have for the Apple II (still boxed!), and that's a release I'll bet most people wouldn't even realize exists!

 

Still, I think you probably do need to be a sports fan to get anything out of collecting games like this; they don't retain broad appeal over time.

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I like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and some racing games. Otherwise I have zero interest in sports games.

 

 

I'm a huge Tyson's punch out fan and Love racing games but I know there are some titles that are epic that are sports games...like Ice Hockey or RBI Baseball for the NES, etc

 

These really good games are acceptations as normally if you walk into a donation store (goodwill, etc), you wont find these hit titles. You find the so, so popular games from 4-5 years ago that there is a new one every year on.

 

I find it interesting, I see these all the time in the stores for $2-4 for PlayStation 1/2, Wii, Xbox but, no one buys them... I hit a store once a week... And saw some fairly good titles (that I already have and not high value ones), the good tiles are always gone...the older sports games... nope..still there... just like the Wii-fit games....tons of them...

 

I was thinking if they were on sale (they run 50% off some days) to grab them all for "fillers" if they are complete and in good shape but, the other side says...Odds are I will never play them.

 

My collection does not have a billion games but, the games I played or wanted to play at one point... so normally these fillers I don't really go for....

 

It's why I was asking on people's views here...because they are sooo cheap...

Edited by TheCoolDave
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They look like donor cartridges to me, but I'm not very interested in sports OR cartridge collecting. At least they're cheap.

 

If I were more into sports games, I'd be really impressed by how you can hack a ROM and insert the current season's team lineups into ancient games to make them more relevant.

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Sports games are, since the late 90's, the "last games" of most systems so they can be interesting to collect for the technical value of them.

I'd say, for a gameplay point of view. it depends of the type of game and age. And, of your own preferences.

Most sports games prior to the 16 bits era aged very poorly, usually being simplistic, stiff and slow-paced. Exception might be racing games, if you count them in sports game, with early games still being fun or challenging.

Stunts (on PC - 1990) is a prime example, with early 3D graphics, a wonky but fun physics, large choice of vehicles, a 80's humour to it, with real opponents that you race against, as opposed to most games of the era still only making you compete against the clock and opponents being just an endless supply of annoying cars on the road.

Usually, as already said, games with wacky themes (like Rock'n'Roll Racing) or featuring something unusual are the most likely to be still interesting to play due to that special thing added.

 

I rarely get sports titles in general as they are usually of little interest but I have a few that stand out because them being funny or such.

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Most I avoid like the plague but, sports games can be super cheap commons you find in bin/get stuck with when buying lots, AND great games, at the same time.

 

WCW vs. NWO Revenge
WWF Wrestlemania 2000
WWF No Mercy

 

The above 3 will run you all of 5-10 bucks each, and they are the 3 greatest wrestling games ever made. Bar none. Fire pro my ass.

 

Wait, "sports entertainment" counts for this thread right? :lol:

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Some sports games are unique or go beyond being roster updates, so they have stood the test of time. Here's a few that I still revisit

 

Bases Loaded (NES)

Double Dribble (NES)

Blades of Steel (NES)

Tecmo Super Bowl (NES)

Mutant League Football and Hockey (Genesis)

NBA Jam / Jam TE (Genesis, 32X)

Mario Tennis (N64)

WCW vs NWO (N64)

Wrestlemania 2000 (N64)

NFL 2k1 (Dreamcast)

Virtua Tennis (Dreamcast)

All Pro Football 2k8 (Xbox 360/PS3)

Edited by derFunkenstein
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I can see why many are "collectible".

If you enjoy Hockey, NHL '94 on Genesis is some of the best 2D hockey you can play.

Maybe your an older fella and you wanna play with the that 1996 roster because that year your favorite team was doing great and a lot of your favorite players are in that season.

As long as you enjoy sports games/the sport in question, then the list can just go on and on as to why to collect them.

But if you don't like sports... then obviously don't buy them... same as if you don't like FPS games... don't buy them.

 

And as already mentioned there are so many "bizarre" sports games like the Mutant League series, Cyber Ball, Speedball, heck, even NBA Jam, that transcend the 'sport' itself and can be just fun games to play. You don't have to enjoy the sport of Golf as a whole to enjoy Kirby's Dream Course for example. And to go back to NBA Jam, I don't 'know' Basketball AT ALL. I've never played a basketball game I enjoyed, with the exception of NBA Jam, which i don't just enjoy, I love. Not because it's basketball, but because it's fast, frenetic, and the fun multiplies with multiplayer. It's unlike and basketball game I've played, except Arch Rivals of course!! and I think I would enjoy NBA Jam more if it had a wild and goofy roster (which it kinda does with hidden characters) as opposed to the NBA license, which I recall back in the day pissed a few of my friends off, they were like "so you can push people and do slam dunks from center court??? that's not basketball!!! No it isn't, and that's why it's so much more fun, to me at least.

Edited by Torr
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I am not a completest collector, so I have no interest in purchasing sports games at any price. The only exception that I make is the occasional hockey game. I have one or two for each of the PlayStation and PS 2.

 

As others have noted, the thrift shops are full of sports games, Wii Fit, and (around here, at least) music games -- frequently multiple copies of each title.

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I collect and enjoy sports titles. I've noticed in the collecting scene they seemed to be frowned upon for whatever reason. If a game is fun to play and you enjoy yourself why not?

I know I played and enjoy them with my friends as a kid as well but the same stigma was never attached to the games then.

I never got into any of the sports games past the Xbox 360 because they moved to simulation style gameplay and I prefer an arcade version.

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I have plenty of sports games in my collection; always have and always will. There are the essentials, like the Tecmo Bowl/Super Bowl games, some NES classics like Ice Hockey and Punch Out, and the NHL series on the Genesis, and then there are the obscure "hidden gems" like the Baseball Simulator 1000 games, Super Baseball 2020, and MLB Power Pros. Hell, the first game I ever pre-ordered was NBA Showdown '94 on the Genesis, and I still have it after plunking down $49.99 for it at Software ETC all those years ago.

I have gotten tired of the same Madden game coming out at $60 a pop every year, but there are plenty of fun games from the old days and even some new ones to keep me occupied. They are great for casual gaming, too!

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Leaving aside cartoony games that are still fun, my favorite sim-style sports games were the NBA Inside Drive games for the original Xbox. They didn't get much attention at the time because they were Xbox exclusive and all the hype was for the NBA Live/2K rivalry as those games had slicker graphics and animation, but I found that with some tinkering of the sliders, I could get a very statistically realistic game of basketball that flowed a lot more like a real game and put up a fair challenge. The games also have what I think is to this day the best voice commentary for a sports game that I've heard by Kevin Calabro and Marques Johnson - it just sounded extremely natural and often funny ("Nice dunk by the old vet!" "Hey, now, he's not old. He's just a guy with a good record collection, that's all..."). The guys would chat about players or random stuff but if a big play happened, Colabro would smoothly interject to remark on it. They sounded like real people instead of robots. I can't play the games anymore because my Xbox is dead, but if I can ever get them running, I'm definitely going to check around and see if there's still a community doing roster updates, which you still see with stuff like the NES Tecmo Bowl games.

 

I'll second the recommendations of the N64 AKI wrestling games. Those are still the best pro wrestling games ever made, IMO. WWE games in particular have been incredibly lazy since the early 2000s, so there's not much competition against No Mercy or Virtual Pro Wrestling 2.

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For the most part, no. Many of them come out with a new version every year with little more than updated rosters. They're bought by the tons and within six months to a year, the new one comes out and last year's game is tossed aside or traded in for pennies so they can get a little off the new one. I don't have much interest in real life sports at the moment, but I used to be into various sports at different time... but even then, I didn't go out and buy the newest sports game to play as "my" team. I have several sports games in my collection, but few of them are ones that I specifically picked out to buy. Most came as part of a larger lot or came with a used system I bought or whatever. The exception is racing games. I enjoy the Forza Motorsport games and have most of them.

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  • 3 years later...

I don't collect them, but I do have some favorites that I go back to now and then.

Arnold Palmer Golf (Genesis)
Extra Innings (SNES)
Hardball (Atari XE)
Winter Games 

The one advantage of cheap bargain bin sports titles are the fact that you could buy sometimes buy them to replace any badly worn cases.  
I'm thinking about the Sega Saturn and Xbox era games.  
When I was into the Sega Saturn many moons ago, I would buy a crappy Madden game and throw out the disc and manual and reuse the fragile plastic case for better titles.

 

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I am not a sports game fan much,but when I do get into that I usually reach for the various skateboarding titles and Ninja Golf 7800 😺

Especially Ninja Golf for the collector's vaue,great game.

 

Cool Boarders the arcade version is really good as well. I love pool games too like 9 Ball Shootout.

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