Sports are one of the cornerstones of American culture. A lot of people live and die by their sports team. We have a 24 hours news channel dedicated to sports. It only makes sense that sports video games have become a huge market in the modern era. Living out your childhood dreams of playing in the big leagues is one of a few reasons why they have become so popular. What steps have this genre taken to be at the level it is now? From Pong to Madden I will explore the history of sports video games to see how we have gotten to where we are now. But first, what is a sports video game? The genre of sports video games includes any video game that simulates the playing of a traditional sport. Almost every sport has had a game created after …show more content…
The third sub-category of this genre is games like Burnout, NFL Blitz and Punch-Out!!, these games were made to satirize the sport for both a comedic aura and also because it presents fun and exciting gameplay opportunities. The sports game genre has been a popular genre senses the origins of video games due to the competiveness of the games. Sports game design is also very different than your average video game. The vast majority of sports games goals are to accurately simulate the sport they are modeled after. For this reason they are designed to model the physical and tactical challenges presented by the sport. They also test the game player’s precision and accuracy of handling the gaming design while also mentally challenging him or her when it comes to tactics. Game designers have to include in their designs the stadiums and arenas these sports take place in, and most offer a type of play by play or commentary that is recorded into the game that is similar to what you will hear when watching the actual sport on TV. On of the defining features of the sports game genre is the utilization of different ‘modes’ for differing sections of play in …show more content…
However the first sports video game was invented almost fifteen years prior to Pong. In 1958 one of the scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project by the name of William Higginbotham invented a game called Tennis for Two on a Donner Model 30 Analog Computer. The game was displayed on an oscilloscope and was only able to be played in the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1983 Higginbotham talked about the invention of the game, he said, “The instruction book that came with the computer described how to plot trajectories and bouncing shapes, for research. I thought, "Hell, this would make a good game. "It took me four hours to design one and a technician a couple of weeks to put it together. ... Everybody stood in line to play. The other exhibits were pretty static, obviously. ... The game seemed to me sort of an obvious thing. Even if I had wanted to patent it, the game would've belonged to the