It's that time of year again, a time when Defunct Games celebrates the holidays by posting a daily theme article that should inform and delight gamers all over the world. This year we're counting down the days until Christmas by looking at 30 different video game genres. From the most popular games to the tiniest niche titles, everything fits into a genre and we're going to be there to shed absolutely no new information about that genre in this month-long feature. Join us as we celebrate this joyous season with the 30 Genres of Christmas!
The green Mohawk is a hair style I would like to see the NBA embrace!
Are you playing a sports game where everybody seems to have superhero abilities? Are you playing a basketball game and everybody can pull off dunks that are twenty feet high? Or maybe it's a football game where the entire object is to hurt as many people as possible? The easiest way to figure out if you're playing an Arcade Sports game or not is whether the refs are actually paying attention to the rule book. If they are constantly calling fowls or throwing down the flag, then you must be playing a sports simulator. If you can punch the ref out when he makes a bad call, then chances are you're playing an Arcade Sports game.
Patron Saint:
Australian Rules Football.
Typical Story:
Crazy people who are modeled off of real sports starts take to the field/court and beat the living tar out of each other. And don't forget the cheerleaders, you'll impress them every time when you burst into flames and literally walk
There was absolutely no reason for Acclaim to try and resurrect the NBA Jam franchise a decade later!
over everything in your way. And when you win, you will be rewarded with the possibility to do it all over again without retaining any of the cuts and bruises you earned from your last outing.
What Your High School Basketball Coach Would Think:
After spending the last four weeks hammering out drills and lessons, your coach would have a heart attack if he saw the wanton disregard for real rules. Then again, he's probably going to have a heart attack from all of the alcohol he's drinking and twentysomething women he's coaching on the side. He may not be loyal to his wife, but he's prepared to do everything in his power to make sure you're faithful to the rules of basketball and teamwork.
Does anybody actually know somebody who bought FIFA Street? I didn't think so!
SSX and Tony Hawk are fast-paced and exciting sports games, but they are not part of the Arcade Sports genre. Games like Skate and Stoked are part of the Extreme Sports Game genre, a type of game we're bound to get to over the next four weeks.
Then vs. Now?
Although there were sports games in the arcade before 1993, it was NBA Jam that changed everything. For me this was the first basketball game I bought in a store (multiple times, no less). Of course, the genre goes back even further, including other action-packed basketball games like Arch Rivals and Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball. But NBA Jam was different. There was something so addictive about this game, something that kept pulling me back time after time. The Arcade Sports games of today aren't like that. While I enjoyed the new NFL Blitz and NBA Street games, there have been far too many incomplete passes in the past ten years. Even though NBA Streets is better than NBA Jam, I'm still going to side with the old school Arcade Sports Games.
