Video game

5 sports video games that defined my childhood – UConn Daily Campus


Since my parents hated fun and fulfilling childhoods, I didn’t own a console until the Wii. So while I did play a ton of GameCube and other prior consoles at friends’ houses, any sports games pre-2006 basically didn’t exist for me. When I finally got the Wii, the first console game I ever owned (besides “Wii Sports,” which came included) was “Madden 07.”

Unfortunately, this was before total time played was really recorded, but I would wager that I put more time into “Madden 07” than basically any game ever. That Shaun Alexander cover and loading screen is burned into my brain for eternity.

For a Wii game, the “Madden 07” controls were surprisingly complicated. This was right before EA decided to dumb everything down to a kindergarten level — I don’t know if anyone remembers that “All-Play” mode in “Madden 09,” but that was horrendous — and I think that’s partly why I loved it. Even the soundtrack, which featured countless heavy metal songs and other violent alternative stuff that you would never find in a game today, was incredible, but that’s a column for another day.

The funny thing is, looking back on how I spent most of my time on “Madden 07,” I barely played the core game. I rarely touched the Franchise mode, and I’m not sure if I even made a MyPlayer. Instead, my brother and I would just mess around on the “Practice” mode for hours on end, mostly just tossing Hail Mary after Hail Mary and seeing if we could score on each other. Today, I would get bored after five minutes. But as a nine-year-old, there was no better way to spend my time. Wholesome!

“Mario Strikers Charged”/“Mario Super Sluggers”

For the sake of your time and my keyboard, I’ve decided to lump these two marvelous Mario games together. I’ve seen plenty of people talk about “Sluggers,” so I won’t get into that one as much, but it was a superb baseball game to play with friends. The story mode was also an unexpected but engaging experience.

Yet easily the most slept-on game on this list is “Strikers.” Now, again, I’m talking about the Wii version, not the original GameCube version of which I was deprived, but this sequel absolutely slaps. My friends and I played the campaign mode (titled “Road to the Striker Cup”), in which you assemble a team and play in increasingly difficult tournaments, for entire afternoons straight.

The problem is, we never really discovered the whole charging-up-the-ball technique, and so we weren’t all that good. Despite our innumerable attempts, we never made it past our arch-nemesis, Diddy Kong. Alas, it was still crazy fun, and don’t worry, last fall I successfully defeated Diddy with the help of my roommates. Better late than never.

“Backyard Baseball”/“Football”

These games come from slightly different periods of my life, but were equally memorable. “Backyard Baseball” is obviously a classic; I played it on my mom’s ancient desktop computer — that thing was literally deeper than my arms could reach — when I was so young that I barely remember it. 

Like, I’m talking the original 1997 one, on CD-ROM. If my memory serves correctly, I got it in a cereal box. These were truly different times. But there are some things that you never forget, and seeing Pablo Sanchez swagger to the plate is one of them. (Side note: Pablo gets all the love, but what about Tony Delvecchio? Kenny Kawaguchi? My personal favorite, Achmed Khan?)

“Backyard Football” (2007) I played on my GameBoy Advance, usually while I sat outside my mom’s exercise class waiting for it to end. In hindsight, the gameplay really wasn’t all that great, but it was a perfect introduction to football video games.

 “The Bigs”



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