My Top 10 Sega Genesis Sports Games

[Music] from the earliest days on the genesis sports titles were a regular fixture the ads in magazines the television commercials the software library sega made sure to focus heavily on as many games as they could across multiple professional sports their early celebrity endorsements defined their strategy tying up some of the biggest names in boxing football baseball and basketball if they were a champion or associated with greatness at the time chances are they were on a sega box at one point in time or another since i watched a number of professional leagues myself i was drawn to these games with many of them soaking up hours of my time the genesis would go on to be one of my favorite platforms for sports titles and i own many of them to this very day while old sports games tend to be dismissed by many in retro gaming you'll get no such nonsense here these can be every bit as important to your memories of this great system as the streets of rage or shinobi if you didn't care about football baseball basketball or their like i can understand having no interest but for many of us these types of games hold important places in our hearts for the time spent with friends and family scoring goals catching touchdown passes or nailing that elusive hole in one some of them even had customization features that added additional depth and gameplay variation in this episode we will be looking at my top 10 sports titles for the sega genesis before i begin i wanted to say that when i was younger i did not play or watch soccer or hockey so these games have a noticeable lack of representation here that's less an indication of their quality and more a case of my preferences and experiences i also chose to limit an entry to just my favorite in a series that way we didn't end up with 10 variations of american football since it's my favorite anyway let's get right to it my top 10 sega genesis sports games [Music] [Applause] i did not play much in the way of soccer games in my youth in fact it'd be years before i paid the sport any mind at all eventually i discovered the european and brazilian exclusive international superstar soccer deluxe and took to it quite well in fact i ended up loving it i thought the presentation was phenomenal the screen scrolled super smooth the sprites were animated as well as some arcade games and there was quite a bit of nice sounding speech there's a bunch of options to set a simple friendly match tournaments and train yourself there's different fields and weather conditions and a fair few countries to choose this one comes down to raw playability and it's easy to get into and understand since u.s genesis owners didn't see this one you guys might want to give it a go on an emulator to see what it's all about fifa had some good 16-bit entries but this one here impressed me the most go if you were an nes kid chances are you play tecmo bowl if you appreciated a good game of football some years later they brought out tecmo super bowl for the genesis and surprise it's still immensely playable it started out as an arcade game so the gameplay is fast and built around choosing your plays easily to keep the action at a breakneck pace the graphics have only seen a mild improvement over the 8-bit version and that's okay because this one was never about visuals anyway the two player mode is the stuff of legends me and a few friends could play this all night without hesitation it's the kind of nfl game you play to burn 15 minutes waiting for your wife or daughter to get ready for a night out the super simple playbook may seem to lack depth at first but it serves the gameplay just fine it's got real teams and players and there's even a season mode if you want to go all the way to the super bowl if you have non-gaming friends this is the one you want them to try out it was a winner on the nes and this one is just as fun [Music] you guys know i love a good game of golf there's a few on the old genesis that i enjoyed but pga tour 3 was the best this one was all about authenticity and recreating a feeling of choosing the right club for the right situation while the visuals themselves aren't anything impressive i did dig the pseudo 3d flybys of the courses which at the time really helped gage how to tackle each area the system to hit the ball was easy to understand basically breaking down to how far each club could hit and automatically choosing your best option you could manually choose of course but it was a great way to introduce newcomers on how to play it it's got loads of courses and real players as well adding to the realism it was a rare case of a sports game with a ton of depth that had an easy to pick up and play quality that just about anyone could appreciate i enjoyed it so much i actually bought a kit to play with a motion controlled club it kinda worked and added an element of faux realism that made it unforgettable tennis also happens to be a sport i really enjoy it was the only sport my mom cared about and we'd watch matches together when i was a kid pete sampras tennis was something i discovered quite by accident i only purchased it because of the weird cartridge that had controller ports on it the game's developers codemasters called it a j-cart which allowed four-player simultaneous multiplayer without additional adapters thing is there was actually one heck of a good tennis game here it's got great animation a bunch of different areas and court types to play on and again four players can challenge each other the interface is easy to understand and you have the option to play tournament and world tour modes you can mix women against men as well sampras is the only real player in the game but you can name your guy or gal whatever you want if you find yourself getting your ass handed to you by the computer try the doubles matches to get more acquainted with the timing this one was a sleeper and one of the better tennis titles that generation game computer computer one to serve while wrestling's inclusion as a sport is open to interpretation i really enjoyed wwf royal rumble all the same i first played the super nintendo version so when it finally hit the genesis i was all in here we get some wrestler changes but it has the same great gameplay it supports up to two players with six characters on the screen at once and has a tag team in battle royal mode for you and your friends the gameplay is pretty much button mashing fun to see who can pull off the moves the fastest the fun here alone is admittedly on the weak side and its strong point is absolutely rooted in its multiplayer two players fighting it out with four cpu controlled wrestlers interfering is a great time the series would continue with wwf raw and you can really put either one in this slot raw does add four player support more moves and some new faces so it may appeal to some of you more the difficulty settings are pretty forgiving so it's a good one to play with your kids as well the graphics and sound aren't quite as good as the super nintendo version but the six button face of the genesis pad pairs well with the gameplay it's simple but great fun [Applause] nba jam came along during the 16-bit era but the home ports were cut down quite a bit by the time we got nba hang time though things really started to come together the animation here is the best these types of games ever saw in the genesis the action flows flawlessly too it's fast responsive and never slows down the three button interface keeps things super simple and accessible to anyone who enjoys a good game of basketball you only have two players to keep track of but it's fully licensed and has all your favorite teams the role playability of this game is likely known to any of you who have played the nba jam style games the insane dunks the regular scoring the loose book all make for something special don't get me wrong i appreciate sim versions of the sport as well but for something i return to again and again this is what i want to play the accessibility is second to none as far as these types of games are concerned and everything about it improves with the multiplayer i always wish that this had come out on the sega cd so we could have gotten some better sound effects but it was dead and gone by the time it showed up double dunk heating up [Music] neo geo ports to the genesis usually came with a ton of cuts but thankfully super baseball 2020 still has all the fun of the original it's baseball as you've never seen it before robots a unique stadium jet packs and an upgrade system to make it as crazy as possible the basic rules of baseball apply here it's just powered up a bit with a few additional changes there's a home run zone that requires a bit of luck to nail there's a lot less foul balls and nearly everything ends up in the outfield its arcade design means everything keeps up at a breakneck pace gameplay follows the path of most baseball games of the era so it's easy to get into and play competently it looks great too while there is some color cutbacks around the various assets it still looks remarkably similar to the neo geo source the sound has its moments but overall suffers the most in the translation but the gameplay certainly makes up for it seeing how this turned out makes me wish that someone had ported over neo turf masters to the genesis that could have been one heck of a great port [Music] in 1990 the world of console sports changed forever with the release of the first john madden football there had been games based on the sport before of course but this one really tried to be a true simulation the playbook was deep the ai actually stuck to running routes covering lanes and a blown assignment meant a wide open field or a vicious loss of yardage madden also upped the stakes visually giving us a sort of pseudo-3d perspective that looked like you were controlling it from over the shoulder of the player even sega's own first effort on the genesis looked flat in comparison it wasn't particularly deep in options or modes it lacked an official players or league license but it played so well no one cared i remember it being the talk of the school when it launched and everyone wanted to play it who had an even passing interest in the sport it was one of those games that started the fire that led to the inferno that was known as sonic the franchise would go on to spawn numerous updates and really you can trade any of those with this one depending on your own preferences i chose the first one because of its impact on me and the platform personally and its great combination of gameplay sound and visuals really boosted sega in the eyes of teenagers all over the united states first down [Music] i had been privy to a number of boxing games before evander holyfield's real deal boxing sega's first game had been buster douglas boxing an arcade title that was as shallow as a rain puddle holyfield here changed everything it introduced a boxer creation system that started you out as a rookie and only through training fighting and moving up the ranks did you get any better that fighting was incredibly fun too no one punched knockouts here you earned your foes blood by working them down with jabs uppercuts body blows and tying them up when the momentum wasn't going your way once your fighter got older he starts to lose his edge getting weaker and weaker until you retire more he starts losing matches starting the process all over again a bit over a year later sega would update this with improved graphics and add a whole bunch of real-life champions with greatest heavyweights so you could really choose either one of them since they have the same great gameplay engine it was yet another genre that had matured into one of the best representations of a sport on the genesis and there was nothing that played anywhere else as nice on other platforms i dumped countless hours building careers and champions watching them eventually fall and building them back up i still play it today because the mechanics were just that good and it easily earns its place on this list [Applause] one two three [Music] picking a number one was really tough i love the games we've seen so far but when it comes to hours played championships won and gameplay appreciated there was only joe montana nfl sports talk football 93 to consider sega had released a few football games already for the genesis but none of them had been perfect just yet they had elements of greatness but things still needed improvement montana 93 finally brought it all together it was the visual upgrade the series needed to be more realistic the playbook was brought in line to directly compete with the realism of madden and sega sports talk technology added an edge no other cartridge game had at the time sega perfected their zooming features here as well when the play first starts you get a pulled out view that gives you more of the field to see once things get going the view changes to a much closer perspective that allows you to see the action on a much more personal level i really enjoyed this presentation style and it really set itself apart from madden it was nice to see sega not copy its closest competitor so blatantly and try to do things on its own terms the montana series would continue to evolve over the next few years but i always considered this one to be the best and most unique the defense in the 3-4 montana calling signals montana back to throw throws deep clocked by the receiver down on the 38-yard line 36-yard gain on the path making a list like this sometimes makes you feel like you should add certain games because you know they're popular in the community nhl 94 fifa 95 and their like command a lot of respect among 16-bit sports fans and many of you likely will feel their omission here is some form of slight or oversight that's definitely not the case i've played them both and just prefer these games instead but that's the great thing about the available sports titles on the genesis there are so many choices so much variety and so many companies that put stuff out you really do have nearly endless options it was sort of a golden era of sports gaming where no one company owned a license exclusively and everyone was free to make whatever the hell they wanted it was also a time when developers weren't afraid to make wacky sports software that could be just as much fun as the simulation stuff sometimes even more so that openness allowed a fearless and competitive field of releases we haven't seen in gaming for nearly 20 years now the massive growth of the industry has resulted in developers and publishers paying for exclusive rights to make games based on real life leagues strangling creativity and leading to the same products over and over from the same companies i miss the days when a sport could look sound and play radically different release to release giving you a choice in your software that meant you were never bored the genesis was certainly one of the better systems for sports gaming thanks to that kind of competition i don't think it would have done half as well as it did in the united states without them i'm single lord x thank you guys for watching and i will catch you next time [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Sega Lord X

Views: 63,375

Keywords: segalordx, sega lord x, sega saturn, sega genesis, sega dreamcast, mega drive, megadrive, game gear, 32x, mega cd, genesis, saturn, master system, sega, sega cd, gameplay, review, movies, retro games, retro gaming, video games, ps4, xbox, wii, nintendo, gamecube, n64, ps1, ps2, ps3, psp, vita, switch, atari

Id: evWeJ55GxZM

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021