In some ways, your involvement in sports games has evolved to be almost instantaneous. Whether that is in virtual reality sports gaming or online sports betting, you can find yourself in the action right here and now.
Sports video games have evolved since their inauspicious inception back in 1958 to command huge arenas and even betting markets. That includes arcade games, pong, and the rise of artificial intelligence leading up to the golden age of gaming and virtual reality.
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The Very First Sports Video Game
Sports video games date back all the way to 1958 when the physicist, William Higinbotham, invented Tennis For Two.
What would become a huge global industry started from these humble beginnings The game was played on an oscilloscope, looked similar to pong, and was designed to entertain visitors to Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Arcade Games
Almost a decade later, Taito began the arcade game market in 1967 with Crown Soccer Special. This was a mechanical pinball-based game with many impressive electronic components.
Two years later, Sega entered the arena with their arcade game, Grand Prix, which came with a foot pedal and a controller based on a steering wheel. You could play these games in arcades though the next developments brought the games into your home.
Home Sports Games Consoles
Many believe that sports video games as we know them today actually originated from Pong. This was indeed a sports game but rather a somewhat crude style of tennis created by Atari. Pong was not initially intended for home use but was designed as a mere training exercise assigned to Allan Acorn by the co-founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell. The game became incredibly popular and bars would order in the arcade systems to draw up custom and profits.
Taito was back in the Seventies with Davis Cup which prolonged the tennis game theme, though this time you could play as doubles. Soccer was next up and permitted two players, one to control the goalkeeper and another to control the forward. Both of these games were created by Tomohiro Nishikada who would go on to create Space Invaders in 1978.
By the Eighties, the ‘Console Wars’ had begun when Nintendo’s NES competed with Atari’s 2600 console and Mattel’s Intellivision. While this was the birth of home sports games consoles, you can bet on FanDuel money lines online either on your computer or phone.
Artificial Intelligence
In 1982, artificial intelligence became a game changer for the sports video games industry when Namco released Pole Position. The template was set and Electronic Arts took the lead with Earl Weaver Baseball which pairs realistic gaming with gorgeous graphics.
The designers even used the insight of Earl Weaver himself to help design the artificial intelligence and the game stands up to scrutiny for realism in baseball even today.
The Madden Franchise
As the graphics and technology improved, more sports could be played via a console at home. This included the franchise known as Madden which combined the latest artificial intelligence and graphics with tracking software. John Madden Football was launched in 1988 on Apple II computers and went under its own swift evolution. Since 1990, the game has largely kept the same layout.
As the Madden franchise developed, so did 16-bit games with the release of the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. You could play the video game on either console and such versatility ushered in a golden age of sports video games.
The Golden Age
The so-called Golden Age of sports video games was likely between the mid-Nineties and the early 2000s as more advanced systems and technology became available. From the PlayStation to PlayStation 2, there was a competitive market with the Xbox, Nintendo 64, and Sega Dreamcast. Motion capture also meant that featured athletes had increasingly realistic moves. That includes games like Major League Baseball featuring Ken Griffey, Jr. and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
Sports video games were becoming increasingly popular and profitable and by the mid-2000s, games companies were creating their own. Alongside the Madden franchise, you could buy basketball games, soccer games, and hockey games. Licenses also became a big deal as hockey and basketball games could be created by those willing to pay for the license. However, Madden was exclusively available on EA Sports as the only NFL sim while 2K made sure that EA Sports were forbidden from making more baseball games.
Virtual Reality
Now you can play sports through your video game console at home and the movements are as realistic as they can get. The Nintendo Wii can be seen as a front-runner for honing motion-activated controls though there have been further improvements since then.
While the Madden franchise did help introduce football to a wider audience in the home, you can now play football in virtual reality. PRO ERA allows you to see and play the game just as a quarterback would and is a fully licensed NFL VR simulation game.
Summary
Perhaps if William Higinbotham had not decided to design the very first video game, we may not have seen the advent of VR sports video games. The history goes from an oscilloscope to arcade games, Pong, the ‘Console Wars’ to artificial intelligence. By that point, technology had become so advanced that an individual could play against the computer for hours on end.
Though the Madden franchise did push sports video games further, it was not until game companies took it upon themselves to create their own increasingly realistic and popular games that the industry became what it is today.