The Ageing of Retro Sports Games

There is a common thought process among retro gamers that sports games don't age well. You may find that the old football/golf/tennis games you once loved are on eBay or other sites for a pittance and you can claim back some of your sporting youth at a bargain of a price. But is it truly worth it.

Short answer for me... no...ish.


On Friday, we had a sit down at RCR headquarters and tried to get through a couple of games, we maybe didn't get through as much as we hoped due to a multitude of reasons but I certainly took enough away to know that going forward, sports games are going to be very tricky to review for a few reasons.

We know retro games may not always support the best graphics, many would argue that it is part of the charm. There is sometimes no distraction from the actual gameplay and a game can be appreciated on a completely different level. Sports games however don't get that luxury, it is a lot harder to look back with a nostalgic head due to the yearly update of many sport games in a franchise series, the game I will be using as an example will be FIFA '97 on SEGA Mega Drive. Keep in mind just a year later, FIFA '98 was released on the PlayStation and the difference is unreal. Granted the Mega Drive didn't have anywhere near the capabilities of the PS1 but for 1997, I just can't take what was put out as acceptable.

Look at the examples below, FIFA '95 to '97 are practically the same game, the level of progression is unforgivable here.

FIFA '95

FIFA '97

FIFA '98

Now it isn't just the graphics here, I genuinely have no clue how on earth we played these games and enjoyed them at the time, yes hindsight and all and there will have been no basis of comparison but playing this again made me fully appreciate how far we have come.

The gameplay for me was practically non-existent, the controls were apalling, blocky with no real feeling like you were controlling what was going on. You could be one-on-one with the goalkeeper for example and you could only hope this "this time it is going to be different" shoot and once again get the shot saved. Repeat. No matter which direction you shoot in, the keep does the 'save' animation at the last possible split second and the ball ends up somehow in the middle of the goal. Frustrating isn't even the word.

Contrastly, we played WWE RAW, also on the Mega Drive and I actually enjoyed it. It was simple and basic with few commands to pull of moves but the Royal Rumble match we had catered to the 'laugh' we were looking for. Some of our Twitter followers and people over at the Greydog Software Forum may already know we are long time wrestling fans to begin with so this may have been the reason why, but we are big football fans too so it can't be purely on personal interest.

I think I know why now there is a general rule of thumb that sports games don't age well, of course there still will be one or two that people have a personal preference over but it is much harder to look back without evaluating how far they have come in terms of controls, gameplay and graphics to that of any much loved side-scroller. There will always be a comparison to something more modern and in this genre, retro games will most likely lose.