The ultimate sports video game bracket

The ultimate sports video game bracket
By Pete Volk

From NBA Jam to Backyard Baseball, it’s time to vote on your all time favorite.

This week at SB Nation, we’re going to be talking about video games across the network. That’s not limited to sports video games, but in this post, right here, that’s what we’re going to talk about. What is the greatest sports video game title of all time?

That’s where you come in. We’ve selected 32 games from a variety of sports, types and eras, and we’ll be running polls over the course of this week for you to decide which one reigns supreme (there’s more info at the bottom on the selection and seeding process, for those interested). There are some I couldn’t make room for (Pyre and Golf Story stans, know that I’m with you) and some I definitely forgot. I’d love to hear about them, please yell at me in the comments.

If you can’t see the voting box, click here.

Voting for the first round will close at 11:59 PM ET Monday, June 15. We’ll vote on the second and third rounds Tuesday, and the final four games Wednesday before crowning a champion Thursday.

First-round matchups

The Originals Region (pre-1999)

Tons of classics in this region! My personal favorite in this group has to be Backyard Baseball, but I grew up playing most of the games in the Backyard series and I will not begrudge any of you who vote for the excellent Tecmo Super Bowl.

The Turn of the Century Region (1999-2003)

This region has arguably the favorite to win the whole thing: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. The first two games in the series are being remastered, with a release date of September, so get excited for that. The region also has the legendary snowboarding title SSX Tricky, and standouts from wrestling (WWF No Mercy) and tennis (Top Spin).

Other personal favorites here: NBA Street Vol. 2 (still holds up!), Madden 2004 (aka Michael Vick Madden) and Ken Griffey Jr. Slugfest (I logged way too many hours in that game as a child).

The Mid 2000’s Region (2004-2008)

This is when things started to consolidate into the major titles we see today (the next region is even more illustrative of that). I’m really intrigued by that first match-up: two beloved 2K football titles before EA boxed them out of football games. All-Pro Football 2K8 is one of the few examples of me taking some creative license here: it didn’t get great reviews, but it’s my all-time favorite football game (in my opinion, no game has better balanced rushing and passing on both sides of the ball). 2K will be returning to football soon, though!

Two more of my favorites here from now-discontinued series: MVP Baseball 2005 (a game that we’ve already laid out the case for as the best of all-time) and College Hoops 2K8. Two comments on 2K8: 1) the career mode was so much fun I applied to Elon because of it and nearly went to school there 2) go Leathernecks.

A potential darkhorse here is iRacing, the best-in-class racing simulator, complete with laser-scanned tracks.

The Modern Era (2009-Present)

Now we’re pretty fully into the big franchises. It can be hard to pick representatives for each, because the games often hardly change from year to year.

NCAA Football 14 has a big upset opportunity here — the game did not get as high reviews upon release as the rest of the entires here, but as the last licensed NCAA Football title there is a looooot of nostalgia around it.

You’ve also got Motorsport Manager, which in my opinion may be the best-in-class of the simulator genre. There are also a pair of excellent new takes on the sports genre from the past few years: Rocket League and Super Mega Baseball.

How the games were selected

A combination of personal preference, crowd-sourcing my SB Nation and Polygon colleagues, Metacritic review scores and the always-slightly-intangible “legacy” factor. I limited it to one selection per franchise (and often used Metacritic score as a tiebreaker) — if you are so inclined, feel free to view each individual entry for a franchise as representative of the franchise as a whole. This is not my 32 favorite sports games of all time — that would be a different group. I tried to make the group of games representative of the common fan favorites and the different kinds of sports games we’ve seen over the years.

Seeding was done strictly via Metacritic review scores, with the exception of the first region (old enough that most didn’t have Metacritic scores). I tried to make logical seeding out of that one.

June 15, 2020 at 07:58PM
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