Two eShop golf games, Mario Tennis, a couple Pro Evo soccer games, an atrocious non-series Madden crapjob, and Mario Tennis. That's it for sports on the 3DS, seriously? I cannot be the only one who still pines for the good old days of accessible and addictive sports titles. Japan's a little bit better, they've got a couple Pro Yakyuu baseball games, the totally awesome-looking Pocket Soccer League: Calciobit, even an Arc System Works baseball game up on the eShop. But I mean, where the hell are the basketball games? Where is American football? Baseball games in the states? Ice Hockey for christsake? Think back to the great arcade sports games of the past. Hey, they didn't just "suddenly get bad" over time, they're still excellent gaming foundations. Stuff like Blades of Steel, Hit the Ice, NBA Jam, the Sports Talk Baseball games on Genesis, the beautiful Tecmo Super Bowl and even slightly more complex stuff like the main series Joe Montana Football games or even NHL '96 or something. Where the hell are these kinds of games? I think I know where they are.
OH, THEY ARE NOWHERE. You know, there was a time, back when I was busy defending the SNES against the Genesis kids, when sports games were literally all that mattered. Those were the ones selling millions of copies, and we only didn't have sports games on our Game Boys and Game Gears because the handheld power was just total crap. Oh wait, there were tons of sports games!! They put NBA Jam, Madden, NHL, Hit the Ice, Bases Loaded, even goddamned College Slam, an NBA Jam spinoff, onto that Game Boy, virtually unplayable! Look at the power we're carrying around now. You're telling me that there's no audience for small, manageable sports games on this thing? Is it cause we all just started hating sports? I think about starting up even a simple baseball game, a game based on a sport I don't even like, and naming and making my own little players and putting together a team and earning experience for them by playing other teams and upgrading my stats, and maybe even getting little powerups like in the brilliant Baseball Simulator 1.000 and I FUCKING COME. Why on earth has the arcade sports game died! Why can I not play them on my 3DS? JESUS, CHRIST!!!!
The football season just started, and I had to resort to buying goddamned Madden 13 on my PS3, because there is literally nothing else. Why, instead of attempting to release an atrocious 3D polygonal gimp football game on the 3DS at launch and then bitching about how it didn't sell cause it sucks the fucking rock, did you not think "oh, maybe we could make a different style of sports game for the 3DS?" EA! Put that shit in 2D like it used to be, give me a side view, do it like that awesome Calciobit, just give me the sports games holy crap.
The state of affairs when it comes to heavy console sports "games" these days is sickening and disgusting. They are complex, virtually unlearnable simulations slightly masked in the illusion of player control and influence, covered in switches. I can hardly get my gamer friends to play them with me cause we're in for hours of figuring out what the fucking buttons are, and yet I used to get my goddamned father to throw down in some Tecmo Super Bowl with me or a game of Bill Walsh College Football and he would whip my pre-pubescent ass raw. Can't we get back to basics a little bit?
Alexey Pajitnov did not find it necessary to increasingly add various elements to Tetris until it eventually collapsed under its own goddamned weight, a physics-packed three-dimensional variation on a theme that eventually all but eclipsed the core game mechanics that made the original popular in the first place, an atrocity that will just "run the routes" by itself if you don't push any buttons once the play starts. It's a shame that instead of formulating new, addictive, fun sports games for the 3DS, most devs seem to have been satisfied by either not even trying, or releasing a single piece of shit then not doing another goddamned thing.
Unlike Tetris though, there's not really an original I can go back to, a compulsively playable classic sports game on the go. We're in a new era of handheld power and screen size and resolution now. Why does all this extra power mean we can't have sports games based on old concepts? Make a new Madden 13 for the 3DS, but make it like Calciobit, make it like Tecmo Super Bowl, make it for the goddamned 3DS. Give us sports fans something fun to play. Trust me, we are waiting.