Top five sports video games

Each year, sports fans and gamers look forward to the release of the newest iteration of sports video games.

For countless years now, sports video games have been on the decline, which brings me to rank my top five sports classics to ever hit home gaming consoles.

5. NBA 2K16

For basketball fans, NBA 2K16 is seen as the greatest NBA 2K game of all time. Scratch that, the greatest basketball game of all time.

2K16 was ahead of its time and played better than how NBA 2K plays today. The game was just smooth in every aspect. The graphics were top-tier, dribbling was crisp, shooting the ball wasn’t over complicated, and you could actually play defense.

On top of that, this game had an amazing soundtrack featuring artists like DJ Khaled, Drake and Imagine Dragons.

When NBA 2K fans think of the golden era of their beloved video game, they think of NBA 2K16.

4. Wii Sports

While not being a sports “simulation” game like all of the other games that appear on this list, Wii Sports is a timeless classic that everyone played growing up.

Wii Sports was a game exclusive to Wii and gamers could play 5 different sports with their Wii remotes. Baseball, Golf, Tennis, Bowling, and Boxing were the sports included in the original Wii Sports.

There was nothing better than being a little kid back in the day and immersing yourself in a game of Wii Sports and thinking you were a professional athlete trying to imitate the motions of your favorite athletes.

There also was nothing better than getting crushed by Matt, one of the Nintendo characters created for the game, every time you played against him.

Wii Sports will forever be an all-time classic among the older members of Generation Z and kids growing up today will never understand the satisfaction of hitting out-of-the-park home runs in Wii Sports baseball.

3. EA Sports College Football 25

I know I said I would be putting classics on this list, but I couldn’t help myself to not include EA Sports College Football 25.

After more than a decade of waiting for a new college football game, EA delivered a masterpiece with College Football 25.

The game perfectly encapsulates the atmosphere of college football gamedays, especially with the stadium pulse feature to emulate the feeling of going into a hostile environment as a road team in college football.

EA prioritized the game’s dynasty mode, delivering an in-depth experience to allow fans to build their dynasties the way they want to do it.

They also emphasized the fact that “Every team is someone’s favorite team” and really put in the effort to get the small details right to make sure game days in the video game matched those of real life.

The success of College Football 25 has college football fans eager for the next edition of the game which is slated to be even better than the reboot we received this past year.

2. NBA Jam

NBA Jam is a 90s arcade classic that many people of my generation have not actually played.

The game was originally developed in the 1990s and was a 2v2 arcade basketball featuring superstar players from all 27 NBA teams at the time. Players could play NBA Jam on arcade machines or on the Sega Genesis when it was first released.

NBA Jam was an instant classic and gave us the iconic voice lines, “He’s on Fire” and “Boomshakalaka”.

Players could also enter in “cheat” codes with their controller to unlock special features in the game, like being able to play as United States politicians or NBA mascots.

EA ended up coming out with a reboot of NBA Jam in 2011 allowing a new generation of NBA fans to experience the 90s arcade classic with a new generation of players, while fans who grew up playing the game could relive their childhood playing an updated version of the classic.

There have been rumours about another potential reboot of NBA Jam but so far nothing has happened and nothing probably will any time soon, however, if a developer rebooted the game they could take my $70 in a heartbeat.

1. ESPN NFL 2K

ESPN NFL 2K is widely regarded as the greatest sports game of all time because of how ahead of its time the game was.

The game featured a full presentation from ESPN, which included SportsCenter, detailed reports from Chris “Boomer” Berman and one of the most in-depth franchise mode experiences we have ever seen in a video game.

If you were to go back and play NFL 2K5 today, you would notice that the game somehow plays smoother than EA’s Madden 25 and probably every other Madden game before that.

The fact that 2K got run out of town from making NFL games is a travesty because since EA got the exclusive NFL video game license, Madden has been nothing but a shell of itself and a cesspool of glitches.

There have been rumors about 2K potentially rebooting its NFL sim series, but EA still has its chokehold on the NFL’s video game license with no end in sight.

Ian Rothenberg is a first-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him email imr5327@psu.edu.