Here at Operation Sports, we all love sports video games, but that’s not reserved just for video games about real sports. Some of the best sports games of all time are about fictional sports. With the holiday sale and gifting season here, these are our favorite sports games about sports that don’t exist in the real world.
Speedball
Future sports are a common theme for fictional sports games, with developers more able to imagine games that couldn’t exist in our current world than finding voids in our existing sports landscape. Despite operating with the basic visuals available at the time, this game is evocative of sci-fi film future sports, with players in a metallic arena trying to score goals in a physical ball sport.
The gameplay on offer may not be the most enthralling in the world by modern standards, but it still holds a place of honor in the timeline of fictional sports games. Many young gamers in the 90s had a blast trying to score Speedball goals at home.
Cyberball
Robot athletes were another common theme for fictional sports games in the early home video gaming era, with games like Cyber Stadium Series: Base Wars and CyberBall asking what would happen and how the rules would change if athletes were machines.
CyberBall is a robot take on American football, albeit played with shorter sides brought about by the technical limitations of early home consoles. The most notable change to the sport was the one 50-yard line down reset, and the exploding ball, which not only led to a turnover but also a lost player if tackled on fourth down.
Windjammers 2
Dusting off a franchise that is nearly two decades old is a tricky proposition as developers have to make a lot of decisions about how to modify and update the game to better match modern gaming sensibilities while retaining what made the classic a hit. For Windjammers 2, Bandai Namco Studios went with the less-is-more approach. While the game includes modernized graphics and special abilities, it is also visually a game easily identifiable as a continuation of the original.
A sport that’s pong meets ultimate, Windjammers 2 is a top-down game where players attempt to throw the scoring disk past their opponent, with three points for scoring in the corners or five points for thundering one home down the middle. Tricks and special shots add to the challenge and produce a fast-paced arcade game that’s great for a hotseat night with friends.
Star Wars Episode 1: Racer
The prequel trilogy in the Star Wars saga has aged better over time, but is still often considered a step back from the original films. One thing that did not have a mixed reception was the action and excitement of the pod racing segment in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, and a spinoff video game of the sport was an inevitable opportunity for a franchise well known for its product marketing.
Fortunately for gamers, the podracing action was as fun as the segment itself. Players took control of high-powered racing machines, which could fly around at near-unmanageable speeds, but also would explode if not taken care of, leading to a fun challenge balance as you learned to master your podracers.
Pyre
Released by the studio behind the beloved Bastion, Pyre unsurprisingly is a sports game that does a bit more in the storytelling department than simply weave a tale of a sports league in a fantasy setting. In Pyre, teams of three exiles are competing in a sporting competition to earn their freedom, while opposing teams after the same boon try to stop them.
For the sport itself, the game consists of the teams trying to progress a magic orb down to their opposing team’s burning pyre enough times to extinguish it and win the match. During a Pyre playthrough, gamers are responsible for managing their team on the pitch, controlling the player in possession as they attempt to score and win, as well as making between-match decisions that help to shape the team at their disposal.
Rocket League
Rocket League is a textbook example of how to make a game in a lot of ways because there’s a lot it does right. The game introduces a new sport that is simultaneously unique and familiar enough to be easy to understand, while the low barrier of entry it offered made it easy for gamers to jump in and try it for themselves. What players found was a game that was instantly fun but with a lot of room to grow their skills for a meaningful competitive scene, too.
If you’ve somehow missed hearing about Rocket League it’s basically soccer played in an enclosed arena so the ball never goes out of play. Also, the on-field players are RC cars. What could easily prove to be a fun blurb that is terrible in practice instead turned out to be a masterclass and the game has remained beloved for over a decade since its release.
Blood Bowl
Blood Bowl is one of the more close-to-normal sports games you’ll find on a list such as this, as if you squint your eyes, you can just about call it a rugby/American football hybrid. To do so, of course, you do have to overlook that the players are things like walking trees, terrifying minotaurs, raised ghouls, and the like, and that they’re all literally killing each other.
A tabletop game transitioned into video game versions like Blood Bowl 2, players field teams of fantasy races from the Warhammer universe and attempt to bludgeon and batter the opposition into permanent injury or death, and also if at some point they progress the ball into the end zone that’s gravy. For a game that proves tactical sports play can still be high-action fun, Blood Bowl is a winning choice.
