The modern sports video game landscape is largely dominated by the major team sports of the world, with the occasional carve-out for a racing or karting game. If you want a game to recreate what you see on your TV or to build a team for online play by opening up packs of virtual cards, then the gaming market has you covered. If you’re looking to break outside the back, things get a bit less plentiful.
Nowhere is this stepback in new releases as prominent as in the world of extreme sports. Once a healthy part of the sports video game market, the world of extreme sports games now feels much more barren, with few original releases hitting the market for fans to try out. Today, we’re looking at the peak years of extreme sports gaming, what has changed, and what the future for the genre might be.
The Turn Of Millenium Golden Age
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There may not be any genre of game more strongly tied to an era in gaming than extreme sports games around the new millennium. When the Tony Hawk series debuted in 1999, it kicked off a period in gaming where extreme sports games were a serious player and for good reason, as they soon developed a strong track record of being great games that balanced fun and challenge. Some of the leaders in the field were:
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater: The undisputed king of the genre, the Tony Hawk’s series is not only directly responsible for the next two games on this list, but also spiritually significant to nearly any open-stage extreme sports games in the last 25 years. The series established the genre and set a standard for others to attempt to live up to, including its own successors.
- Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX: A clear attempt to follow the leader, although not from the same team, as evidenced by the slight tweak on the naming structure, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX translated the same general gameplay loop over to the world of BMX riding. This provided new ground for seasoned Tony Hawk fans while also opening the door to extreme sports video games to a new group of real-world sports fans and participants.
- Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer: Published by Activision and thus free to use the “Pro” naming structure, Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer yet again moved the extreme sports gaming formula over to a new sport, this time on the water. As with other extreme sports franchise debuts at the time, it was well received by the gaming community and critics alike.
- SSX: EA decided to throw its hat into the extreme sports ring with snowboarding, and critics of the AAA studio may be surprised to learn they did so with no shortage of aplomb. SSX debuted the series in 2000 to absolutely rave reviews and continued through five straight rave-reviewed titles ahead of a five-year break that might have killed the momentum. Instead, 2012’s franchise reboot, SSX, carried on that tradition, only to also end up the last game released under the brand.
Rising Costs Prove Problematic
One of the benefits of extreme sports games in their infancy was a relatively low cost compared to the major ball sports. While an NBA game would need to secure licensing to cover 30 teams and 360 players for the league with the fewest players, an extreme sports game could release with a roster in the single digits.
That did not mean that the games did not come with costs, however, and those rose with time. As extreme sports athletes became more recognizable and the games established longer track records of success, the athletes gained leverage for licensing negotiations, for which there was no unified players’ union to work with.
Soundtracks were also a critical aspect of any extreme sports classic, but those also come with costs. Using established bands’ music means licensing, which means another large item on the balance sheet.
Rehashes Take Over The Major Studio Sector
The genre has not been fully abandoned in modern times, but the most anticipated games to release have not been new series or even new releases in established brands, but instead modern remakes of beloved classics. Both Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 offered gamers the chance to return to the beloved classics of their childhood or to check out games from before their time.
These games, like the ones they were remastering, were successful hits. They’re great games, and it turns out taking a great game and making it look better and powering it on modern consoles and the benefits they provide is a recipe for another great game. What they weren’t, however, was new explorations in the genre for fans looking for something special to latch onto.
Can Indie Games Be A Path Forward?
If high costs and low receptiveness to risk mean that major studios are moving away from new swings in the extreme sports world, then the indie scene may be the way forward. While smaller studios may not have the same budgets at their disposal, that can work to encourage creative solutions. From games that look to recreate the old magic without the high-cost bells and whistles to games that reimagined what an extreme sport can be, indie developers have shown some promise in the extreme sports game market:
- Streetdog BMX: We reviewed this game earlier this week after getting ahold of a review copy last week and found it to be an excellent addition to the genre. While not as expansive as titles released by larger studios, at less than half the cost of your average AAA title, it provides a lot of extreme sports bang for your buck and a gameplay experience that makes it clear Streetdog BMX was built by developers who played and loved the extreme sports games of old.
- OlliOlli World: Taking a diversion from the established extreme sports framework, OlliOlli World took things to a different gaming classic, 2D platforming. Like the Tony Hawk series, however, what it managed to do was make a skating game that appealed not just to skaters, but also to gamers in general, with fun, addictive gameplay that hooked you whether you’ve ever set foot on grip tape or not.
- Roller Drama: Roller Derby may not be your first thought for an extreme sport, particularly if you’re more familiar with its pro wrestling-adjacent roots, but as a modern sport is basically Crashed Ice with a flatter track and even more physical contact. Although not as universally beloved as some other extreme sports games mentioned previously, it shows a potential route for indie developers to lean into truly breaking outside the box of what a sports game can be, and if extreme sports aren’t fertile ground for box departure, I don’t know what sports would be.
Are you a fan of extreme sports games, longing for the golden age to come back? Do you think more indie games represent the future, or are you holding out hope for a AAA dive back into the genre in the years ahead?
