Tecmo Bowl, Madden, RBI Baseball & FIFA: How Much Do Video Games Contribute to Changing Sporting Tastes

There are seminal moments in your life as a sports fan. The first time your team wins a a title. The first time your team breaks your heart. The first time you painted your face. The first time your favorite team drove you to drink. The list goes on.

If you’re a sports fan of a certain age there’s also that moment you first ran for a 99-yard touchdown with Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl. ESPN devoted a large chunk of it’s 30 for 30 (“You Don’t Know Bo’) about Jackson’s otherworldly video game exploits. This is nothing new, especially on the Internet where there’s usually about a column per month churned out waxing poetic about that immortal 8-bit sprite.

I still remember games of Tecmo Bowl nearly 25 years later like it was yesterday. In fact, I remember asking my dad to buy me a Los Angeles Raiders pennant at the mall specifically because of Tecmo Bowl. To that point in my life I was still in the stage of “liking” sports, but not necessarily watching them with a blind, rabid devotion on a daily basis. Before playing Tecmo Bowl, the only player’s name in the NFL I knew was Walter Payton — which, in retrospect, was strange for a kid living in Connecticut, but whatever.

Admittedly this is fully anecdotal evidence from my own experience but in the wake of Tecmo Bowl‘s release in 1989, the after-school games of choice in my neighborhood went from baseball to two-on-two football — Tackle or touch depending on whose parents were or were not around.

When we finally got around to Madden on Sega Genesis circa 1991 it was over. While I had no idea what a “near,” “far” or “pro” formation might be, it was damn fun playing video game football in the snow. (Yes, as is the case today, I’m not very cool. Sorry to burst your bubble.) If an ambulance drove onto the field to run over Buffalo No. 34 (Thurman Thomas, pre-NFLPA license), all the better — BOOM! Again, it often doesn’t take more than that or a well-placed fart joke to amuse a 12-year-old kid.

Looking back two decades later, I keep wondering how much video games, specifically Madden, during the 90’s and 00’s helped in some small way to pave the way for the NFL to blow past baseball in terms of popularity in America, saying nothing of revenues, the decline in network television and other stuff I explored in another column this month on the topic.

How many hours of Madden have been logged since the franchise began on Commodore 64 and MS-DOS in 1988? Millions? Billions? The franchise’s relevance has waned from its peak days on the PlayStation 2, but its release still feels like an event — enough so that EA can hype it with Kevin Hart and Dave Franco.

The beauty of Madden was you could play a buddy sitting next to you for hours on end, regardless of the system and regardless of the potential accusations of “you’re looking at my plays, dude.” No matter how you played it, Madden vs. a friend was fun. Chucking bombs to Randy Moss every play? Sure. Toss counters to Barry Sanders? You bet. How many dorm rooms fights have begun due to someone’s inability to stop their buddy from executing a half-back option pass?

Whatever dumb comment Madden (“WHAP!”), or the late-great Pat Summerall (“There’s a man down.”), made during game play only enhanced the fun. EA Sports slogan, “It’s in the game,” rung true.

Without even realizing it, all those hours of gaming familiarized/indoctrinated you with the players and teams of the NFL, helping make every Sunday from September-January feel like Christmas. There was a time circa-2003, fresh out of college, when I probably could have told you the starting right guard on every NFL team thanks to Madden.

At the same time, if you’re around my age you probably have warm memories for games like RBI Baseball or Little League Baseball or Baseball Stars on Nintendo (NES) or Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on Super Nintendo. Problem for baseball? Since those days, baseball video games haven’t quite kept pace with Madden. Sure Triple Play Baseball on Genesis was a terrific, one-off title in the mid-90’s. The All Star Baseball and High Heat franchises had their moments. (As much of a loser as I am, I can’t speak much to the likes of games endorsed by Tony LaRusa or Tommy Lasorda on earlier systems.)

Currently the MLB: The Show franchise might be the most-realistic, detailed sports video game going, granted it’s only available on Sony platforms so if you own an XBox your only option this year was the revived version of RBI. The Show‘s best mode might be “Road to the Show” where you create a minor league guy and play a him throughout a career, steadily grinding to improve your skills — but it’s a solo affair.

The realism of baseball doesn’t necessarily translate into a fun video game experience for most people.

Whether you’re playing the computer or a friend, it’s hard to play a baseball video game and not try to swing for a home run every time. As much as I like baseball, working a pitch count in digital form or hitting behind the runner isn’t something I really want to do with my free time, sorry Sammy:

For whatever the reason – if and when I played a baseball video game – it would irk me to strikeout something like 15 times in a game while drawing one walk for every seven games played.

Finding a digit balance to smacking 10+ homers a game and one where you can barely get a single is multi-decade struggle for baseball video games. There’s nothing wrong with challenges in a video game, but at the same time you want some fun, too. The NBA 2K series nailed that balance thanks to a usual, complex set of sliders so if you want to play games more like NBA Jam and score 100 points in a game with Klay Thomspon or more like a straight-up sim and shoot 4-for-13 from the field, you can, and either way it’s fun — especially pitted against another human opponent either face-to-face or online.

In the mid-90s the NHL received a big boast in popularity — remember when it was the “coolest game on earth” — thanks to ESPN actually televising the games along with the amazing NHL series by EA Sports. Maybe some of the game’s appeal was chalked up to in-game fights, bleeding players and Al Iafrate’s 900 mph slap shot, but whatever. The NHL series appeal has transitioned quite well from the 16-bit era to the modern day.

Anyways, here’s your requisite Swingers clip:

Ease of play and undiluted fun are big contributors to the FIFA series’ rise to the top of the sports video game heap, selling over 100 million copies since 1993 and moving it past Madden as the defacto sports game of choice for a lot of Americans. People who don’t even like soccer can still play games of FIFA and enjoy themselves for what it is, in a quick, easy-to-play environment. For whatever little its worth, the local Game Stop near me reportedly had a line of over two dozen people waiting for the FIFA 15 release at midnight, even more than this year’s Madden.

I think back to the kids who were like me in 1988 playing Tecmo Bowl, scoring their first digital golazo with Lionel Messi and the impact that’s had over the last 15+ years. Again, it’s anecdotal evidence but more-and-more you’ll see kids wear Messi jerseys or Mario Goetze jerseys in America. Now these kids could tell you the 20 teams in the EPL easier than they could the five teams in the American League West. As crazy as it is to think a lot of high schoolers could probably recite the Borussia Dortmund or Real Madrid starting XI before their local baseball team’s starting nine.

You can’t convince me FIFA hasn’t played a major role in these changing attitudes. The impact of FIFA has helped make soccer feel much less of a “foreign sport” in America and more like any other sport consumed on television or the Internet.

Downplay the impact of video games if you must — it’s well within your rights. Ignoring the countless hours they’ve made on impressionable minds over the last 25 years and the changing attitudes Americans have toward certain professional sports is hard to overlook.