Sweating Details Before the End of 2025

Time to accept that, with my children being the ages they are and all the special events involved, every holiday season from this point at least until the children leave the nest is going to be crazy-busy. But by no means take that as a complaint, for family gatherings and holiday celebrations are what this season is supposed to bring. What makes this "the most wonderful time of the year" (thank you, Andy Williams) is the building of precious memories from these happenings.

Among those precious memories are the family room traditions that acquired a life of their own, which means they were never consciously conceived but happened to occur in the course of things. Gathering by the fire is as classic as it gets, and in the later 20th century this would also be gathering in front of the television for distinct holiday programming. Perhaps Thanksgiving sums this up best: the Macy's parade in the morning, followed by the National Dog Show, followed by FOOTBALL.

I am not even a fan of football: my choice sport is baseball, I inherited a fair deal of my father's taste for hockey, and if it comes to what I can play myself I will happily take to a soccer field (I also dabbled with playing basketball in my youth, but never got good at it, interest waned, and I never developed a taste for passively watching the sport). What I cherish are the memories of family watching football together, particularly my late grandfather who at least lived to see the New England Patriots become royalty again after a long Super Bowl slump (which, in my view, is still no comparison to the Boston Red Sox breaking their 86-year drought so spectacularly in the 2004 MLB postseason). Even more easygoing golf, the one sport playable by ANYONE with two functioning arms and a proper set of clubs, could made it into the quiet afternoon lineup among the men in the family.

Last post (more than 2 months ago, begging your forgiveness) I covered EA Sports with emphasis on the Sega history that got them started as a household name in sports video games. That story many know, but what is not as well known (due to the line having changed hands 2 decades ago) is that it spawned a sometimes-friendly, sometimes-fierce competition in Sega's own fold. As will be elaborated today, Sega was never a stranger to sports games however, as an arcade company at heart, did little to develop simulation aspects until the hit approach EA took prompted them to rethink that focus...and, in the view of many, produced results that frequently exceeded EA's own.

In their mid-1990s peak the motto of Sega Sports was "We Sweat the Details."

Championship Beginnings & Great Expectations

Getting the hard truth out of the way, there is little to praise about sports offerings on Sega systems prior to the 16-bit era. To be fair, this was not a problem unique to Sega: 8-bit systems being limited as they were, this was an era in which anything could go as developers from Accolade to EA took different approaches in trying to capture the experience. Nintendo ruled the console realm at this time and while its first-party sports games are likewise unspectacular under an objective eye they boast the advantage of seminality in gaming history.

These early Sega sports brandings, "Champion" for SG-1000 & "Great" for Master System, were liable to, at best, draw like comparisons to their Nintendo equivalents which would never suffice in a market with reigning competition so strongly entrenched. Yet in a sign of things to come, Sega tried varying their approach to stand out. The Master System saw its Sports Pad accessory offered, a trackball controller (thus matching the experience for arcade sports games of the era) that was hopeful in concept but in execution only worked so well; in the end it was only supported in 3 games.

In the late 80s came the next approach, adopting that taken by other companies (including EA) in having celebrity endorsements for games. However it is NOT mere cover athlete flair: Walther Payton Football & Reggie Jackson Baseball are not bad for their time and serve as key exhibits of Sega already working to get the formula right. But at the end of the day the it was a matter of technology having to catch up to the capacity to offer immersive sports experiences, and by attempting to get a jump on Nintendo by redefining the market with Genesis before the SNES launch crushed that effort Sega would benefit not only in terms of reach but in forever redefining, thanks to their own efforts as well as those of EA, how console sports games should look and play.

The Ballad of Joe Cool

While difficult to imagine today with the franchise's 2-decade reign of NFL license exclusivity, there was a time John Madden had a powerful rival for its video gaming football crown...and EA themselves were the ones who created it in the first place. That Sega, after having failed to strongarm EA into a Genesis development contract on their terms, was compelled to crawl back to EA for the sake of having their 16-bit football entry ready in time for the season in 1990, is one of those "cannot make this up today" tales of video gaming history. That the Joe Montana line would manage to one-up EA while, for today's retro gamers, still trump John Madden in many ways, only adds to the anecdotal value.

Out of these 7 notice 5 are sports, all with celebrity endorsements.

But that is getting a little ahead of ourselves. Two key factors were at play for the Genesis broadside at Nintendo's monopoly: 1) celebrity endorsement of each title was a defining part of the "Genesis Does" campaign; 2) Sega was well set-up to offer a 16-bit sports lineup out the gate by translating its existing arcade games to Genesis. American football was an exception to the second factor, prompting Sega to contract with an outside developer for console-exclusive Joe Montana Football, and the rest is history.

Unlike EA, Sega had no qualms recruiting outside support for its published games. In part this reflected standard practice for the rest of their time as a console developer, but it was also out of necessity due to sports and other console-centric development being too much for Sega's in-house teams on top of their arcade fare and franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog. That needs to be kept in mind since it explains how Sega Sports games vary so widely in their quality and presentation, as opposed to EA consistently sticking with a particular approach for years on end (which, more often than not, worked just fine).

Joe Montana Football provides a microcosm of this fact. After the initial 16-bit entry by EA (technically EA's contracted Madden developer Park Place Productions), much of the rest of that line during the 16-bit era (along with other Sega Sports titles and a few originals like the technically-impressive Vectorman duology) were done by BlueSky Software, a California developer that had started on contemporary Atari systems in the late 1980s. Another frequent collaborator on both Sega Sports and original offerings on Genesis (and Sega CD) was Acme Interactive, a successor of sorts to Amiga developer Cinemaware who would join the Malibu Comics brand to become Malibu Interactive (opening the door to several licensed properties, albeit almost none of those games are fondly reviewed or remembered) whose mixed record on game development culminated (to Sega's chagrin) under their new owners GameTek with NFL '97 for Saturn (which is frequently considered among the worst sports games ever made for console).

Like last post, the simplified approach taken today will involve reviewing each sport's game translations. While some had a rougher journey than others (something EA was not immune to either), a pattern will emerge for each one as arcade roots give way to sophisticated simulation. Of course, all mainline sports would culminate in the Dreamcast era with Sega's acquisition of Visual Concepts (who, beforehand, had been instrumental in getting EA Sports entries working well on SNES) yielding the 2K Sports line which is still ongoing today.

Baseball

If there was a 16-bit sport where EA was so clearly left in the dust, this is it. EA tried, with an enhanced port of MLBPA Baseball (originally developed for SNES) and the 16-bit entries of its Triple Play Baseball exclusive to Genesis, none of which are bad per se (as opposed to Stormfront Studios' Tony La Russa, also published by EA on Genesis, which really should have stayed at its computer roots because those two games are more fun to watch than play), but gamers then and now understand how much they all pale in comparison to Sega's full-featured World Series Baseball franchise. All the way to the end of its Sega Sports branding, World Series Baseball became the standard to judge all others (2K even signed an exclusive MLB license deal as a counter to EA doing the same with the NFL in 2005).

But the start of that story goes much further back. Being a Japanese company, a country where baseball is VERY popular, Sega was immersed in the sport virtually from the start. Champion Baseball is a simple, fun, albeit unfair translation of the sport released to arcades in 1983, then ported to SG-1000 as part of that console's line of "Champion" sports. But Sega's defining in-house baseball franchise was the Super League series that began in 1987; some were independent, some had league licenses, and some cannot be played via emulation today even though their ROMs are dumped and runnable because their unique lever controls cannot translate in MAME.

The original Super League is what was translated to Mega Drive in Japan in 1989, then carried over for the American Genesis launch as Tommy Lasorda Baseball. The following year Sega secured the Nippon Professional League license for two arcade games exclusive to the Far East: 1) Clutch Hitter, which made it West on Sega's then-new Game Gear handheld, and 2) Super League '91, which served as the basis for Sports Talk Baseball on Genesis, both of which carried the MLPBA license on consoles. Sports Talk Baseball, like its Sports Talk Football companion that year, featured the voice of longtime commentator Lon Simmons (who, it turns out, covered both football and baseball in his career) and set a staple for the beginning of the Sega Sports brand.

But first, a special focus on Game Gear is called for. While Clutch Hitter was ported by Sega themselves, from there their Japanese porting partner Imaginative Technology Land (credited as I.T.L. for short) took over Sega's baseball offerings on the handheld with impactful results (which, to be fair, since baseball is not constantly fast-paced sports it is friendlier to 8-bits than other sports). After an original (also MLBPA-licensed) sequel The Majors: Pro Baseball, the efforts of I.T.L. paid off as the first chronological entry of World Series Baseball appeared in 1993 on Game Gear (then I.T.L. would manage all handheld ports of the series).

But most would be forgiven for not remembering that as more than a footnote-worthy factoid as the real debut was 1994's World Series Baseball on Genesis by BlueSky Software. The original may also be the fondest as it carried the Lon Simmons play-by-play, added the MLB license, and packaged it all in a new simulation engine that, while unnecessarily tricky at times (particularly on advanced difficulty levels), runs so deep it still stands today. Unlike many other entries of the Sega Sports branding, the formula worked so well for the first World Series Baseball that it followed standard EA practice by remaining essentially unchanged for the remainder of its 16-bit sequels.

After an aborted Sega CD port and successfully-released sequel on 32X (that endorsed by multi-athlete Deion Sanders) World Series Baseball made the jump to Saturn in 1995, only this time under the auspice of Sega instead of BlueSky Software. Its new basis was Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine, a Nippon-licensed in-house series Sega expressly designed for Saturn (though a couple entries of World Series Baseball for Saturn were released in Japan, the only impactful difference between contemporary series entries were whether it used the Nippon or MLB license). While starting with player sprites, this is the point the series made the jump into full-3D and played even better for it with analog controls.

Unlike other Sega Sports helmed by Visual Concepts for 128-bit, World Series Baseball continued under its prior name until the ESPN license prompted a change to match other 2K Sports series as ESPN Major League Baseball 2K4. The different timing of baseball season relative to other major sports being what it is, 2K4 would also be the final baseball game to bear the Sega Sports label (albeit Sega branding can still be spotted within the first release of ESPN Major League Baseball 2K5). From that point, 2K Sports secured their exclusive MLB license (bringing a sudden end to EA's MVP Baseball) and would continue MLB 2K entries until 2013.

Basketball

Sega's basketball games, perhaps more than any other sport, exhibit how design differences can take even direct sequels in wholly different directions. Basketball being as popular as it is (second-highest in the USA, a favorite in many other countries with cold climates) yet so simple to grasp, it speaks volumes that the most impressive game translations of the sport in the 1990s were not true-to-life simulations at all but rather incorporations of distinctly video gaming characteristics such as NBA Jam. But there was still a simulation market; finding balance between accurate and fun proved a challenge for everyone.

While Sega has a portfolio of basketball arcade games, none bothered attempting to simulate the sport in a believable manner, thus for Mega Drive they developed Super Real Basketball (released for Genesis as Pat Riley Basketball) which was believable enough but definitely more arcade (showcasing what the 16-bit console could do) than a true translation of the sport, and remains lower in fond remembrance among its "Genesis Does" peers. It could be sensing the opening for a 16-bit console basketball sim is what prompted EA to port its PC game Lakers Versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs in enhanced form to Genesis which alongside the first John Madden Football succeeded in establishing a sports standard for the console. In any case, Sega played their basketball hand for the system and from there were content to contract subsequent developments to others.

However this contracted developer, Acme Interactive, would not prove to have the same acumen as was being delivered by BlueSky Software. The celebrity endorsement approach remained: David Robinson's Supreme Court would have been more fitting had it released in 1990 instead of the under-impressive Pat Riley Basketball, and it is notable for adopting an isometric court perspective years before EA did the same. Acme Interactive rebranded to Malibu Interactive and tried taking the right lessons to heart, with NBA Action '94 featuring a neat shifting camera that looked impressive, but it executed too awkwardly for many gamers' tastes.

Sega's sole basketball entry for Game Gear was simply titled NBA Action Starring David Robinson which adopted the easier TV-style sideways perspective EA had just abandoned. Its companion game, NBA Action '95 Starring David Robinson on Genesis, could hardly have been more different in this regard as it went with an overhead perspective akin to EA's NHL games for the system. There may have been some room left to try something new and see what fit, but that became the last 16-bit Sega Sports basketball game.

Canadian Chris Gray's Studio Gray Matter brought the series reset NBA Action to Sega Saturn in 1996. As one of the earliest full-3D sports games it played well enough and impressed accordingly, but being exclusive to a console already facing woes in its markets (NBA Action never released in Japan) meant it only achieved so much reach. For the sequel Sega was fortunate to have already begun its relationship with Visual Concepts whose NBA Fastbreak '98 for PlayStation became NBA Action 98 for Saturn (with, unusually, an enhanced port to PC). Then Visual Concepts introduced NBA 2K for Dreamcast, a series still running today.

Boxing

Its concept so naturally translating to arcade gameplay, boxing was another one of those sports Sega had been involved in for some time. Its Champion Boxing for SG-1000 is among the short list of games for that console getting a LATER arcade release in an era the norm was very much the other way around. Master System entries included the licensed film tie-in Rocky, of which it appears the same engine was used for the port of the arcade game Heavyweight Champ (endorsed by James "Buster" Douglas in the US, the rarest and most expensive Master System game today).

James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing for "Genesis Does" came not from a Sega game, but Taito's Final Blow, and is generally considered inferior for it. Acme Interactive stepped in to produce a sequel with a new engine, Evander Holyfield's "Real Deal" Boxing in 1992. Sega took Acme's engine, added an impressive array of historical content, and in 1993 Greatest Heavyweights became the very first game endowed with the Sega Sports branding.

Third parties took charge for the sport from there, but for whatever reasons Sega never revisited boxing on its consoles again (concentration on arcade fighting in the vein of Virtua Fighter, perhaps?).

Football

Now we get to the one to rule them all with the still-memorable champion charisma of Joe "Cool" Montana. After EA/Park Place finished the Genesis game, BlueSky Software's first Sega contribution was porting Joe Montana Football to Master System and Game Gear. That earned them their place taking the franchise from that point, with each subsequent entry proving how Sega (with the right help) could best EA at its own game.

It started with Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football, shifting the field perspective to set it apart from John Madden with its real showcase in the title: play-by-play commentary by Lon Simmons, a huge first for cartridge-based consoles as the their limited memory and sound capabilities challenged making the concept work. That feature was proclaimed again for sequel NFL Sports Talk Football '93 Starring Joe Montana which beat EA to the punch on the NFL license. Confident enough now to best EA on its own set of rules, NFL Football '94 Starring Joe Montana (the first with Sega Sports branding) returned to the Madden-like vertical perspective while being first in combining the NFL license with NFLPA (EA would correct that oversight for Madden NFL '95 while countering with the addition of Fox Sports licensing).

BlueSky was determined not to give EA a break, matching their diversification into NCAA with College Football's National Championship using the NFL Football '94 engine. One sequel, College Football's National Championship II, matched the concurrent direction of Sega's NFL series in dropping the sports talk while adding updated content (additional school teams in this case). Other than these differences, both titles use the same engine and essentially play the same.

NFL '95, the name confusingly similar to Madden NFL '95, took an endorsement break due not only to the expiration of Joe Montana's contract with Sega but also his retirement from playing in the NFL. That break lasted one game, though there were fewer substantive improvements to be found in Prime Time NFL Football Starring Deion Sanders. BlueSky Software had moved onto other things, and with nary a technical improvement left to be made Farsight Technologies (of Action 52 infamy) was entrusted with keeping the series trucking with up-to-date content culminating in NFL 98.

Sega football on its CD-based systems is a more tragic tale, to the point that it may be better for fans to ignore the existence of the games in this paragraph. The name of the game on Sega CD was making a presentation not possible on any cartridge-based systems of the time, and while it technically delivered the results were the wrong kind of impression to make. Joe Montana's NFL Football boasts impressive effects, but the overall appearance is ugly and its execution unforgivably kludgy, leaving players striving to return to any of the Genesis entries. NFL's Greatest: San Francisco vs. Dallas 1978-1993 may make for a neat time capsule but is not even a real football game, not in a sense of allowing direct control of any of the players, and accordingly bores after a rather short time.

But either of those blows pales in comparison to Sega's football failures on Saturn. First was the inability to have its own football game ready for the system at that first vital shopping season, then when it finally came in the form of NFL '97 it fell well short of expectations. Played and observed in a vacuum it is not that bad a game and has some neat ideas, but it was far too late in gaming history to look at ANYTHING in a vacuum and the truth is the Saturn entries of Madden NFL (inferior to their PlayStation counterparts at that) leave this one being carried off the field in a stretcher.

Redemption from that travesty came via Visual Concepts whose NFL 2K series was more than enough to get people calling out EA for its decision to not support Dreamcast. For the second time in as many decades, Sega football went toe-to-toe against Madden NFL and, in the eyes of many, proved superior. Instead of continuing to play on that field EA bought it outright, ending its chief competitor at the EPSN NFL Football 2K5 mark by securing the NFL license exclusively for Madden.

One thing that means is that the NFL 2K series was a Sega Sports property all the way to the end.

Golf

This was one sport Sega did not concentrate on, however EA's PGA Tour would cover it on Genesis with a few other third-party entries thrown in. Their 1989 arcade game Super Masters is, due to similarities in the Japanese title, believed to be the basis of Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf for "Genesis Does." Past that single entry, Sega established a relationship with T&E Soft to bring their New 3D Golf Simulation from PC-98 to Mega Drive, but most of those entries stayed in Japan.

The exception came West as Pebble Beach Golf Links with an edition for Genesis and enhancement for Saturn. An exclusive to 32X, by a different developer called Flashpoint Productions, was Golf Magazine: 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples appears to derive its basic concept (and long-winded title) from Accolade's Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf (of which one of its sequels appeared on Genesis). Sega never explored the sport beyond that, though time seems to have proven golf something that translates only so well to console gaming.

Hockey

Not all that popular in Japan nor among the top 3 in America either, hockey is the one big sport in which Sega proved content to leave the trendsetting to others. But it was not going to be ignored for its 16-bit showcase possibilities either, and for that Sega turned to Alpine Software to develop Mario Lemieux Hockey as a later entry in the system's initial wave of endorsed (but league-unlicensed) sports games. It is flashy and fun by arcade standards, but by the time it released EA's first NHL Hockey had already elevated the standard of what a hockey video game should be.

EA's NHL formula worked so well Sega knew better than to stray too far from it when they finally got to making what became NHL All-Star Hockey '95. By playing it, it becomes clear this is more distinct than the same overhead perspective as NHL suggests. Some find it too clunky by comparison, while others acknowledge that it rips off the EA formula but nevertheless improves on it in some ways.

Gray Matter, prior to NBA Action on the same system, brought NHL All-Star Hockey to Saturn in 1995. It is quite the multimedia package (including a virtual tour of the NHL Hall of Fame in Toronto unlocked by winning the Stanley Cup) boasting an amazing array of detailed features, and nothing at the time could match its simultaneous 12-player capability (imagine 2 fully loaded Saturn multitaps), but reviews were consistent in that graphics failed to impress and execution left much to be desired. In another parallel to NBA Action Sega had to resort to sourcing a sequel from elsewhere: NHL All-Star Hockey 98 is merely the Saturn port of NHL Powerplay 98 by Radical Entertainment.

While NHL 2K was somewhat more of an intermittent series (there was no 2K1 entry, while 2K2 has the distinction of being the last first-party Dreamcast game for North America), it was successful enough to survive past Sega Sports to stand opposite EA's NHL until 2014.

Racing

There is nothing distinct to cover here, only to account for use of Sega Sports branding for Sega's home versions of its arcade racing hits (primarily during the Saturn era) such as Daytona USA.

Soccer

This sport was another necessitating development of an original game for Mega Drive since this was still years before Sega gave soccer its arcade focus (in the form of Virtua Striker). It had a staggering number of names but is best remembered in these circles as World Championship Soccer, and it only impressed so much since it played like an 8-bit game with 16-bit windows dressing. World Championship Soccer II is a sequel in name only, being a shadow entry in the long-running Sensible Soccer series, and while not bad it barely held a candle to EA's FIFA.

In Japan, Sega had drawn up a licensing agreement with Japanese League, the result of which was the J. League Pro Striker series exclusive to Japanese Mega Drive. Its successor, the Victory Goal series, was developed for Saturn with several of those entries coming West for Saturn & PC as the Sega Worldwide Soccer series. It got more interesting with Dreamcast, Sega Worldwide Soccer continuing exclusively in Europe on that console.

The same general time period saw launch of Virtua Striker and its sequels, first on arcades then sporadic ports to consoles over the years (covered in a previous blog post on Sega arcade games).

Tennis

SIMS, best known for its work on Master System & Game Gear, brought its original licensed 16-bit game, Wimbledon Championship Tennis, to Genesis in 1993. Its fully-licensed sequel ATP Tour Championship Tennis featured real players. That was the end of the line for tennis in Sega Sports until the Dreamcast era which saw the beginning of the licensed but arcade-focused Virtua Tennis series.

Around the TV

Sports video games have always had a special appeal, by the nature of their source material full of action and ideal for couch multiplayer. But it is for those same reasons they can seamlessly bring pre-existing family gathering in front of the television into the interactive realm, potentially as fun for an audience to watch as players to play. Who knows: can gaming become part of family holiday tradition like watching already is?

Everyone have a safe, fun, and Merry Christmas!

For unto us a Child is born, to us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. -Isaiah 9:6