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Television Media Entertainment Games

Vintage Athletes' Fame Lives On In Videogames 36

Posted by simoniker from the back-when-everything-was-black-and-white dept.
JoeCotellese writes "Salon is running an article (ad click-through required) discussing how athletes live on in video games long past their retirement. In some cases, the article claims: 'The fond memories that a particular fan may have for a sports star owes more to the performance of his pixelated version than his actual on-court heroics'."
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Vintage Athletes' Fame Lives On In Videogames More

Vintage Athletes' Fame Lives On In Videogames

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  • Here are the ones from my youth (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lake2112 ( 748837 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @07:59PM (#8196068)
    Bruce Jenner - I remember playing the decathlon game for my 286 in the mid-80's. It's the only reason why I know who he is. Bo Jackson - Who could forget the infamous 2-in-1 football/baseball handheld made by Tiger. I play Bo in football, I swich the handheld over and voila Bo playing Baseball!!
  • I haven't a clue who bill lambeer was but that basketball game for snes was awsome. perhaps that is another effect is that it makes us geeks know at least a little bit about sports.
  • Can anyone say Ivy Joe Hunter.....?

    The most injured player ever.

  • old news (Score:4, Interesting)

    by eglamkowski ( 631706 ) <eglamkowski AT angelfire DOT com> on Thursday February 05, 2004 @08:20PM (#8196343) Homepage Journal
    Dr. J vs. Larry Bird on my C64!

    w00t!
  • Kicking Tyson's ass was loads of fun in this game, but they missed out on the most obvious opponents of all: Robin Givens & Mitch "Blood" Green. :-)
  • Will always be remembered by me, not for whatever crap he did on the basketball court, of which I have no idea. I will always remember him for starring in one of the world's shittiest games, SHAQ-FU (and to a lesser extent, the movie KAZAM.)
    • My brother (in our loving tradition of buying each other crappy outdated video games for all occasions), once gave me Bible Adventures for Christmass. The game itself is quite rare (and bad), and it took me a long time to find something its equal in suckitude. Untill one day I found Shaq-FU!

      Without so much as glancing at the instructions, we nearly beat it in one try, but we had to stop because we were laughing too hard. As a fighting game, it's so bad I tend to think they shipped a beta. But the Shaq-

      • You know what's even funnier. Someone at Netjak reviewed the game [netjak.com], so it was fresh in my mind. I went over to my friend's house, and his wife was playing a bunch of episodes of Daria on tape from back when they were on MTV and during the commercial breaks there it was...EA's Shaq-Fu commercials. It was crazy.

        The commercials are almost as bad as the game. I have to find some way to digitize them so we don't let EA forget that they made this game.

  • Rambling memories (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dewie ( 685736 ) <dbscully@gm a i l .com> on Thursday February 05, 2004 @09:29PM (#8197020)
    I have vague memories of Jordan versus Bird on the Sega Megadrive (Genesis, for the Americans among you). As I recall, it was a terrible collection of basketball related minigames, and definitely not a candidate for a second rental.

    The one sports personality I remember fondly (and, I must admit, solely) through his digital incarnation is Daley Thompson, the game being Daley Thompson's Supertest on the Commodore 64. It was just a decathlon type game, ten events, three lives, you know the deal. But it obviously made quite an impression on me, because I still clearly remember all of the events, from the pistol shooting (you could move the cursor down and left, but not up or right) to the incredibly frustrating giant slalom, which I never did get the hang of.

    Anyway, I've rambled enough. Maybe I'll see if i can dig my c64 out of the attic, and have a few games of Wizball, and Ricochet while I'm at it. (Yes, I have an emulator, but it's just not the same, is it?)
    • I had Daley Thompson's Decathlon for the C64 - but I do remember him in real-life too - Daley was a big hero to us kids growing up in the UK in the 80s, when he won the Olympics. He was interviewed recently in one of the 'Sundays' - he is now a fitness trainer to rich guys in The City, and he seemed a little bitter about life after his days on the track...
  • Wow, so I never thought I'd ever be able to link and ESPN article to a slashdot article. Much less two of them. Anyway, ESPN covered something very similar in

    baseball [news.com.au] and

    football. [news.com.au] I like that they think Bo wouldn't have been anything special were it not for his video game legacy.

    Hed.

    • wow, totally wrong articles, sorry, it's

      baseball [go.com] and

      football [go.com]

      That's what I get for updating my website at the same time. On the plus side, those articles are rather humorous...

      Hed.

    • I like that they think Bo wouldn't have been anything special were it not for his video game legacy.

      I hate it when people think that - since you obviously never looked at his statistics. Sure, he never had 1000 yards rushing in football (he'd join the Raiders at midseason because of when baseball season ended so would've missed the preseason + 5-6 regular season games) - but still very few running backs in the last 20 years have had as good a yards per carry average. Add to that he still remains the only

    • > I like that they think Bo wouldn't have been anything special were it not for his video game legacy.

      You ask most professional sports folks who the great athlete was in the later 1900s and most would say Bo Jackson.

  • Most of the games - especially NFL games - has historical teams built in. Even though you don't see the names, the jersey numbers make it pretty clear who is who as do the player performance stats.

    So if his team was any good, you can STILL PLAY as Bo.

    But does Bo know that?

    • A couple of things: Speaking with regards to Madden 2004, the jersey numbers for the historical teams are not accurate. You can tell who the players are if you know what ones were supposed to be playing what positions but the numbers aren't accurate. I don't know about the rest of this years football games in that respect. Second of all, even if the Raiders team with Bo on it was selectable in a current game, odds are that his stats would not be what they were in Tecmo Bowl. The reason everyone mentions Bo

      • Agreed on Vick, my friends and I had to make a "No Falcons" rule to prevent Atlanta from winning every game. Whoever has Vick has a TREMENDOUS advantage, it's easy to rack up 300+ rushing yards per game with M. Vick.

        • Yeah, whenever I play online I always hesitate to play against people who pick the Falcons. Although, I've found that man coverage with a QB spy in the nickel is fairly effective at shutting that little operation down. The Falcons don't have enough skill at their receiver positions to make dedicating a man to stopping Vick a big problem. So Vick puts up 200 on you but throws a few picks or gets sacked a few times [the game is fairly good about making scrambling quarterbacks give up fumbles at a realistic ra
  • I'm looking foward to Jesse Owens running past outraged Nazis in a forthcoming version of "Castle Wolfenstein".
  • Ask anyone who played Championship Manager, who the biggest bargin ever was and Simon Daives (now Welsh international and Spurs) will come up more often than not.

    So many other obscure players have come to my attention thorugh this game before they were famous, Joseba Exteberria of Spain and all those amazing and amazingly cheap Djurgarden players. Ahh, wish I wasn't at work...

  • ...because Bo Jackson is "vintage", apparently.

    Seriously, is "vintage" the right word to use for something that was more or less 15 years ago? Jeez.
  • But don't forget about Marcus Allen. You know the guy on the Raiders who had the other running play? He maybe didn't have quite the juice that Bo did, but he could easily break it at any time as well.

    Also, I can't believe I haven't heard mention of Derrick Thomas from Techmo SuperBowl. Made Lawrence Taylor look like a wimp. When Derrick was in "Excellent" condition I could rush the quarterback, and if he managed to throw the bomb, get back on defense before the pass got to the receiver. Derrick is litera

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