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Trigger Happy
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pixel humans in approximations of sprinting,
shotputting, ice-skating, ski-jumping and the like.
Variations on tennis, soccer (classic examples were
Match Day and Sensible Soccer), ice hockey and
baseball followed; graphics became more detailed,
control methods more complex, and environments more
colorful and detailed. The promising sub-genre of
“futuristic sports,” where designers, freed from the
limitations of having to reproduce a messy, real sport,
could attempt to create the perfect physical game, threw
up a few fine moments—most notably the wonderful
Speedball, a violent, sci-fi kind of taghockey that is still
considered by many to be the best sports game ever
made. But the unbeatable advantage of “real” football,
soccer, basketball and hockey games is that the rules
are given and everyone knows them: you don’t have to
spend precious time studying a manual to learn how to
win.
When videogames cracked 3D representation in the
mid-1990s, sports games flourished as never before.
Today the world’s largest software publisher is the one
that has the most impressive stable of sports games:
Electronic Arts, which for the financial year 1998–99
broke the billion-dollar turnover mark. The soccer
game is one of the most popular videogame genres of