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114-436: The appeal of multitaps was focused mainly on sports games due to their multiplayer aspects, though some role-playing video games and first person shooters have taken advantage of multitap support as well. While historically strong, the demand for console-specific multitaps had largely vanished over the course of the seventh generation , where it became much more common for controllers to connect either wirelessly (removing

228-585: A basketball court , a crowd, cheerleaders , four periods, the ability to rough up an opponent, and big dunks capable of backboard shattering . Konami's Punk Shot (1990) is an arcade basketball game with an element of violence, allowing players to physically attack each other, which CU Amiga magazine compared to the film Rollerball (1975). The success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in North America led to

342-631: A female sports game based on high-school track & field, The Undoukai , and a dirt track racing game Buggy Challenge , with a buggy . Other dirt racing games from that year were dirt bike games: Nintendo 's Excitebike and SNK 's motocross game Jumping Cross . Nintendo also released a four-player racquet sport game, VS. Tennis (the Nintendo VS. System version of Tennis ). That same year, ice hockey games were also released: Alpha Denshi's Bull Fighter and Data East's Fighting Ice Hockey . Data East also released

456-441: A lawn sports game Haro Gate Ball , based on croquet , while Nichibutsu released a game based on roller derby , Roller Jammer . Meanwhile, Technos Japan released a game based on sumo wrestling, Syusse Oozumou , and the first martial arts combat-sport game, Karate Champ , considered one of the most influential fighting games. In 1985, Nintendo released an arm wrestling game, Arm Wrestling , while Konami released

570-447: A table tennis game that attempted to accurately reflect the sport, Konami's Ping Pong . On home consoles, Mattel released Intellivision World Series Baseball ( IWSB ), designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower , in late 1983. It is considered the earliest sports video game to use multiple camera angles to show the action in a manner resembling a sports television broadcast. Earlier sports games prior to this had displayed

684-642: A Robot Tournament with robots specially designed for their combat and offensive capabilities. They hope to steal Bomberman's advanced combat capabilities, Diamond has created a fake Bomberman to go to Peace Town and kidnap the real Bomberman. They're aware of Diamond's plot, Black Bomberman heads out alone to face the fake Bomberman. But Black Bomberman is defeated and his castle is taken. However, Black Bomberman escapes and seeks refuge with White Bomberman, and warns him of Diamond's evil plan. Later, hordes of enemy robots begin their advance toward Peace Town. The two heroes must join forces to defeat Diamond. Super Bomberman

798-525: A bomb blast hits one of these soft walls, then it disintegrates, allowing characters to pass through the now empty space. Once a bomb is laid, it is usually impossible to walk past until it has detonated. This leads to the tactic of trapping enemies with bombs and forcing them into bomb blasts but can also result in the player's defeat. Special items can be picked up by walking over icons on the screen. These items are normally revealed when destroying walls or killing enemies. There are many different items which give

912-509: A brand name used for sports games they produced. EA Sports created several ongoing series, with a new version released each year to reflect the changes in the sport and its teams since the previous release. Sega launched its own competing NFL series on the Sega Genesis. The gameplay of Sega's earlier 1987 Master System title Great Football (1987) was the basis for Joe Montana Football (1991), developed by EA and published by Sega for

1026-409: A continuous action. For example, football games may distinguish between short and the long passes based on how long the player holds a button. Golf games often initiate the backswing with one button-push, and the swing itself is initiated by a subsequent push. Arcade sports games have traditionally been very popular arcade games . The competitive nature of sports lends itself well to the arcades where

1140-858: A game called Tennis for Two , a competitive two-player tennis game played on an oscilloscope . The players would select the angle at which to put their racket, and pressed a button to return it. Although this game was incredibly simple, it demonstrated how an action game (rather than previous puzzles) could be played on a computer. Video games prior to the late 1970s were primarily played on university mainframe computers under timesharing systems that supported multiple computer terminals on school campuses. The two dominant systems in this era were Digital Equipment Corporation 's PDP-10 and Control Data Corporation 's PLATO . Both could only display text, and not graphics, originally printed on teleprinters and line printers , but later printed on single-color CRT screens . Ralph Baer developed Table Tennis for

1254-604: A horizontal side-scrolling format, depicting one or two tracks at a time, a large scoreboard that displayed world records and current runs, and a packed audience in the background. Despite the industry's hype for laserdisc games at the time, Track & Field became the most well-received game at the Amusement Machine Show (AM Show) in Tokyo and the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) show in

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1368-517: A motion-sensitive remote controller known as the Wii Remote , could detect up to four wireless controllers, but also had four controller ports that were compatible with GameCube controllers. The PlayStation 3 could support up to seven wireless controllers. For the eighth generation consoles, the maximum number of wireless controllers detected by the PlayStation 4 was reduced to four, while

1482-578: A name) by NEC Home Electronics for the PC Engine, which launched alongside the platform in Japan on October 30, 1987, was the first multi-controller adapter made specifically for multiplayer support, allowing up to five controllers to be plugged into the console. Because the console itself only has one controller port as standard, the Multitap was a necessity for games that supported more than one player. As

1596-499: A number of actions, including a back heel, power kick , high kick, sliding tackle , super shot, and fouling other players (kicking, punching, and pulling shirts), which the player can get away with if the referee isn't looking, or get a yellow or red penalty card for if he is. In 1991, the American football game Tecmo Super Bowl was the first mainstream sports game to feature both the league and player association licenses of

1710-634: A prior installment on the PC Engine (simply titled Bomberman ) that featured a five-player battle mode, although the SNES game only supported up to four players (the series did not support five players on the SNES until Super Bomberman 3 , which was released only in Japan and the PAL region). The Super Multitap has a switch for 2P Mode and 5P Mode, allowing it to remain connected into the console without affecting incompatible games. While no Nintendo-produced version of

1824-527: A result, various inexpensive alternatives to the Multitap were released for the PC Engine by third-party companies, such as the Battle Tap by Big Club and the Joy Tap 3 by Hudson Soft , which featured less controller ports than the first-party Multitap, but these were gradually phased out as more games started to allow up to five players. The first PC Engine game to allow more than two players simultaneously

1938-503: A season mode with nearly the entire NFL roster. Tecmo Super Bowl is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential games of all time, as it was the first mainstream sports video game with both the league and player association licenses, with ESPN ranking it the greatest sports video game of all time. Sega also developed American football games for their competing Master System console, Great Football in 1987 and American Pro Football ( Walter Payton Football ) in 1989,

2052-646: A similar device, as demonstrated on Season 2, Episode 5 of TV's GamesMaster . The original PlayStation Multitap was one of the earliest peripherals released for the platform. It featured not only four additional controller ports, but also four memory card slots for each of them as well. Like the Team Player adapter for the Genesis, two PlayStation Multitaps could be used at the same time for up to eight controllers and memory cards, although very few games allowed for more than five players. A six-controller adapter

2166-496: A simpler " arcade-style " approach to its gameplay, ISS Pro introduced more complex simulation gameplay emphasizing tactics and improvisation, enabled by tactical variety such as nine in-match strategy options. In 1997, Electronic Gaming Monthly reported that sports games accounted for roughly 50% of console software sales. At the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, extreme sport video games began to appear more frequently. Namco 's Alpine Racer (1994)

2280-462: A single game. Wii Sports and Nintendo Switch Sports are recent examples. A popular sub-genre are Olympic video games , including Track & Field and other similar titles. Multi-sport tournaments are becoming the basis for computer games. Sports video games have origins in sports electro-mechanical games (EM games), which were arcade games manufactured using a mixture of electrical and mechanical components, for amusement arcades between

2394-446: A single non-scrolling screen. The screen shows the top down view of a grid of 143 (13 x 11) squares. The grid restricts the movement of characters so they can only move horizontally or vertically around the screen. Pressing a button will make Bomberman drop a bomb at his feet. This bomb will pulse for a few seconds (giving the player time to run away) and then explode, shooting flames horizontally and vertically. The game revolves around

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2508-783: A specialized joypad if they desired). During the same year, Nintendo released their own first-party adapters for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America: the NES Four Score and the NES Satellite . Despite the fact that the HVC-101 model of the Famicom uses the same controller ports as the NES, 4-player Famicom games are not compatible with the NES multitaps. The Multitap (the first device to be marketed with such

2622-718: A splitter that allowed users to switch between multiple input devices (such as a mouse or a light gun) connected to the console at the same time. The original model of the Team Player (MK-1654) was incompatible with games that required the 4-Way Play, so a revision (MK-1647) was later produced that solved this issue by adding a second controller cord and an "Extra" setting for 4-Way Play compatibility. While most Team Player-compatible titles only supported up to four players (with some games such as Columns III supporting up to five), Konami's Double Dribble: The Playoff Season and Sega's Egawa Suguru's Super League CD (a Japan-exclusive baseball game for Mega CD) both allow up to eight players with

2736-412: A trend where presentation would play an increasingly important role in sports games. Magic Johnson's Fast Break (1988) by Arcadia Systems had detailed characters and audio clips of Magic Johnson 's voice. Midway, who had not released a basketball game in sixteen years since Taito's TV Basketball in 1974, released Arch Rivals (1989), a two-on-two game featuring large players with distinct looks,

2850-514: Is considered to be the first video game to accurately emulate American football ; it also popularized the use of a trackball, with the game's developers mentioning it was inspired by an earlier Japanese association football game that used a trackball. Atari Football was the second highest-earning arcade video game of 1979 in the United States, below only Taito's shoot 'em up blockbuster Space Invaders (1978), though Atari Football

2964-432: Is the first person to win a set number of gold trophies (i.e. the first person to win a certain number of rounds). The number of trophies needed is configurable when starting the game and ranges from 1 to 5. Each round has a time limit of two minutes. If nobody has won after two minutes then the round is declared a draw and no trophies are given. It is also possible for a draw to occur if all remaining players are blown up at

3078-458: Is time for the player to attempt a penalty kick, a free shot at goal from the penalty spot, taken by a single player. Some sports games also require players to shift roles between the athletes and the coach or manager. These mode switches are more intuitive than other game genres because they reflect actual sports. Older 2D sports games sometimes used an unrealistic graphical scale, where athletes appeared to be quite large in order to be visible to

3192-426: Is to multiplex the signals from each attached controller in some way. Some systems have unused lines available on the controller port, designed for future expansion, which can be used. Another popular technique is to serialise the data from each controller. Since the NES and Super NES both use a serial bus for standard controllers, creating a multitap is simply a case of increasing the amount of serial data available to

3306-563: The Sensible Soccer series (1992 debut). Several sports laserdisc games were released for arcades in 1984, including Universal 's Top Gear which displayed 3D animated race car driving, while Sega's GP World and Taito's Laser Grand Prix displayed live-action footage. Sega also produced a bullfighting game, Bull Fight , and a multiple-watersports game Water Match (published by Bally Midway ), which included swimming, kayaking and boat racing ; while Taito released

3420-512: The Amiga home computer system after 1995 included support for custom-built multitaps. Instructions for how to build a multitap were included in the manual to classic Amiga racing sequel Super Skidmarks . The Amiga multitap would plug into the computer's parallel port and provide two additional ports for use. Earlier, the Amiga version of Bomberman , Dynablaster had already included support for

3534-462: The GameCube . Despite this, the PlayStation 2 was released with only two controller ports like its predecessor, so a Multitap was still produced for the console. Because of compatibility issues, the original PS2 Multitap (SCPH-10090) for the early models of the console only worked specifically on PS2 games, meaning that the original PlayStation or PS one Multitap was still required for the games on

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3648-740: The Gravis PC GamePad ), and two pass-through ports for analog joysticks. The Nintendo 64 did not have any official multitaps released for it, as the console featured four controller ports by default (the first console to do so since the Bally Astrocade and the Atari 5200 ). As a result, many four-player games were released for the system. Dreamcast and the original Xbox would follow the N64's example by including four controller ports as default as well, as did Nintendo's succeeding console,

3762-433: The Nintendo VS. System titles VS. Tennis and VS. Baseball , Taito's golf game Birdie King II , and Data East 's Tag Team Wrestling . 10-Yard Fight in 1983 had a career mode , where the player progresses from high school , to college , professional , playoff , and Super Bowl , as the difficulty increases with each step. Irem's waterskiing game Tropical Angel had a female player character , and

3876-442: The PlayStation console. The following year, Square 's popular role-playing video game , Final Fantasy VII , included a snowboarding minigame that was later released as an independent snowboarding game, Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding , for mobile phones. In 2000, SSX was released. Based around boardercross , the game featured fast downhill races, avoiding various objects whilst using others to perform jumps and increase

3990-491: The Pong market crashed around the mid-1970s. Sports video games would not regain the same level of success until the 1980s. In 1976, Sega released an early combat sport game, Heavyweight Champ , based on boxing and now considered the first fighting game . In March 1978, Sega released World Cup , an association football game with a trackball controller. In October 1978, Atari released Atari Football , which

4104-428: The arcade video game industry, so they began turning to sports games. The arcade industry began producing sports games at levels not seen since the days of Pong and its clones, which played a role in the recovery of the arcade market by the mid-1980s. There were initially high expectations for laserdisc games to help revive the arcade industry in 1983, but it was instead non-laserdisc sports games that ended up being

4218-587: The highest-grossing arcade sports game of all time. FIFA International Soccer (1993), the first game in EA's FIFA series of association football video games , released on the Sega Mega Drive and became the best-selling home video game of 1993 in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the top-down perspective of earlier association football games, FIFA introduced an isometric perspective to

4332-624: The history of the Nintendo Entertainment System , as they were the earliest NES games released in North America, initially in the arcades and then with the console's launch. Nintendo's arcade version VS. Baseball (1984) was competing with Sega's earlier hit Champion Baseball in the arcades. On home computers, Track & Field spawned similar hit Olympic games for computer platforms, such as Ocean Software 's Daley Thompson's Decathlon (1984). Electronic Arts produced their first sports game for home computers,

4446-400: The wrestling game Tag Team Wrestling . In the field of association football games , Alpha Denshi's Exciting Soccer (1983) featured digitized voices and a top-down overhead perspective, which was later popularized by Tehkan World Cup (1985) from Tehkan (later Tecmo). Tehkan World Cup was a multiplayer association football game with a trackball controller, where a button

4560-661: The 1940s and 1970s. Examples include boxing games such as International Mutoscope Reel Company 's K.O. Champ (1955), bowling games such as Bally Manufacturing 's Bally Bowler and Chicago Coin 's Corvette from 1966, baseball games such as Midway Manufacturing 's Little League (1966) and Chicago Coin's All Stars Baseball (1968), other team sport games such as Taito 's Crown Soccer Special (1967) and Crown Basketball (1968), and air hockey type games such as Sega 's MotoPolo (1968) and Air Hockey (1972) by Brunswick Billiards . The earliest sports video game dates backs to 1958, when William Higinbotham created

4674-416: The 90th best game ever made in 2001. They claimed that its multi-player mode resulted in missed deadlines at video game magazines and development studios due to its quality. In 2011, IGN rated the game 49th on their "Top 100 SNES Games of All Time". In 2018, Complex rated Super Bomberman 37th on their The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time and they opined the game is "probably best four-player game for

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4788-539: The Best 150 Games of All Time, the highest ranking sports game on the list. International Superstar Soccer Pro ( ISS Pro ), released for the PlayStation in 1997, was considered a "game-changer" for association football games, which had been largely dominated by rival FIFA on home systems for the last several years. Developed by Konami Tokyo , ISS Pro introduced a new 3D engine capable of better graphics and more sophisticated gameplay than its rival. Whereas FIFA had

4902-456: The Genesis. Sega then released their own sequel without EA's involvement, Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football (1991), which became the first American football game with audio commentary. After Sega acquired the NFL license, they shortened the title to NFL Sports Talk Football Starring Joe Montana , which later became known as Sega's NFL series. Due to strong competition from Madden , the series

5016-619: The Joypair, while certain controllers (such as the ASCII Stick series and certain models of the Family Champ joysticks) came equipped with an additional expansion port that allowed for users to connect an additional controller into them. A more conventional 4-Players Adapter for the Famicom was eventually released by Hori in 1990, which allowed up to four controllers to be plugged into the expansion port (allowing each player to utilize

5130-596: The Mattel Intellivoice module. The game was sophisticated for its time, but was a commercial failure, released around the time of the video game crash of 1983 when the North American home video game market collapsed. Nintendo released a series of highly successful sports games for the Nintendo Entertainment System console and the arcade Nintendo VS. System , starting with Baseball (1983) and Tennis (1984). They played an important role in

5244-497: The NBA Playoffs (1989), the latter ported to the Genesis in 1991, which added more simulation aspects to the subgenre. In the arcades, Midway followed Arch Rivals with NBA Jam (1993), which introduced digitized sprites similar to their fighting game Mortal Kombat (1992), combined with a gameplay formula similar to Arch Rivals . In its first twelve months of release, NBA Jam generated over $ 1 billion to become

5358-581: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System and J2ME. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly gave Super Bomberman a unanimous score of 9 out of 10 and their " Game of the Month " award, and asserted that the game's addictiveness is on the same order as that of Tetris . They further commented that the game is great fun even in single player mode, but that the highlight is the multiplayer. Game Informer ranked it

5472-568: The United States, the best-selling arcade video game of 1973 was Pong , followed by several of its clones and variants, including Pro Tennis from Williams Electronics , Winner from Midway Manufacturing , Super Soccer and Tennis Tourney from Allied Leisure (later called Centuri), and TV Tennis from Chicago Coin . In Japan, arcade manufacturers such as Taito initially avoided video games as they found Pong to be simplistic compared to more complex EM games, but after Sega successfully tested-marketed Pong in Japan, Sega and Taito released

5586-788: The United States. The game sold 38,000 arcade units in Japan, became one of the top five highest-grossing arcade games of 1984 in the United States, and the top-grossing arcade game of 1984 in the United Kingdom. It was also the basis for an organized video game competition that drew more than a million players in 1984. The success of Track & Field spawned other similar Olympic video games . Numerous sports video games were subsequently released in arcades after Track & Field , including American football games such as 10-Yard Fight (1983) by Irem and Goal to Go (1984) by Stern Electronics , boxing video games such as Nintendo's Punch-Out! (1984), martial arts sports fighting games such as Technōs Japan 's Karate Champ (1984),

5700-544: The Wii U's USB port. Through the use of a USB hub and two adapters, up to eight GameCube controllers can be used. The Nintendo Switch supports up to eight controllers, in any combination of individual Joy-Con controllers or Pro Controllers. Many systems were not designed with multitaps in mind, and so require some clever design to work. Because of this, games usually have to be specially written to include multitap support. The most common way of implementing 8 and 16 bit multitaps

5814-471: The aim is to work cooperatively to defeat the enemies, although it is still possible to blow up one's teammate with one's own bombs. The game utilized a password system to save progress. Each stage provided a four-digit password that would allow the player to return to that stage by entering it on the Options screen. Battle Mode is played by one to four players, either human or computer controlled. Because

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5928-433: The arcades, and subsequently served as the prototype for later baseball video games . It had a split-screen format, displaying the playfield from two camera angles , one from the outfield and another close-up shot of the player and batter, while also giving players the option of selecting relief pitchers or pinch hitters, while an umpire looks on attentively to make the game calls. The game also had digitized voices for

6042-429: The basketball title Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One (1983), which was the first licensed sports game based on the names and likenesses of famous athletes; the inclusion of famous real world athletes would become one of the most important selling points for sports games. One on One became Electronic Arts' best-selling game, and the highest-selling computer sports game, having sold 400,000 copies by late 1988. In

6156-737: The change in controller ports between the TurboGrafx-16 and the TurboDuo). Hudson Soft manufactured the Super Multitap, a multiplayer adapter for the Super NES in 1993. The adapter connects to the second controller port of the SNES control deck (leaving the first one free), resulting in a total of five controller ports (much like the original Multitap for the PC Engine). It was produced primarily for Super Bomberman , which had

6270-555: The clones Pong Tron and Elepong , respectively, in July 1973, before the official Japanese release of Pong by Atari Japan (later part of Namco ) in November 1973. Tomohiro Nishikado 's four-player Pong variant Soccer was released by Taito in November 1973, with a green background to simulate an association football playfield along with a goal on each side. Another Taito variant, Pro Hockey (1973), set boundaries around

6384-550: The console. In that way, an almost unlimited number of extra controllers can be connected. Later systems used more complex buses, such as the Nintendo 64 serial bus , the Dreamcast Maple Bus or USB . These buses tend to be more modular and can already support more than one device per port, making the multitap little more than a hub. Sports games A sports video game is a video game that simulates

6498-494: The early 2000s. A rivalry subsequently emerged between FIFA and PES , considered the "greatest rivalry" in the history of sports video games. PES became known for having "faster-paced tactical play" and more varied emergent gameplay , while FIFA was known for having more licenses. The FIFA series had sold over 16 million units by 2000, while the PES series had sold more than 10 million units by 2002. The sales gap between

6612-629: The emphasis being more on realism than on how fun the game is to pick up and play based from the competitive seasons of each sport. The simulation-style tends to be slower and more accurate with normal rules while arcade games tend to be fast and can have all kinds of ad-hoc rules and ideas thrown in, especially pre-2000s. Examples of this include the EA Sports FC , NHL , EA Sports WRC , F1 , MotoGP , PGA Tour , PGA Tour 2K , MLB The Show , Madden NFL , EA Sports College Football and NBA 2K series. A sports management game puts

6726-405: The entire field on screen, or scrolled across static top-down fields to show the action. IWSB mimicked television baseball coverage by showing the batter from a modified "center field" camera, the baserunners in corner insets and defensive plays from a camera behind the batter. It was also one of the first sports video games to feature audibly speaking digitized voices (as opposed to text), using

6840-495: The fast-growing Sega Genesis. In 1990, Orr and Hilleman released Madden Football . They focused on producing a head-to-head two-player game with an intuitive interface and responsive controls. Electronic Arts had only expected to sell around 75,000 units, but instead the title sold around 400,000 units. In 1990, Taito released Football Champ , an association football game that allows up to four players in both competitive and cooperative gameplay . It also let players perform

6954-446: The fast-paced music score that accompanies it. The Speed Round, which is Stage 12, is considered to be the most competitive as it requires a large amount of skill to control the fast-paced players and bomb detonation. Special items appears during the gameplay for ammo supply as players destroy walls, enemies, or opponent Bombermen. During a Normal Game, the effects of all items except firepower, number of bombs, and speed will be lost when

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7068-472: The first video game console , the Magnavox Odyssey , released in 1972. While the console had other sports-themed game cards, they required the use of television overlays while playing similarly to board games or card games . Table Tennis was the only Odyssey game that was entirely electronic and did not require an overlay, introducing a ball-and-paddle game design that showcased the potential of

7182-472: The following year. Ramtek later released Baseball in October 1974, similarly featuring the use of character graphics. In 1975, Nintendo released EVR-Race , a horse racing simulation game with support for up to six players. It was a mixture between a video game and an electro-mechanical game, and played back video footage from a video tape . After the market became flooded with Pong clones,

7296-458: The game. This is especially true in games about American football such as the Madden NFL series, where executing a pass play requires six different gameplay modes in the span of approximately 45 seconds. Sometimes, other sports games offer a menu where players may select a strategy while play is temporarily suspended. Association football video games sometimes shift gameplay modes when it

7410-542: The genre. International Superstar Soccer (1994), the first game in Konami 's International Superstar Soccer ( ISS ) series, released for the SNES. A rivalry subsequently emerged between the FIFA and ISS franchises. In the 1990s, 3D graphics were introduced in sports games. Early uses of flat-shaded polygons date back to 1991, with home computer games such as 4D Sports Boxing and Winter Challenge . However, it

7524-412: The idea of using these bomb blasts to destroy walls and enemies. If a bomb explodes and the flame hits another bomb it will cause this second bomb to detonate early. This can cause large chain reactions . If the flame from any bomb hits any character it will injure or kill them (unless they are currently invincible). Most levels start with the grid being partially filled with destructible soft walls. If

7638-462: The late 1980s, basketball video games gained popularity in arcades. Konami's Double Dribble (1986) featured colorful graphics, five-on-five gameplay, cutaway animations for slam dunks , and a digitized version of " The Star-Spangled Banner " theme. It was considered the most realistic basketball game upon release, with fast-paced action, detailed players, a large side-scrolling court, innovative cinematic dunks, and detailed sound effects, beginning

7752-461: The latter very well received by critics at the time. The late 1980s is considered the "Golden Age" of baseball video games . Namco 's R.B.I. Baseball (1986) and the Atlus title Major League Baseball (1988) for the NES were the first fully licensed baseball video games. SNK 's Baseball Stars (1989) was a popular arcade-style NES game, while Jaleco 's NES title Bases Loaded (1987)

7866-511: The main objective is usually to obtain a high score . The arcade style of play is generally more unrealistic and focuses on a quicker gameplay experience. However the competitive nature of sports and being able to gain a high score while competing against friends for free online, has made online sports games very popular. Examples of this include the NFL Blitz and NBA Jam series. Simulation games are more realistic than arcade games, with

7980-551: The maximum of 12 players. The "Sega Saturn Multiplayer Task Force (SSMTF)" is a small but enthusiastic group of developers who have released homebrew games dedicated to utilizing the Saturn's multitap. One of the first multitaps for personal computers, the Gravis Interface Protocol (officially abbreviated GrIP) from Advanced Gravis Computer Technology , has six ports, four for digital Gravis-brand gamepads (e.g.

8094-469: The most well-received hits at amusement arcade shows by late 1983. In March 1983, Sega released Alpha Denshi 's arcade game Champion Baseball , which became a blockbuster success in Japanese arcades, with Sega comparing its impact on Japanese arcades to that of Space Invaders . Champion Baseball was a departure from the " space games " and "cartoon" action games that had previously dominated

8208-406: The need for physical controller ports altogether) or through standard USB ports (allowing a USB hub to serve the same function as a multitap). The earliest multi-controller adapter was the Joypair by HAL Laboratory , released in Japan for Nintendo 's Family Computer in 1985 , which allows two additional controllers to be plugged into the console's DA-15 expansion port. Originally the Joypair

8322-415: The new video game medium. This provided the basis for the first commercially successful video game, Pong (1972), released as an arcade video game by Atari, Inc. Numerous ball-and-paddle games that were either clones or variants of Pong were released for arcades in 1973. Atari themselves released a four-player cooperative multiplayer variant, Pong Doubles (1973), based on tennis doubles . In

8436-514: The ones detected by the Xbox One was raised to eight. The Wii U can support up to seven Wii Remotes or Wii U Pro Controllers in addition to the GamePad, for a total of eight wireless controllers. The Wii U does not feature GameCube controller ports by default, but a GameCube Controller Adapter was primarily made for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U that connects up to four GameCube controllers via

8550-414: The other multitap enabled games. This second version was designed in the shape of a Bomberman's head and had the two controller ports on the front and one on each side. It was also designed to be used with future games. Eventually there were 54 Super NES games that utilised the multitap. However, they were predominantly sports games. Super Bomberman was met with very positive reception from critics on both

8664-689: The peripheral was ever produced (nor were there any first-party games that supported it), various other SNES multitaps were later produced by other companies (both, licensed and unlicensed) such as the Hori Multitap (released by Bullet-Proof Software in North America as the Super Links) and the Multi-Adaptor Auto. One particular unlicensed model, the Tribal Tap 6 Player Adaptor by Naki, added a fraudulent sixth controller port that

8778-488: The platform becoming a major platform for American sports video games. Basketball games included a port of Double Dribble , with a halo mechanic signifying the optimum release for shots, and Tecmo NBA Basketball (1992). American football video games included Tecmo Bowl (1987), which was ported to the NES with the NFL Players Association license, and Tecmo Super Bowl (1991), which introduced

8892-434: The player different abilities; these change a player's tactics and the way the game is played. Normal Game consists of six themed worlds each with its own set of enemies. Each world has eight stages with the last stage being a boss fight. The player makes progress through the game by clearing all the enemies from the stage and then exiting via a door that is hidden under one of the destructible walls. World 5 differs from

9006-465: The player in the role of team manager . Whereas some games are played online against other players, management games usually pit the player against AI controlled teams in the same league . Players are expected to handle strategy, tactics, transfers, and financial issues. Various examples of these games can be found in the sports management category . Since Track & Field (1983), various multi-sport video games have combined multiple sports into

9120-485: The player loses a life. During a Battle Game, the effects of all the items last for one battle only. Only items such as Ice Cream, Pancakes, Apples (Etc.) give points and other items such as a clock that adds additional time to the game time. The game's story takes place in Diamond City, far to the north of Bomberman's home city, Peace Town. There, the evil Carat Diamond and his cohort, scientist Dr. Mook, are holding

9234-465: The player's precision and accuracy. Most sports games attempt to model the athletic characteristics required by that sport, including speed, strength, acceleration, accuracy, and so on. As with their respective sports, these games take place in a stadium or arena with clear boundaries. Sports games often provide play-by-play and color commentary through the use of recorded audio. Sports games sometimes make use of different modes for different parts of

9348-423: The player's speed. In 1997, Sega released one of the first mainstream skateboarding games, Top Skater , in the arcades, where it introduced a skateboard controller interface. Top Skater served as a basic foundation for later skateboarding games. The following year saw the release of the console skateboarding game Street Sk8er , developed by Atelier Double and published by Electronic Arts . In 1999,

9462-532: The player. As sports games have evolved, players have come to expect a realistic graphical scale with a high degree of verisimilitude. Sports games often simplify the game physics for ease of play, and ignore factors such as a player's inertia. Games typically take place with a highly accurate time-scale, although they usually allow players to play quick sessions with shorter game quarters or periods. Sports games sometimes treat button-pushes as continuous signals rather than discrete moves, in order to initiate and end

9576-458: The players and the baskets, and attempted to simulate basketball . Each player controls two team members, a forward and a guard ; the ball can be passed between team members before shooting, and the ball has to fall into the opposing team's basket to score a point. The game was released in North America by Midway as TV Basketball , selling 1,400 arcade cabinets in the United States, a production record for Midway up until they released Wheels

9690-521: The practice of sports . Most sports have been recreated with video games, including team sports , track and field , extreme sports , and combat sports . Some games emphasize playing the sport (such as EA Sports FC , eFootball and NBA 2K ), whilst others emphasize strategy and sport management (such as Football Manager and Out of the Park Baseball ). Some, such as Need for Speed , Arch Rivals and Punch-Out!! , satirize

9804-550: The previous console. For the "slimline" model of the PS2, a new Multitap (SCPH-70120) was made that supported both, PS and PS2 games. All three seventh generation consoles abandoned the use of conventional wired controller in favor of having wireless controllers as standard, although the maximum number of detected controllers varies with each platform. The Xbox 360 console can detect up to four wireless controllers, as well as three wired controllers via USB connection. The Wii , which uses

9918-405: The rest in that the player fights robot Bombermen in an arena. The arena has no destructible walls or exit doors. The end of each stage is not defined like the other worlds. Instead, once the arena has been cleared of one set of robot Bombermen, then the next set walk into the arena, thus making this world one continuous battle. The normal game can be played by one or two players. In two-player mode

10032-410: The same time. After a minute and a half the game displays a message to "Hurry Up!" and then starts dropping indestructible walls around the edge of the play field (starting bottom left and travelling clockwise), effectively reducing the area players can move around in. If the player gets hit by falling walls, they'll get killed instantly. Battle Mode can be extremely fast-paced and hectic, reflected in

10146-479: The screen and only a small gap for the goal. Tomohiro Nishikado wanted to move beyond simple rectangles to character graphics, resulting in his development of a basketball game, Taito's TV Basketball , released in April 1974. It was the earliest use of character sprites to represent human characters in a video game. While the gameplay was similar to earlier ball-and-paddle games, it displayed images both for

10260-467: The second highest ranking for any sports game in that 1981–1996 period (after FPS Football ). The 1990s began in the 16-bit era , as a wave of fourth generation video game consoles were created to handle more complex games and graphics. The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in particular became renowned for its sports video games, as it was more powerful than the NES and with Sega targeting an older audience than Nintendo's typically younger target demographic at

10374-418: The sport for comic effect. This genre has been popular throughout the history of video games and is competitive, just like real-world sports. A number of game series feature the names and characteristics of real teams and players, and are updated annually to reflect real-world changes. The sports genre is one of the oldest genres in gaming history. Sports games involve physical and tactical challenges, and test

10488-468: The sport it emulated; previous titles either had one license or the other, but Tecmo Super Bowl was the first to feature real NFL players on real teams. Orr joined EA full-time in 1991 after the success of Madden on the Sega Genesis, and began a ten-year period of his career where he personally supervised the production of the Madden Football series. During this time EA formed EA Sports ,

10602-494: The standard SNES control deck only has two controller ports, in order to play with more than two human players, a multitap device is required. The battle takes place on one of twelve themed stages. The aim is to blow up the other players while staying alive. All bomb blasts are instantly fatal in Battle Mode. If one of the players are the last player remaining they win the round and receive a gold trophy . The overall winner

10716-510: The subgenre was further popularized by Tony Hawk's Pro Skater , an arcade-like skateboarding game where players were challenged to execute elaborate tricks or collect a series of elements hidden throughout the level. Tony Hawk's went on to be one of the most popular sports game franchises. Association football games became more popular in the 2000s. Konami's ISS series spawned the Pro Evolution Soccer ( PES ) series in

10830-634: The time. Basketball video games included EA's Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs (1991), which launched the NBA Live series. World Series Baseball (1994) introduced the "catcher-cam" perspective, launching the World Series Baseball series and becoming the first game in the Sega Sports line. In 1989, Electronic Arts producer Richard Hilleman hired GameStar's Scott Orr to re-design John Madden Football for

10944-838: The two franchises had narrowed by the mid-2000s. Super Bomberman Super Bomberman is an action , maze game, part of the Bomberman series, released for the Super NES in 1993. It is the first in the series to be released in Europe keeping the Bomberman title instead of being called Dynablaster or Eric and the Floaters . Super Bomberman spawned its own series of sequels; including Super Bomberman 2 , Super Bomberman 3 , Super Bomberman 4 , Super Bomberman 5 , Super Bomberman R , Super Bomberman R Online , and Super Bomberman R 2 . The game takes place on

11058-551: The umpire, and individual player statistics. Sports games became more popular across arcades worldwide with the arrival of Konami 's Track & Field , known as Hyper Olympic in Japan, introduced in September 1983. It was an Olympic-themed athletics game that had multiple Olympic track-and-field events (including the 100-meter dash, long jump , javelin throw , 110-meter hurdles , hammer throw , and high jump ) and allowed up to four players to compete. It had

11172-468: The use of the first four controllers to play the game, other Bomberman games: Super Bomberman 3 , Super Bomberman 4 and Super Bomberman 5 allowed to use three to five controllers and the fifth controller would allow a sound test to be accessed by pressing the right shoulder button on the options screen. Hudson Soft later released a second multitap (the Super Multitap 2) on its own for people that had purchased Super Bomberman unbundled, or one of

11286-504: The use of two Team Player adapters (one in each controller port). In addition to these multitaps, Codemasters released a series of Genesis cartridges known as the J-Cart with two additional controller ports installed on them, allowing users to plug in additional controllers on them without the need of an adapter. A total of six games were released in J-Cart format. A few games released for

11400-721: Was Pro Tennis: World Court in August 1988 (ten months after the launch of the system), which allowed up to four players in a doubles match, while Dungeon Explorer in 1989 was the first game to fully allow up to five players. The Multitap was redesigned into the TurboTap for the North American market with the launch of the TurboGrafx-16 in 1989, and later as the DuoTap for the TurboDuo in 1992 (the different models were due to

11514-416: Was a simulation game with statistics. In 1988, EA released Earl Weaver Baseball , developed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, which for the first time combined a highly accurate simulation game with high quality graphics. This was also the first game in which an actual baseball manager provided the computer AI . In 1996 Computer Gaming World named EWB the 25th of its Best 150 Games of All Time,

11628-478: Was a skiing winter sports simulator that became a major success in arcades during the mid-1990s. This led to a wave of similar sports games capitalizing on its success during the late 1990s, from companies such as Sega , Namco, Konami and Innovative Concepts. In 1996, two snowboarding video games were released: Namco 's Alpine Surfer in the arcades, and the UEP Systems game Cool Boarders for

11742-530: Was cancelled in 1997. Licensed basketball games began becoming more common by the early 1990s, including Sega's Pat Riley Basketball (1990) and Acme Interactive 's David Robinson's Supreme Court (1992) for the Sega Genesis, and Hudson Soft 's Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball (1991) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). EA followed Jordan vs. Bird: One on One (1988) with Lakers versus Celtics and

11856-516: Was featured in the Intellivision ads, which showed the parallel games side by side. Both Atari and Intellivision fielded at least one game for baseball, American football, hockey, basketball and association football. Atari's sports games included Activision Tennis (1981). Sports video games experienced a resurgence from 1983. As the golden age of arcade video games came to an end, arcade manufacturers began looking for ways to reinvigorate

11970-584: Was made specifically for their lineup of sports games (such as Madden NFL '94 ), whereas the Team Player (known as the SegaTap in Japan) was developed by Tengen for Gauntlet IV and sold by Sega as a first-party product. In contrast to the 4-Way Play, the Team Player only required one controller port (leaving an additional port free for a fifth player, much like the Super Multitap) and also acted as

12084-477: Was not until the mid-1990s that 3D polygons were popularized in sports games. Sega 's arcade title Virtua Striker (1994) was the first association football game to use 3D graphics, and was also notable for its early use of texture mapping . Meanwhile, Sierra Online released American football title Front Page Sports Football in 1995 for the PC. The following year, Computer Gaming World named it twelfth of

12198-490: Was one of the two most well-received games at the September 1983 AM Show (along with Hyper Olympic ) for its graphics and gameplay. Another sports game with female player characters was Taito's Joshi Volleyball ( Big Spikers ) , which topped the Japanese table arcade cabinet chart in December 1983. Kaneko 's Roller Aces was a roller skating game played from a third-person perspective, while Technōs Japan released

12312-495: Was only intended to allow two players to use specialized controllers (specifically HAL's Joyball controllers) in place of the standard Famicom joypads (which were hardwired into the console itself), but Nekketsu Kōkō Dodgeball Bu (the Japanese version of Super Dodge Ball ) utilized it to allow up to four players to participate in the game's Bean Ball mode. Hori later released the Twin Adapter in 1989 as an alternative to

12426-453: Was originally bundled with a multitap device to allow more than two players to play simultaneously. The Super Multitap was long and grey with four controller ports in a row on one side. It plugged into either of the controller ports on the SNES deck. This meant a total of five controllers could be plugged in with the fifth controller plugged into second port on the SNES. Although Super Bomberman , as well as Super Bomberman 2 , only allowed

12540-488: Was promoted as a selling point against competing multitap models, even though no licensed SNES game ever supported more than five players and the sixth racer of Battle Cross is always controlled by the computer. Two independently developed multitaps were released for the Sega Genesis also in 1993. The 4-Way Play (which utilized both controller ports) was developed by Electronic Arts without license from Sega and

12654-648: Was released for the Sega Saturn (sold as the Multi-Player Adaptor in the United States and as the Multi Terminal 6 in Japan), which features the most controller ports out of all the multitaps made by first party manufacturers. The most famous Saturn game to make use of the multitap was Saturn Bomberman , which supports up to 10 players (requires two multitaps) simultaneously. A number of sports games such as NFL Quarterback Club 96 support

12768-509: Was released for the ZX Spectrum computer in 1982. Between 1981 and 1983, the Atari's VCS (2600) and Mattel's Intellivision waged a series of high-stakes TV advertising campaigns promoting their respective systems, marking the start of the first console wars . Atari prevailed in arcade games and had a larger customer base due to its lower price, while Intellivision touted its visually superior sports games. Sports writer George Plimpton

12882-651: Was the only sports game among the top ten highest-earners. In 1980, Mattel 's Basketball for the Intellivision was the first basketball video game to be licensed by the National Basketball Association (NBA). On home computers, Microsoft 's Olympic Decathlon (1980) was one of the first sports-related programs to mix game and simulation elements, and was an early example of an Olympic track-and-field game. The first association football management simulation, Football Manager ,

12996-466: Was used for kicking the ball and the trackball used for the direction and speed of the shot, with gameplay that was fairly realistic. It was a landmark title for association football games, considered revolutionary for its trackball control system, its top-down perspective that allows players to see more of the pitch, and its trackball-based game physics . It provided the basis for later association football games such as MicroProse Soccer (1988) and

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