Don't Be a Poor Sport

Blitz is a full-contact hybrid of hockey and basketball that’s played with a flying disc. The game pits two teams of four against each other and tasks them with moving the disc through their opponent’s hoop. Players can also score points by knocking their opponents out, and they each have an arsenal of punches, kicks, throws, and stomps at their disposal. You’ll be removed from the game of you lose too much health, but you are encouraged to impress the crowd by committing violent acts. You’ll earn credits for scoring goals, landing knockout blows, and pleasing the audience. These credits can be used to recruit new teammates, but they can also be gambled away or be used to purchase performance-enhancing drugs on the black market. Apparently, sports are even more corrupt in the 23rd century than they are today. Deathrow features over 150 individual characters across 18 different teams, and they each have their own skill sets, attributes, and personalities. There’s a lot to like about the game, but it was met with mixed reviews when it was released in 2002. If you’re bothered by brutality and excessive profanity, Blitz is not the sport for you.

HyperBlade is set in a future where advancements in medical science have rendered once-serious injuries inconsequential. HyperBlade would be unfeasible today, but the aforementioned advancements have allowed sporting events to become increasingly violent. The action-packed sport is a futuristic take on hockey that’s played in an inverted dome rather than a flat rink. The arenas are filled with weapons and deadly traps, and players have to contend with spinning blades, laser hurdles, and pretty much everything in between. Each player has a special suit that allows for maximum flexibility, strength, and protection, and the athletes are allowed to enhance their performances with steroids and bionic appendages. The players are also fitted with bladed gloves that can be used to pick up magnetized items or to slash opponents. If you’re aggressive enough, you can actually decapitate a rival and use their disembodied head as a makeshift ball to score on the opposing team. This kind of behavior is not only permitted, but it’s actively encouraged. Needless to say, it’s not a sport for the faint of heart.

Dark Cloud 2 (also known as Dark Chronicle) is an action role-playing game with procedurally-generated dungeons and hack-and-slash combat. The game features a city-building metagame, an invention system, and a handful of mini-games. For the purpose of this list, we’re focusing on a glorified version of golf called spheda. The game can be played with specialized spheda clubs or a basic stick, and the object is to knock a small ball into a colored vortex in order to repair time distortions. In golf, your only major concern is to finish each whole with as few strokes as possible. Spheda is slightly more complex, however. Spheda balls change color each time they bounce off a hard surface, and they have to be the opposite color of the vortex in order to close them. Spheda courses are also a lot more varied than typical golf courses. You’ll occasionally get to play the game in scenic canyons and atop beautiful mountains, but you can also expect to play inside volcanoes and sewer systems. Dark Cloud 2 doesn’t give players a lot of insight into how to play the game, and it can be quite frustrating at first. After you get the hang of things, it can be quite enjoyable. You can win many rewards by playing spheda, and it’s a nice change of pace from all the dungeon-crawling ventures.

Grifball is a community-made game that can be created with Halo‘s “Forge” gamemode. Grifball was briefly mentioned in the popular Red vs. Blue webseries, but it wasn’t fully realized until Halo 3‘s “Heroic Map Pack” was released in 2007. The team at Rooster Teeth wanted to create a meta-game that didn’t require traditional Halo skills, and grifball was the end result. Grifball could be likened to modern-day rugby in many regards, and it pits two teams against each other in a simple arena with no obstacles. The ultimate goal is to place a bomb (which acts as the ball) into the opposing team’s base, but this is easier said than done since players have to move the bomb around the arena with gravity hammers. This concept leaves a lot of room for creativity and advanced techniques, and players can use their gravity hammers to launch their teammates forward. When they’re not busy trying to score, the players can attack their opponents with energy swords. It wouldn’t seem fair to rank a community-made game any higher on this list, but I think grifball deserves a spot on this countdown. If nothing else, it highlights how flexible Halo‘s map-creation tools are.

The world of Spira consists of three subcontinents surrounded by small tropical islands. An enormous, whale-like creature is threatening to destroy the land, and the people of Spira have little recourse against the rampaging monster. Since they were in dire need of escapist entertainment, the people of Sparta started following blitzball with an almost religious fervor. Blitzball is an intense sport that’s played inside large spheres of water. (Incidentally, the water is infused with spiritual energy that allows the participants to stay active underwater for extended periods.) The rules of blitzball vary from one region to the next, but the game could be described as a mixture of rugby and water polo. The basic objective is to kick blitzballs through the opposing teams’ triangular goal, and players will have to work on their passing, blocking, shooting, and attacking skills. There’s a lot of strategy involved since each player has their own statistics that determine their proficiency within the sphere pool. Blitzball plays a big role in the game’s story, and a couple of the game’s main characters are professional blitzball players by trade. It would have been mentioned higher on this list, but it’s a lot more fun to watch than it is to play. Unfortunately, the game restricts your movement to a 2D plane, and the hard-hitting cutscenes don’t reflect what you’re able to do when you’re actually playing.

A sport called speedball was invented at the University of Michigan in the early 1920s, but the video game iteration has nothing to do with its real-life counterpart. The video game version of speedball is a futuristic cyberpunk sport that combines elements of handball and ice hockey. The game rewards players for scoring goals, and violence is strongly encouraged. (In fact, injuring an opponent earns you just as many points as scoring a goal does!) The game is played in an enclosed court that features various obstacles that can change the trajectory and speed of the ball. There are also gates on each side of the court that can inexplicably transport the ball to the opposite side as though it were a Pac-Man maze. The layout changes depending on what team you’re facing, but the basic premise is the same. Each player has their own unique attributes, and their stats can improve as the game progresses. Players will also have an opportunity to obtain power-ups that randomly appear during the game. Speedball is action-packed by default, but things get even more intense when the ball becomes electrified or when players start teleporting around the court. The original Speedball was released in 1988, and it was successful enough to warrant a sequel in 1990. Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe made an even bigger impact, and it holds up much better than most of the “realistic” sports games from the era.

In Windjammers, two players throw flying discs from opposites sides of a court and try to hit designated goal zones. The mechanics of the game have a lot in common with air hockey, and players are encouraged to ricochet the discs off of the arena walls. Players are also able to curve their throws or lob the discs in order to catch their opponents off guard. From a defensive standpoint, players have various ways to stop the discs, and the sliding maneuvers are especially exciting. The game features six different characters with unique stats and their own special throws. Each character also has a court that’s tailor-made for their specific skill set, and this helps accentuate the differences between the athletes. Whether you’re playing on a scenic beach or inside a packed stadium, Windjammers is action-packed and highly competitive. The grueling battles require quick reflexes, and you’ll likely need to play mind games in order to win against experienced opponents. Windjammers was recognized elsewhere on this site as one of the ten greatest Neo Geo games of all-time, and we can only hope that the 2019 sequel lives up to the original.

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball focused primarily on volleyball, but the sequel expanded upon the original by introducing a handful of new beach-related activities. This time around, the girls could ride jet skis, compete in tug-of-war challenges, or partake in beach flag races. Without question, the most riveting activity was the newly-introduced butt battles. Described in-game as a “competitive conflict of perfect prosteriora,” the object of a butt battle is to knock your opponent off a floating pad and into a swimming pool. The participants face away from each other for the duration of the match, and they are only permitted to attack with their rear ends. The girls can feign attacks and dodge their opponents, however, so the battles have a distinct “rock, paper, scissors” dynamic. Butt battles rely mostly on luck, but you have to admire how shameless they are. They’re basically just an excuse to demonstrate the game’s jiggle physics, after all. Xtreme 3 took things to the next level by introducing wardrobe malfunctions and destructible clothing. The sight of sexy young women slamming their asses against each other was too intense for many game journalists, but most people will be able to appreciate it for what it is. The epic Dead or Alive butt battles inspired a 2013 manga called Keijo!!!!!!!!, and I think the sport could potentially catch on in the real world too. I know I’d watch!

In Turf War, two teams of four compete against each other in a bid to claim as much territory as possible by painting surfaces with colored ink. The team that covers the most ground after three minutes is declared the winner, and there are various strategies that can be deployed during each match. If you paint over areas that your rivals have already claimed, you can expand your coverage while simultaneously removing territory from your opponents. Conversely, if you claim territory in a more secluded area on the map, you’ll be more likely to hold onto it for the duration of the match. Players are able to swim through their own ink, and this will allow them to ambush foes or find new spots to lay down their colors. Although you don’t get credit for coloring walls, it can be an effective way to create shortcuts for you and your teammates. It’s also important to use appropriate weapons, and players should pay close attention to how they affect range, mobility, and coverage. Ink rollers let you cover a lot of area in a short period of time, while blasters can dish out a lot of damage to your opponents. There are many variables at play, so the advantage tends to go back and forth as the matches progress. There’s always potential for a team to mount a “come back from behind” victory, and this makes Turf War one of the most dramatic modes in the Splatoon series.

In 2008, Psyonix released a vehicular soccer game for the PlayStation 3 called Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. The object of the game was to use rocket-propelled cars to knock an oversized soccer ball into the opposing teams’ goal. Players could propel themselves into the air in order to intercept the ball, and the rocket-powered cars were surprisingly maneuverable. Since the areas were littered with speed boosts and surrounded with ramps, it was easy to change your direction immediately. The game was largely overlooked, but Psyonix saw much greater success when they released Rocket League eight years later. The premise is basically the same in both games, but Rocket League offered a more refined experience and featured a more marketable title. At the end of the day, Rocket League Soccer is faster and more intense than the sport its modeled after. It feels like you’re in a demolition derby at times, and the game’s aerial component literally ads a new dimension to soccer. It’s an addictive game that lends itself well to multiplayer sessions, and it’s extremely welcoming to new players. The biggest advantage Rocket League has over soccer is that the rocket-powered cars don’t exaggerate injuries in order to trick referees.