I thought this would be an interesting thread to start here at GM Games. I am really curious to know about how you found out about playing these types of games. We've had several blog entries from our feature contributors telling us their story about how they got started playing sim sports.
History:
I don't consider myself someone with a great memory lol but here is how I think it all got started and how it evolved. For a long time I have always been fascinated with the statistics in sports. Being a fan, playing sports my whole life, I was always interested in box scores. My grandparents would always have a daily paper and I would grab the sports section and be really interested in reading the box scores that tell a little bit of a story of how the game went. From then on I knew stats and sports, athlete performance had a lasting effect on me.
But it evolved further to wondering why teams won, why teams lost, and understand the aspects of a manager or franchise.
I think it all started on NES. I owned a copy of Baseball Simulator and my friends in the neighbourhood and I just played the crap out of Baseball Stars. I think my mom at one point had a 40 dollar late charge with Blockbuster on a copy of Baseball Stars being a few weeks late. Man did I ever love that game from the team building perspective, money, salary caps etc.
Later on Baseball Simulator was pretty fun, but I think I ended up playing Baseball Simulator 1.000 on SNES more, minus the dumbass magic part of that game lol.
Baseball was my sport growing up but I loved all sports and my background being Lithuanian, I have been bred to love Basketball. Along the journey at blockbuster I rented my first copy of Tecmo Super Bowl. I would play out full seasons with my friend during sleepovers and we would almost get a whole season done from early afternoon till about 3-4 am. Losing in the playoffs with eyes barely open was an empty feeling when it was all over, lol! But was simulating it ever fun as well. Stats were realistic, player personnel moves had significance etc. Loved this game.
I found some joy in basketball from copies of NCAA Basketball (which didn't simulate well but played well), and played a lot of Tecmo Super NBA Basketball. Tons of fun and loved my mid-range jumpers from the elbows (which normally was a low percentage shot) but loved seeing Michael Jordan hitting those while growing up.
From a hockey perspective my first simulation game was Wayne Gretzky Hockey, which I believe was way ahead of its time. As time progressed Baseball Mogul showed up on the scene. It instantly was a hit to me, it took what I wanted these games to become to the level where it made me feel wrapped up in this world. I helped run a league named BMIL that lasted for years until we switched to OOTP .. I have been a user on the OOTP forums since 2002 and I have an interesting private message with Markus from 2002 that makes me smile to this day.
As the modern games came out I pretty much played about everything. Countless hours of Championship Manager (CM) even though I wasn't a huge European Football / Soccer fan but the game was just THAT good. Eastside Hockey Manager was developing and the games got more sophisticated.
I still firmly believe this genre made some of the most addictive games ever made. If you really believe and are intrigued with a great simulator algorithm and AI world, these games will keep you playing through all hours of the night. "Just sim one more day"..
Hey, share with us your story. I would love to hear it personally. I helped create this site so these games, the developers get the attention they deserve, but also, we get a chance to mold the games with the dev's in our desired fantasy world's.
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