Must Escape From My Escape From Reality

It's times like these, when New England is dominating the sports world, that I wish I had some sports games around. It's always handy, when you're tired of Bill Belichick's "Fuck you"s to the rest of the NFL, to be able to put in a football game and stomp the crap out of the Patriots (Would someone please offer up their firstborn as a sacrifice to appease Belichick? This is getting ridiculous.)

The problem for me with sports games was twofold: One, after I've won the championship, I have a hard time finding motivation to play the game again, and two, I find that the games are just getting too damn complex. With sports games, I just like to keep the controls simple, but with all the weird stuff they do for swing meters, or for velocity + movement meters for pitching, or free throw shooting, or the passing cone on Madden, it's just a bit much.

But on my N64, I had some games I very much enjoyed. Not too simple, not too hard. In Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr., you could drop all the players into a pool, then hold a draft. With that, I managed to win a World Series on lots of hit-and-runs, stolen bases, and bunting. That's because I took either players I liked, or players with lots of speed, which meant lots of no-names (an outfield of Willie McGee, Tim Raines, and Quinton McCracken). The biggest power-hitter on the team was Paul Molitor at first base, and the game gave him a 4 out of 10 for power. The upside to having that sort of team was the game got harder as the season progressed. I'd start out winning 23-1, and by the end of the season I was struggling to score 3 runs a game. All those line drives that dropped early in the season were being caught now. So it was good that I'd spent the beginning of the season practicing moving runners over and scrounging for every run (even when I was up 20 runs. If Belichick can do it, so can I.), because then you know what to do when you actually do need a run. The one thing that disappointed me was I got my #1 starter, Bob Tewksbury, within two outs of going the entire regular season without giving up a run, only to watch the computer somehow pull a ball hit off the end of the bat over the fence for a solo home run. Cheating bastard computer, ruining my moment.

You know, I never actually got much enjoyment from playing NBA Courtside. It wasn't a bad game, but it was too easy when you played it because the computer's offense revolved solely around throwing the ball in to a big guy and letting him take a shot, even if the big guy was say, Chris Dudley. Of course my offense was all about letting the little guys do all the work, but at least I spread it around, and attacked inside and outside. With the computer, all I had to do was just keep swiping at the big guy until I took the ball (or got called for a foul). Pretty easy to stymie their offense. The real fun in the game for me was modifying the rosters, usually taking away each teams two best players, then simulating the season to see which players the computer would have step up. I wasted so many hours screwing around with rosters. Yet I care nothing for fantasy sports. Go figure.

And then there was Madden 99. probably the only place where the Arizona Cardinals could win back-to-back Super Bowls. Hmm, if that happened in real life, I wonder if I would become an insufferable fan? I sure hope not. This game is probably the quintessential example of my attitude towards sports games. I put it on Franchise mode, play every game for two years, win almost all of them, and two championships. Then I got bored with playing games, and basically just handled general manager duties, which was probably the downfall of the team. Without my guiding hand, the team fell to pieces, even though I got better players on the team than there were when I started. Which is quintessential Arizona Cardinals football, I suppose, not playing to the level of their apparent talent. I did come out of coaching retirement for one game, when the team managed to make the Super Bowl, and I stepped in to make sure they closed the deal.

Then the team fell back into mediocrity, and part way through my 15th season I got fired. Sure, my overall record was under .500, but three Super Bowls man! What the heck?! WHere's the gratitude?