Growing up, if you owned a Nintendo Entertainment System you most likely played R.B.I. Baseball, Ice Hockey, Blades of Steel, and Tecmo Bowl. A natural progression might have been to transitioning to Joe Montana Sports Talk Football and FIFA on Genesis. Even later, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Madden, and NBA 2K on more advanced consoles. The point is, the big four American sports — okay, and soccer and golf — have dominated the video game industry for … well, forever.
But there’s always room for the fringe. Things like table tennis (okay fiiiiine, ping-pong), roller derby, hurling, and curling are considered sports (or sports-ish), and actually have a following to where making video games out of them seems like it could turn out to be a profitable idea. Yep, someone thought playing a hurling video game could make money. Seriously.
1. Take-Out Weight Curling
Curling is a hobby sport where players slide stones across a sheet of ice, and it dates back to late medieval Scotland. We think it’s more like shuffleboard on ice, or a game that you might think up after a long day of boozing on a cold winter day, but some people think it’s cool without the booze. However, a video game was created to celebrate (?) the sport. In fact, the game was popular enough to earn a sequel. Spoiler alert: it’s basically the same boring game as the first installment.
2. Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis
Rockstar Games is best known for producing violently awesome video games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. So of course they’d be the brains behind a game about miniature tennis. Is it a sport? According to the Olympic International Committee it is. So for those of you who want to bash it, direct your letters to the IOC. That’s what we did. Released on Xbox 360 and Wii, the game received mostly positive reviews, with special mention going to a knockout job with graphics and animation. If you played Wii Tennis, you might enjoy this game.
3. Gaelic Games: Hurling
Back in 2007 and 2010 on PS2 and Xbox 360, respectively, two hurling games were introduced to what we can imagine was five people who were clamoring for a hurling game. What is hurling, you ask? Well, uncultured reader, it’s basically like lacrosse and golf fused with a giant waste of time that gets hopped onto your TV screen. The graphics were poor and the gameplay was poorer. In other words, there was no reason to release one game, let along another three years later.
4. Conversion Kick Rugby
Don’t bother Googling the title; it’s not a standalone video game. It’s a promotion attached to the Rugby World Cup on Betfair. It might seem weird to us here in the States because football (not the European football, meaning soccer!) is more popular than rugby. That said, you’ll need to know what a conversion kick is to play this game. For those who don’t — and that’s most of us — it’s more or less the equivalent of a field goal in football. The game brings the conversion kick to life (well, arcade life) and the catch earns you some free casino play. Our description doesn’t do it justice. Just play it.
NEXT: HUSKY DOGSLED RACING
