Before EA, official sports titles were more spread out, and used in all kind of ways. Games like NBA Jam are hard to come by these days (barring updates to NBA Jam). Before annual installments of Year of the Same Game, you had crazy sports game ideas that were one and done. These weren’t simulators, like we have today, but imaginitive riffs on the sports to make up for any technical proficiency that hardware
of the time may have had. And that’s what makes them Rad Sports Games. Vinnk and Sean talk about their favorite titles, including the aforementioned NBA Jam, Punch Out, Bases Loaded (and a bunch of other weird baseball games), and even Scotti Pippen’s Slam City! If you’ve never played it before, why… it sure is something else. Will we ever see their like again? Aside from EA picking up the IP for NBA Jam from Midway, that is…

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When did video games start using “lives”? More importantly, when and why did they stop? With this changing, what does it mean to die in a game? Vinnk and SeanOrange examine the games that pioneered this mechanism, and take a look at when and why it started changing. Was it with games like Myst, or did adventure-style games always buck this trend? Has the fall of arcade gaming lead games to be easier, and therefore no longer need “lives”?

(Listen to the episode after the jump)

[Listen to the episode after the jump…!]