By Stephen Turk

Of all the sports games in the world, there is nothing quite as successful as foosball. Excluding video games, foosball is about as close as it gets to playing a sport without playing a sport. As far as tracking the game, it does not have a very astounding history, or really much of a history at all (at least that I could find, I’d love to know more) but it does embody everything that makes a sports game special.

The origins of the game are shadowy, with no one really knowing for sure when the game itself first appeared. There were apparently many soccer imitating table top parlor games invented in the late 1800s. Progress and popularity advanced the game’s technology from levers and gears, to the horizontal bars that we currently know and love by at least the 1920s.

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By Stephen Turk

A key factor in the creation and purpose of a sports game is simulation.  Different games do this different ways, but miniaturizing the sport is an effective way to do this.  As such, one would be remiss not to include one of the strangest, yet most entrancing sports games ever created.  That game is electric football. 

1947 saw Tudor Games release what was essentially a vibrating table on which little football men would move around. 

Electric football was a very interesting game because there really is no way play a game, as there was absolutely no way to control the players.  There was a dial to intesify or quell the vibration of the field, and the players had tabs on their bases which could control their speed, but that was about the extent of it.  Players also broke any number of football rules, including illegal contact, illegal block in the back, excessive spinning, off-sides, and scoring in the wrong end zone amongst others.  Still, in its heyday the game sold an incredible amount and is admired to this day.

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By Stephen Turk

While legions of people occupy their virtual sports time with video games, it’s interesting to look at just how far the simulation of sports has come.  For nearly as long as professional sports have been popular, people have found ways to shrink them down in to related, yet entirely different, games and simulations. 

So starts a series in which I will look back at what we can call “sports games.”  While clearly a redundant title, a sports game, simply put, is a game based off of an organized sport.

Chronologically speaking, the first thing I could think of was stickball.  Now, you may be thinking “hold on, that isn’t a simulation, that’s a sport,” but I include it here because while it may be closer to an actual sport than say a sports toy, the game is an adaptation.  The important thing is that it embraces the imagination, which is the entire basis of a sports game.

I missed the stickball era, and as a suburban kid, I had little league and grassy fields to play around in.  As such I’m even more fascinated with all the ins and outs and the shear inguinity and resilance of the game.  I mean check out that photo, there’s that intangible charm that comes from legions of babies playing on cobbled roads.  That wagon is no slouch either.

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