Player One Podcast

Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: Extended Play Productions
Release: 1994

If you follow this website you probably know about my other series, Generation 16. The episode I’m currently working on there features the first soccer game on the Genesis: World Cup Soccer.

By coincidence, FIFA International Soccer is the next game in WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL. And playing these two games back to back drives home the fact that the 16-bit era is really when console sports games became a big deal.

Sports games were very basic on consoles in the early days. The point was mostly to recreate the on-field experience in the simplest way possible, with almost no thought given to presentation, authenticity or even accessibility. Camera angles were always either directly overhead or “television” angles that did not give players a big enough view of the field.

During the 90s, publishers like EA started taking sports games more seriously, looking to make simulations rather than arcade experiences. Licensed teams and players had a lot to do with this, sure. But more importantly, sports games were being made with the player in mind. Case in point: the isometric view used in FIFA International Soccer.

With this view you see a huge amount of the field, and thus can set up passing plays a lot easier than in a lot of previous soccer games. In fact, it just makes overall field awareness so much easier than earlier sports games, where it felt like players who weren’t on the screen weren’t really even on the field.

Not that this was the first game to do this (in fact, the FIFA series itself hit the Genesis a year before the Sega CD version was released), but it’s definitely a great example of the leaps and bounds sports games in general made between the late eighties and mid nineties. And, of course, we all know what kind of business the genre has become in the years that followed.

FIFA International Soccer on the Sega CD also showed off the system’s capabilities in another way, beyond your standard redbook audio and full-motion video clips of real players doing amazing things on the pitch. The sound effects were incredible – especially the crowd noise. One thing that a lot of people don’t remember about the Sega CD is that it boosted the much-maligned sound system from the barebones Genesis. The combo still wasn’t able to produce a lot of the quality stuff you’d hear on the SNES, but it sure sounded a lot better than what you’d get on a cartridge if the development team bothered to take advantage.

I think the crowd sounds incredible in this game. And I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with using redbook audio. You can hear great recreations of crowd chanting and reactions to plays on the pitch. Alternatively, EA’s NHL Hockey on the Sega CD used a recording of an arena crowd played on a loop, augmented by reaction effects done through the standard sound system. The feature was quite effective, too, until everything went quiet when the recording ended and the laser had to seek to the front of the track again.

I think FIFA sounds better.

This series received a lot of much-deserved praise back in the day, and FIFA on the Sega CD stands as one of the best representations of it on a 16-bit console.

Greg Sewart EA Sports, Extended Play Productions, FIFA Soccer, Sega CD

Publisher: Sony Imagesoft
Developer: Park Place Productions
Release: 1994

ESPN Baseball Tonight is the first in a series of ESPN-branded sports games for the 16-bit machines. This is one of four that made it to the Sega CD (National Hockey Night, NBA Hang Time and Sunday Night NFL being the other three). I always thought it was kind of interesting how Sony didn’t use league licensing to bring legitimacy to their sports games, rather relying on the ESPN branding to draw all of their sports games together.

Baseball Tonight does feature an MLB license, so players have access to every team in the league. It doesn’t, however, feature a players association license, so none of the little digital men who take the field are named properly.

Not that it matter anyway, as the graphics in this game are so bad the players don’t resemble humans in the first place.

Baseball Tonight is absolutely horrible. Once you get past the decent-by-1994-standards ESPN intro and appearance by Chris Berman, you’re face with extremely mediocre visuals and a baseball game that plays worse than it looks. In fact, the only real plus in the game play department is the above-average animation on the players – they move really smoothly for a game of this vintage.

But I think that may actually be one of the reasons the game is so hard to play. The batter just doesn’t react to your buttons presses they way you think he should. And when the ball it hit…yikes. Fielding in this game is downright awful, thanks to the fact that the camera angle never changes from the behind-the-plate batting view, leaving most of the action off-screen as you struggle to figure out which fielding you’re controlling and exactly which way you should run for that ball sitting somewhere in the outfield. Not to mention how difficult it is to discern exactly where in the outfield the ball is, as this camera angle offers almost no indication of depth.

The lack of quality is a bit surprising here. Developers Park Place Productions had definitely proven their sports-game chops by this point – Madden Football and NHL Hockey on the Genesis were just the tip of the iceberg on their development resume. All I can think of is that this game was released after their decline and closure.

Park Place Productions is actually an interesting story. This was one of the first super-developers in the industry. Founded in 1989 by Michael Knox and Troy Lynden (who already had an impressive game dev resume), Park Place really made their name creating big sports games for the likes of Electronic Arts and Virgin Interactive.

By 1993 they were the biggest third-party developer in the world, with 130 developers creating 45 games for 14 different publishers. The party was short-lived, though. By the end of 1993, milestone dates had begun slipping and publishers began withholding payments. According to wikipedia, one major publisher that accounted for 30% of Park Place’s business pulled their contracts, setting off a chain reaction with other publishers that ultimately ended in the death of the studio. By December 1993, Park Place could not afford to pay its employees. It was also around this time that about 30 of Park Place’s employees left to join the newly formed Sony Imagesoft. So I assume most of the work on this game was done just before the death of Park Place.

Troy Lynden is still around today. After leaving Park Place, he began work with the Jesus Film Project, which was the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ. There he worked on a plethora of software including missionary CD-ROM programs and iLumina, the first interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite.

Lynden is currently the CEO of Inspired Media Entertainment, otherwise known as Left Behind Games. Gamers will likely remember them for the game Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a real-time strategy game that takes place in a post-Rapture New York City. The game was quite controversial when it was released, being criticized for apparently promoting everything from religious warfare to racism, bigotry, and misogyny.

Good times.

Greg Sewart EA Sports, Left Behind Games, Madden NFL Football, NHL Hockey, Park Place Productions, Sega CD, Sony Imagesoft, Troy Lynden

Bill Walsh College Football

Publisher: EA Sports

Developer: High Score Productions

Released: 1993

Sports games on the Sega CD fell squarely into the “slightly upgraded cartridge game” format. EA Sports’ stuff in particular followed a pretty standard formula – you got the cartridge game with a bit of real music on the title screens; some sort of full-motion video feature; and a real recording of a crowd that played on a loop during the actual game play.

Bill Walsh College Football was kind of an interesting move. Rather than securing the NCAA license (Mindscape probably had that at the time), EA followed the same formula as their hit pro-football game – find a great coach and name the game after him.

Bill Walsh seemed an obvious choice. A great pro coach that had three Super Bowl wins with the 49ers who became a broadcaster after retiring in 1988, only to return to coaching college ball in 1992. The year before this game was released he took Stanford to a co-Pac-10 championship.

For whatever reason, though, there were only two games produced with his name on them, and this is the only one to grace the Sega CD. EA grabbed the NCAA and started releasing their college-ball games under that banner in 1997.

What we have in Bill Walsh for the Sega CD is basically Madden Football with NCAA rules and generic “real” college teams. Folks who remember the good old days of sports games will know what I mean. Instead of the Tennessee Volunteers, for example, the team is just called Tennessee, though they still wear the orange uniforms. No real team names, stadiums, players, or logos in this game, I’m afraid.

The looping crowd effect actually worked better than it should have, in my opinion. While the game still featured a full complement of effects found on the Genesis cartridge, having the constant buzz of the real crowd underneath it all lent a level of depth to EA’s sports games that wasn’t there on the Genny and SNES. Of course, the immersion was kind of broken every time the track finished playing and everything went silent while the system cued it up again.

Outside of that improvement, the only Sega CD-specific feature found in Bill Walsh is a series of videos of the man himself, talking to the camera about everything from the difference between game day at the college and pro levels to the range of play styles found in different regions of the country. It’s all pretty interesting if you’re into that sort of thing, but isn’t really very practical information in regards to the actual game.

Obviously, my experience with Sega CD sports games starts and ends with the NHL series. But I do remember noticing Bill Walsh back in the day, if only because it seemed weird to me that EA would release what looked like a product that competed with John Madden (who, by the way, never graced the Sega CD). Yeah, I didn’t understand the difference between college and pro ball back then.

Greg Sewart Bill Walsh, EA Sports, Madden, NCAA, Sega CD