Stuve: My favorite sports video games

ALEXANDRIA — Although I haven’t played video games much in the last four months or so, video games have played a big role in my life.

Video games have been there when other things haven’t.

I’ve ventured out from playing sports video games – playing games such as Red Dead Redemption, The Quarry, and Detroit Become Human, but for the most part, I’ve stuck to sports video games.

So with that said, here’s my sixeven favorite sports video games.

There are two handheld gaming systems that 5-10 year old Sam couldn’t live without – a Game Boy Color (purple) and a PlayStation Portable.

The Power Rangers game on the Game Boy Color was a go-to for five-to-seven-year-old Sam. But by the time I turned eight, I couldn’t live without a PlayStation Portable.

And with how much I loved watching my older brothers play basketball, I fell in love with basketball and basketball-related games.

There’s no specific reason why I like NBA Live 08 for the PlayStation Portable besides nostalgia. It’s what got me through road trips from Ames, Iowa, to Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Louisville, Memphis, Orlando, Cleveland, Kansas City (Missouri and Kansas), Wichita, Kansas, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, for my oldest brother’s AAU Basketball Tournaments.

Growing up in Iowa, I didn’t see much hockey. Sure, I watched the local high school club team play, but I wasn’t fully invested in the sport. I didn’t have much knowledge of the game until I moved up here in January 2022.

There’s nothing specifically about this game that I think makes it special, but I hold this game up here because playing this game taught me more about the sport of hockey.

I also like the create a team feature in this game. It’s a feature I will always use no matter what.

And I’m proud to say that with me as the general manager, the Alaska Malamutes, an expansion team I created, won multiple Stanley Cups.

The Backyard Sports series pre-2008, I think, is what made me initially fall in love with sports.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the Backyard Sports series, they were a series of games – basketball, baseball, football, hockey, soccer, and skateboarding – where you could play in a youth sports league with other kids in the ‘neighborhood’.

It’s the movie, The Sandlot, where you draft a team of kids and play against each other, kids from the virtual neighborhood. It’s a perfect game for kids.

I played all of these games on Microsoft Windows. Winning the Super Colossal Cereal Bowl (football), and the Ultra Grand Championship (baseball) were among the highlights of my childhood.

Having grown up in a college town (Ames, Iowa), I’ve always loved college athletics. I have been playing college football video games for as long as I can remember.

I went back and forth between NCAA Football 13 and NCAA Football 14 (both on Xbox 360) for this entry, but I went with NCAA 14 because of the content that YouTubers I like made from this game.

I like the ability to change conferences in this game’s dynasty mode. This feature made this game continuously playable when the NCAA Football franchise was on hiatus until last summer.

The Road to Glory mode, where you play as a high school football player and work your way up to a college athlete for a school of your choosing (if they offer you), is great. This mode exists in previous editions of the game, but it hits a new level here.

And the graphics in this game are great for the time.

There is the TeamBuilder option in this game so you can create your own school, but I opted to rebuild struggling small schools. The Akron Zips, Florida International Panthers, New Mexico Lobos, New Mexico State Aggies, and Texas State Bobcats were the teams I chose to play as in Dynasty mode. Happy to say I won national championships with them all without having to move up to a bigger conference like the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12, Big Ten, or the Southeastern Conference.

College basketball is my favorite sport. The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Tournaments are my favorite sporting events each year.

Because of that and a few other things, the NCAA Basketball 10 game on the Xbox 360 is my favorite sports video game of all time.

The game animations in this game are horrendously bad, but that makes it even better in my opinion.

There’s no Road to Glory mode, but it makes up for it with how extensive the Dynasty mode is. There are at least 300 schools you could choose to play as.

I’ve always been a small-school kind of guy, and much like I did with NCAA Football games, I chose to build up low-major schools. I always chose smaller schools from small conferences and stayed in that conference.

I played this game so much during the COVID-19 pandemic. It kept me sane. I picked teams that had never been to the NCAA Tournament at the time I played the game, hadn’t been to the big dance in forever, or were the worst team in college basketball in real life. My dynasty teams were the Stetson Hatters, Montana State Bobcats, Maine Black Bears, Binghamton Bearcats, New Hampshire Wildcats, Cal State Fullerton Titans, Cal State Northridge Matadors, Sacramento State Hornets, Northern Arizona Lumberjacks, the Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis Jaguars, the Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne Mastadons, the Southeastern Louisiana Lions, the Marist Red Foxes, the St. Francis Brooklyn Terriers, the Southeast Missouri State Redhawks, the University of Tennessee-Martin Skyhawks, and the Niagara University Purple Eagles.

I also liked that you could choose which game broadcast you wanted, CBS or ESPN. I have always been a big fan of CBS’s sports broadcasts, so that’s what I selected when playing this game.

EA Sports recently announced that the NCAA Basketball franchise will make a triumphant return soon. I hope that the newest edition of this game builds off of previous games and also incorporates women’s basketball as well.