It takes sweat and sacrifice to become a professional athlete. You must surrender to routine, rising early each morning for rigorous training sessions. You must continuously push yourself further, higher, and faster in order to become the world’s best. You must reach for victory with each competition and, often, you must bravely endure the agony of defeat.
Most games are available for online ordering 24 hours a day, every day.
These demands — and possibly a general lack of talent — prevent many of us from becoming professional athletes. Although we may never stand atop a podium and accept a gold medal, we can glimpse an athlete’s dizzying highs and frustrating lows through sports games for the Macintosh.
Championship leagues
Sports games generally fall into three broad categories — solo sports, team sports, and racers — and each category shares several distinct elements.
Solo sports games replicate the experience of single-player sports such as golf or skateboarding. Typically, you compete in a series of events and your performance in these competitions determines your progress through the game. Only by mastering control of your onscreen counterpart will you claim the ultimate prize. Since quick thinking and careful coordination are sometimes key to victory, many of these games provide training areas to familiarize you with the game controls. Several solo sports titles also support online gaming, so that you can pit yourself against friends and foes across the Internet.
Team sports games simulate the experience of multi-player sports such as football, baseball, or soccer. In these games you usually assume a dual player/coach role: you control one member of your team as the action unfolds (typically with the ability to switch to another player as necessary), but you also decide overall tactics, call plays, make substitutions, and so forth. Strategy is often as important as quick fingers. You’ll need to carefully study the strategies of the opposing team and develop an effective strategy of your own in order to outwit your opponent and score points. Many team sports games now support online gaming, so that you can challenge a friend to a head-to-head match.
Racers put you behind the wheel of a mean machine. These games allow you to compete in a variety of racing circuits which typically differ in terrain, road surface conditions, and scenery. The goal, as always, is to place first in the race, and your rank determines your progress through the circuit. Some racers introduce fantasy elements into game play, such as offensive weaponry, that allow you to attack and disable other vehicles to ensure your victory. And, like both solo and team games, many racers include online gaming features so that you can race against friends across town and around the world.
Peak Performances
Racing titles have long been a staple of the videogame industry, and Colin McRae Rally Mac (Feral Interactive) and Need For Speed: Carbon (Electronic Arts) give you two different perspectives on the adrenaline-soaked action.
Colin McRae Rally Mac accurately portrays the world of rally racing, in which you navigate some of the toughest terrain in the world while trying to post the fastest possible time. The game features 300 stages of competition, including Challenges, Cups, SuperCups, Shields, and Championships, as well as 34 realistically-rendered cars that drive the way they do in the real world. Rally events happen in nine countries — the United States, Japan, Sweden, Australia, Finland, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Greece — with the race courses traveling through everything from off-road areas to quaint downtown spots.
In Need For Speed: Carbon, you take on Palmont City’s racing crews in your quest to become top driver. After you form an uneasy alliance with Darius and Nikki, they give you a fresh car and a crash course in Palmont City-style driving, complete with a rundown of the crew members who help you win events: blockers who take out opponents’ cars, scouts who show you shortcuts, and drafters who let you get behind them for speed boosts. Defeat Palmont City’s four crew chiefs and the city will be yours — after you defeat your final surprise opponent.
From Tiger to Turducken
Electronic Arts’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 and Madden NFL 08 offer realistic recreations of two of the most popular sports in the world. Tiger Woods’ golf career began with a national TV appearance at the age of two, while NFL announcer John Madden is known not only for his Super Bowl-winning stint as head coach of the Oakland Raiders but also for his love of that turkey-duck-chicken combination known as turducken.
The ‘08 iteration of Tiger Woods PGA Tour features 23 real pros, 14 real-world courses, a new mode called Tiger Challenge, and the ability to compete in the PGA Tour FedEx Championship. The new confidence meter lets you increase your golfer’s skill ratings at particular holes, giving you a better chance of hitting the perfect shot next time, while Tiger Challenge tasks you with guiding an amateur golfer through a series of progressively-difficult events, such as completing all the par-three holes on a certain course.
Madden NFL 08 brings you a complete football experience, from running your favorite team’s front office to executing plays during the game. Put on the cleats of real players and step into authentic stadiums as you guide your team toward the ultimate goal: a Super Bowl win. New features give you greater success on offense and defense, while such options as Create-A-Fan let you personalize the experience. Take your team through multiple seasons in Franchise mode and complete different objectives to fill in the slots of your Ring of a Champion.
Armchair Managers Wanted
Judging by the popularity of sports-talk shows, there are many of you with an interest in running your own team. That’s where NHL Eastside Hockey Manager 2007 and Out of the Park Baseball 9 (OOTP Developments) come into play. Draft players out of the minor leagues, sign free agents, negotiate trades, decide who starts and who sits, and more. Both games offer a plethora of stats for you to peruse, everything from the exact placement of shots on goal in Eastside Hockey Manager to a batter’s performance against right- and left-handed pitching in Out of the Park Baseball.
Eastside Hockey Manager features over 20 leagues from around the world, including the venerable National Hockey League (NHL). Every NHL team is included, from the Original Six to the latest expansion clubs, and you can decide the careers of some of the biggest names in hockey, from young phenom Sidney Crosby to aging veteran Dominic Hasek.
Out of the Park Baseball doesn’t feature the National and American League teams and players, but you can easily import them with the database linked to in our article. It contains every player from 1871 to 2006, giving you the opportunity to not only play out last season but also past classics, such as Babe Ruth’s, Roger Maris’, Mark McGwire’s, and Barry Bonds’ record-setting seasons in 1927, 1961, 1998, and 2001, respectively.
