TBT - Asphalt Athlete

I'm a pretty huge sports fan. I watch Sports Centre nearly every day. And I'm always up for a pick-up game of whatever. Soccer, Hockey, Football, Volleyball, Baseball...Ultimate frisbee...you name it, I'll play it!

There is a hyper-realistic video game version of nearly every sport you can think of (I'm still waiting for the day that Hurling gets the video game treatment though). They're all fine and dandy, but nothing really beats the "street" versions of these games. FIFA, NBA and NFL Street are some of the best sports games made from an entertainment standpoint.

On The Street

The Street series was an EA franchise. And since they had all the rights to the players of a respective league / sport, all the games actually used real players. Some of the games even had you creating your own team by mixing players from all over. It was sort of like a mini manager mode: you were always on the hunt for better players to add to your roster.

The main draw to these games was how they moved away from the realism and created a more arcade experience. Players have super moves, run off walls and do flips, set the ball on fire, blow up nets, etc. It's crazy! Personally I played a lot of FIFA and NBA street. I never really touched NFL, but I know Sean used to own it on PS2 and loved it.

Since these were "pick-up games", they were also always played with less people than a normal sport would have (lots of 3 on 3's). Smaller teams actually changed the dynamic of the sport quite a bit...you know, on top of setting stuff on fire.

Foul Play

The last game that was released in the series was a reboot of FIFA Street, which was only a couple of years ago. I would hardly count this though because they drastically removed a lot of the crazy-ness, opting for a more authentic feel rather than a street-sport game, and focusing more on tricks you could practice but never perform in a real game.

The last real release was FIFA Street 3, which was 6 years ago on the PS3/360—NFL and NBA were released as well on PS3/360, but dropped the street name from the game and changed focus a bit, much like the FIFA reboot. Taking this into consideration, maybe the series is dead. But I for one hope it isn't, and would love to see a new release on the PS4/XBOne. 

I feel that there truly is a market for these Street-style games: sports games are some of the most popular in the industry, and the best part about these games was that even people who typically don't play sports games had fun with them (Sean is a perfect example). Bring back the arcade experience, I don't care if it's "authentic". Just make it over the top... Are you listening EA Bitch?