The Sports Shelf — 50+ NES Sports Games
The NES quietly ran the family rec room.
People forget how deep the NES sports library got. My shelf alone has over fifty sports cartridges, and a surprising number still hold up. The highlights:
- Baseball Stars — the one that mattered: it let you create and save your own team and players, leveling them across a season. Revolutionary for 1989.
- Blades of Steel — Konami hockey, beloved for fast play and the "FIGHT!" brawls.
- Double Dribble — the jaw-dropping zoomed-in slam-dunk cutscene on every inside score.
- Ice Hockey — pick skinny, average, or fat skaters, each with trade-offs. Daft, perfect fun.
- Pro Wrestling — home of the immortal "A WINNER IS YOU."
- R.C. Pro-Am — Rare's isometric radio-control racer, a classic.
- NES Open Tournament Golf — Mario himself stars, tiny caddie and all.
- Rad Racer — shipped with 3-D glasses for a pseudo-stereoscopic mode.
Plus a deep bench: Bases Loaded, R.B.I. Baseball, Jordan vs Bird, Skate or Die, Nintendo World Cup, Super Dodge Ball, Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road, and a whole rack of golf (Lee Trevino, Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman). The NES quietly ran the family rec room.