There can be a lot of darkness in sports, like the 1974 Munich Olympics or the OJ Simpson case. But are the sports themselves all that grim? Football in all its forms can produce some nasty injuries, and combat sports range from fully approved big leagues to illegal anything-goes brawls. Yet the days of Aztec Ball Sport teams getting sacrificed for losing, or dead men winning the Ancient Greek games on a technicality, have been left in the past.
However, thanks to video game characters not being real, there are multiple sports games that have dark themes. Some acknowledge the backroom dealing or active fouls on the field. Others yearn for high drama, horrible deaths, and lots of blood. As such, these games are a world away from Mario Tennis.
8 Ultimate Soccer Manager Series
Starting off with a light one, Impressions’ take on soccer management was a competitor to Championship Manager (now Football Manager) back in the day. Released on DOS, Windows 95, and the Commodore Amiga, Ultimate Soccer Manager did the usual job of tasking players with training their teams, managing their finances, and leading them to victory on the league tables.
The AI isn’t exactly a challenge for die-hard sports tacticians, and it doesn’t have many features. But it does have something no official game would dare to show: cheating. And not in the video game sense. The player can bet on events, pay rivals to intentionally lose, and make their cash back, among other ways to rig things in their club’s favor. Prospective soccer managers can be as squeaky clean or as horribly dirty as they like.
7 Redcard 2003
But what if players don’t want to be the guy who shouts at the soccer stars? What if they want to be on the field to show Portugal what a foul really feels like? Point of View’s Redcard 2003 took “the beautiful game” and made it a little uglier. With some deft playing, players could use special moves to smash the ball into the back of the net. They could also smash through the back of the opposing player’s knees to get the ball back, among other fouls.
The game never got licensed by FIFA, but strangely it was licensed by FIFPRO. This meant it used real teams and player names, but without their official likenesses or logos. Hence, the European cover used a re-enactment of Vinnie Jones giving Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne a reason to sing soprano than the actual photo.
6 BMX XXX
Is Z-Axis’ game really a sports title? BMX bike racing, stunts, etc. themselves can be sporty, like skateboarding, snowboarding and other extreme sports. But BMX XXX was more about completing objectives, grabbing collectibles, and making unfunny adult jokes than racing and grinding. It was Tony Hawk-style action with worse controls and the vague promise of nudity. And that promise was only fulfilled on the Xbox and Gamecube ports.
The game was censored on the PS2, banned in Australia, and was at the heart of multiple lawsuits that contributed to the bankruptcy of its notorious publishers, Acclaim Entertainment. BMX XXX didn’t kill Acclaim directly. It just pulled the life support plug and laughed before glitching through the floor.
5 Skateball
Future sports are a fairly common subgenre, and more often than not they’re more violent, like Rollerball or Death Race 2000 come to life. F-Zero and Wipeout saw racers blow each other up. Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball featured a world where the former Detroit Pistons star came out of retirement in 2031 and formed a basketball league with more weapons than rules.
Before all of them, though, Ubisoft replaced Rollerball’s skate rink with an ice one to make Skateball. Released for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, and Amstrad CPC, it was essentially 3-a-side soccer on ice with the charming addition of murder. Players had to either score 5 goals or kill all three opposing players to win. It was brutal, moody, and exclusive to Europe (if obscure microcomputer formats like the Spectrum didn’t give that last part away).
4 Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
If Europeans found Skateball familiar, and not just because it was made by Ubisoft, it’s because it was a clone of the Bitmap Brothers’ much more famous game Speedball. The latter was also an interactive take on Rollerball on ice, but it combined it with handball instead of soccer. The gameplay was also more in-depth, with 5-a-side teams, power-ups, and stamina bars that would drain with each hit the players took.
The sequel, Brutal Deluxe, lived up to its title by introducing 9-a-side teams, multiple goals, extra modes like league and multiplayer, and substitutes. If someone got injured, the player could replace them with one of 3 replacements. But if they all got injured, they’d have to be replaced with the original bust-up athletes. Players have to be brutal, or they’ll get smashed themselves.
3 Deathrow
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The Speedball games were originally Amiga and Atari ST releases that would reach broader platforms like the Sega Genesis, PlayStation, and the 360. Even so, it’s a 16-bit, 2D game that’s fun yet shows its age nowadays. Why play a 30+ year old game when there’s a 20+ year old in full 3D? Created by Southend Interactive, and published by Speedball fans Ubisoft, Deathrow was yet another playable hockey-based Rollerball clone.
This time, it combined Canada’s favorite pastime with basketball and the disc game from Tron. 4-a-side teams had to throw a disc through goals to earn points while avoiding their foes’ attacks or striking them back. Players would win by either scoring more points or injuring every member of the opposing team to get them disqualified. But they have to be careful. They could either smash their teammates by mistake, or make the AI seek revenge for deliberate jabs.
2 NBA 2K16: Livin’ Da Dream
Officially licensed games tend to be more on the level. The FIFA and Madden games aren’t going to feature pratfalls for penalties or a performance-enhancing drug-based minigame anytime soon. However, some of them have tried to tell stories in an attempt to rival more narrative-driven efforts. NBA 2K16 got particularly ambitious by getting famous movie director Spike Lee involved in its MyCareer story mode.
Joining Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X as Spike Lee Joints, the Livin’ Da Dream mode told the rags-to-riches story of up-and-coming basketball star Frequency “Freq” Vibrations. The more famous he gets, the more toxic his relationship with his friend Victor Van Lier becomes as he grows more jealous. Throw in a gold-digging girlfriend, a possibly racist manager, and some tragic backstory, and players got a career mode that was heavier than usual.
1 Battle Golfer Yui
If Spike Lee’s dream wasn’t grim enough, Santos’ 1990 Japan-only Genesis release went off the rails. Gameplay-wise, it’s an ordinary old-school golf game with some RPG elements. Players could spend MP on special abilities to conquer themed courses, and talk to their opponents to progress the story or get perks. Story-wise, though, it’s pretty out there.
After being saved from the evil Professor G and his Dark Hazzard organization, Yui Mizuhara has to enter a golfing tournament and beat his “battle golfers” to stop his plan for world domination. There are cutscenes with nudity, brainwashing, guns, and death. It also has two endings. In the "bad" one, Yui blows a flute that brainwashes her into becoming the head of Dark Hazzard. In the “good” one, she reunites with her friend Ran. Their powers combine and set off a bomb that kills both of them, and about 20,000 other people. This finale was so perplexing that, when the game appeared on Game Center CX, host Shinya Arino was sure there had to be a better ending. There isn’t.