2006 Sports Game of the Year

While Indie games seem to continue to struggle in finding their voice when it comes to Sport Games, there were certainly some memorable sport games this year, especially if you are looking for a unique take on sports...or um...golf.

Wonder what we're talking about? Well let's just say that there are sporting experiences here that you won't find anywhere else. Read ON!

5th Place - Sensational Soccer

Developer: New Star Games		Players: 1-2
Website	Download		Purchase
System Requirements: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista, DirectX 7.0 drivers

New Star Soccer 3 was a tough act to follow. It won our sports game of the year last year and ended up in our top 10 list as well, the only sports game to ever make it in our top 10 games of the year in the history of Game Tunnel. With that in mind, Sensational Soccer had its work cut out for it.

Where the focus of New Star Soccer 3 was on becoming a soccer star through creating one character and working your way to the top, Sensational Soccer is a much more straight-forward soccer game. You choose from league and cup options and jump in. Instead of controlling every aspect of your player's life, you simply control all your players on the pitch. All in all it's an alright soccer game. It probably won't make you forget FIFA, but the graphics are a nice upgrade from NSS3 and manage to have a nice cute feel to them even though they are really little pixelated people. It's a game that is worth your time, but only if you don't feel like playing New Star Soccer 3.

4th Place - Grass Roots

Developer: MDickie		Players: 1-2
Website
System Requirements: Windows 98/XP, 256MB RAM or higher

Grass Roots is missing many of the refinements of most soccer games. There are plenty of moments where you will scratch your head as you wonder why things are happening the way they do on the screen. For example, why does the goalie have to SLOWLY chase down every ball that goes out of bounds past the net? Sometimes, especially in half court games, you can feel like all you are doing is sitting and watching.

However, it's the 'other' times that make this game really something. Grass Roots is nothing like a normal soccer game. You play across the world, dealing as much with your team on the field as off the field. Recruiting is part of this, but so is determining playing time and dealing with people who do or don't want to train and endless voices on how the uniforms should look. Each world location offers something unique, from the streets of USA to warehouses, you'll play ball in ways you'd never dreamed, and occasionally with balls you couldn't have imagined (can you say severed head?). In the end it is fitting of MDickie. It's a game unlike anything else you will play, and though there are some points deducted for the lack of polish, the uniqueness of the experience makes it a game that everyone should check out.

3rd Place - Dream Match Tennis Pro

Developer: Bimboosoft		Players: 1-4 (local or online)
Website	Download		Purchase
System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 1 GHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c+

Dream Match Tennis Pro is fully rendered in 3D and is a game that really shows why sport games are so much better in the 3D realm. Beyond having some absolutely gorgeous visuals, the 3D environments increase the realism of the game allowing for better placement of the ball on the court.

It is a very similar game to last year's Dream Match Tennis, improved by adding depth to the play (it has a fantastic world tour mode with rankings as you work your way up the ladder) as well as in the number of players, which is now set at 4.

Dream Match Tennis Pro also sports online play, which, when you can find an opponent, is a nice additional challenge. Not that players will be lacking for challenge. The ability to use your analog stick to carefully place shots anywhere on the court puts the ball in the player's court as to playing well. Mastering your shot placement to achieve continual victory will require many challenging hours of play. Tennis players looking for realism and solid visuals need look no further.

2nd Place - Minigolf Mania

Developer: Top Meadow		Players: 1-4
Website
System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Pentium II 400, 128 MB, OpenGL or DirectX compatiable graphics card

There were four independent golf games released this year! That is just bizarre. The other games, Pow-Pow's Mini-Golf, Total Golf Pro and Putt Mania each have their strengths and frankly all are worth trying as they are QUITE diverse.

Minigolf Mania was the last released of those games and when it first came out it wasn't at the top of the list. Then the developer patched the game. While it didn't fix some of the minor graphical issues we'd run into, but it did make the game a whole lot more fun.

Minigolf Mania plays a little like Rocketbowl. The courses are rather fantastic (in the true meaning of the world) and players can use balls that have special abilities like hop, power boost, go left, go right, and a hole attract ball that always makes up that last inch for you. Players are able to use their ball's ability once on each shot as they carefully try to navigate the imaginative and varied holes. The only thing that kept this game from being at the top of the stack this year is the hole limitation. There are currently 3 courses that are quite varied, but the game feels a bit on the short side, even with world-wide score tables to give you something (someone?) to shoot for. The developer is already hard at work on adding courses to the game, which is great news for the growing fan club of this game. Had the additional courses been available in our version I'm sure the cartoony graphics and whimsical sounds of Minigolf Mania would have found their way to being the game of the year winner in the sports category.

2006 Sports Game of the Year - Motorama

Developer: IPlayAllday Studio		Players: 1
Website	Download		Purchase
System Requirements: 700Mhz, 4MB video Card, Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP, DirectX 8.0+

Motorama is a game that just dares you to think you are good at it. Every time you start thinking you are all that, Motorama will drop kick you and let you know "no, you suck!" It is a hard game. REALLY HARD!

However with great challenges there come great rewards and Motorama certainly is as rewarding as it is challenging.

Motorcycles are fun to race with. Whether it’s on dirt or on pavement, the rush that the mere speed can bring you is unparalleled.

Motorama gives players a lot of different bikes to unlock and then play with as they work their way through 39 levels. The key aspect, that makes the game both fun and amazingly difficult, is the focus on physics within the game.

The game is played by using a keyboard, mouse or gamepad. The neat part about the design is that the rider’s motion and position determine the overall acceleration and bike momentum. By leaning the rider forward or backward, you can determine the direction of the bike’s momentum. For example, leaning forward down a hill will accelerate the bike faster while leaning back on ramps set's players up to pull off quick backward flips.

On dirt tracks you have to use a lot of skill to shift the weight of the bike forward and backward when traveling up rocky hills or dirt mounds. Players must carefully consider the angle of their bike at all times and be careful to accelerate at the right moments in jumping and especially when coming in for a landing.

The stages are also varied and provide a multiple assortment of tricks, stunts, and other skill-related tasks to pull off. The variety in the visual look and complexity of each map is also very well done. Each stage features day and night cycles that add a bit of immersion, despite the 2D look. There’s also the option to post your track records up on-line to a very slick high-score list that keeps records for each stage, adding a bit of competitive replay value to the game.

While the punishing game play in Motorama isn't for everyone, it would be hard for anyone to take a look at Motorama and not see how good it is. The physics-based play coupled with good graphics and a hefty challenge provides a very unique game that stood out in the pack and raced away with our 2006 Sports Game of the Year award.

Sports Game of the Year Award History

History:
2006 - Motorama
2005 - New Star Soccer 3
2004 - RocketBowl
2003 - Tennis Critters

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By: Russell Carroll
Posted: Friday December 08, 2006