Source: Compute! – Issue Number 102 – November 1988
Sports games have been popular on video games systems since the dawn of time. The very first video game (Pong) was really a sports game of sorts. While most sports games try to faithfully recreate the sport it represents in some way, there have also been many sports games to do something a little different. There have been numerous invented futuristic sports games for instance. Epyx took a little bit of a different approach with their “Street Sports” Series of games.
In this ad, Street Sports Baseball, Street Sports Basketball and Street Sports Soccer are shown. I believe Street Sports Football came along a little later. For the most part, these games were a pretty faithful recreation of the sport. It is just that the environment was a little different.
Like most sports games, you have a roster of individuals to choose from for your team. However, instead of professional players these are kids. After all, if you are talking about playing some sport literally on the street or in a vacant field that’s probably who is playing. And I’m sure there’s always one that gets chosen last…
Also like most sports games, there are various locations in which to play. For basketball, this might mean in someone’s driveway or on a court in a park. For baseball it might be an empty field or parking lot somewhere. Because of the nature of the locations, there might be obstacles that you wouldn’t find in a typical sports games (for example, a tree stump in the middle of the field you are playing on).
Though not the best sports games available, generally speaking, the Street Sports Series got positive reviews. They are advertised here as being available for the Commodore 64, Apple II, DOS, and Amiga. If you like sports games and are looking for something just a little different, they are at least worth checking out.
The ad above is from the November 1988 issue of Compute! Screen shots are from the Commodore 64 versions of the game.
