Whither the alterna sports games?

[forgeforsaken]

What happened to these? I'm referring to fantasy/sci-fi sports games whether they be an all new future sport or a twist on a conventional sport. For instance, Deathrow and Hyperblade were both pretty awesome games, I'd love to see something new along those lines. On the flip side where are our modern Cyberballs, or Mutant League games? Is there really no market for these? How awesome would a game like Hyberblade or Deathrow be online on say Xbox Live?

I know Cyberball was rumored to be hitting Live Arcade, and that would be a nice start, but really I can't believe this subgenre has died, seems such a shame.

[Igor Muravyev]

Unreal Tournament 2003?

[spiffy]

mario tennis, mario super strikers, mario kart. I found a lot of those n64 or gamecube games were more fun than real sports games, just because they could feature unique or exaggerated powers for different characters that obviously don't work in real context. Having a more mature rendition of that, say, sports powers that rip players in half, sounds like a no brainer...

Speaking of exaggerations, how cool was customizing your team in Nintendo Ice Hockey back in the day..!

[forgeforsaken]

I kind of blanked on the Mario games, those are pretty decent, reminds me that there was Soccer Slam too which wasn't bad either.

[Shadari]

A modern version of Speedball 2 (http://www.speedball2.com/) is coming out for the PC fairly soon. It looks good....

[BaconTastesGood]

The market is much smaller, because there are tons of real-life fans of basketball, golf, tennis, etc. To position an alterna-sports game you have to find a fan of the existing game and then get them to accept unusual rules, etc. It's going to be a smaller market by definition.

[Erlend Grefsrud]

mario tennis, mario super strikers, mario kart. I found a lot of those n64 or gamecube games were more fun than real sports games, just because they could feature unique or exaggerated powers for different characters that obviously don't work in real context. Having a more mature rendition of that, say, sports powers that rip players in half, sounds like a no brainer...
It's not just a matter of finding fans of certain sports who would be interested in seeing bastardized sci-fi-versions of them. It's also a question of whether you can find anyone who thinks football players ripping each other in two is necessarily more mature than Mario and his friends cavorting around. Particularly if they're also mutants.

You won't. Not outside of 14-year-old kids.

Edit: Holy shit. That's certainly not going to be the game that wises the alternasport genre from its gwave. It looks like an Unreal Tournament mod. Like Unreal Ball. There's absolutely no distinction to that at all.

[Jake Plane]

I so agree with the original poster of this thread. I enjoying playing football on a console, but Deathrow is infinitely more amusing.

Hyperblade was a favorite of mine back in the day. it would be great if something like that made its way on to xbla.