I came to think about an old game (one of the first I played in DOS) called Mean Ugly Dirty Sport (or M.U.D.S. for short).
At the core, it was a made-up fantasy ball game, where you scored by throwing a ball-shaped live animal into a barrel on the other side of a water-filled ditch. You could also attempt a slam-dunk, but it was a bit risky, as your player could then get eaten by the shark which patrolled the water... It was perfectly legal to knock around your opponents in order to win...
Playing the games was fun, but if that had been all there was too it though, it would probably have gotten boring quickly. There were plenty of other elements to it though, which happened outside of the actual games, like setting up your team and formations, and make simple decisions about tactics.
You could also buy and sell players on the slave market. As your players regularly got killed, it was necessary to get replacements quite often, which could be quite expensive, if you went for the more expensive players...
So the game had some options to make money too. You would get paid if you won a game, but you could also go to a bank to get a loan, or to a dodgy loan-shark. The banks were more moderate in how much the would lend you, but the loan-sharks charged much higher interest, and set thugs to hurt your players if you didn't pay up.
Between games, you could visit the local tavern, where you could get an opportunity to bribe just about everyone... the referee, players from other teams or even the ball (!). Sometimes though, things would end with a big brawl, potentially injuring your players...
I miss these types of games. It used to be that the best sports games where based on made-up sports, and it made them fun and interesting to play. They also often had lots of different elements to them, with most of them kept simple enough for them to work well together. Today, there seems to be only a handful of sports games dominating the market. There seems to be one for each major sport, keeping everything realistic with real player names and everything... I say, where's the fun in that? As far as I'm concerned, those aren't video games... they are sport simulations, and we'd be better off without them!
Bring back the FUN sports games! :-)
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