"'It's nice to see blades of grass whirring in the wind, and it's nice to see [an in-game player] that's taken from a bodysuit that has little nodes attached to it,' Passan tells me, describing his experience with some of the newer baseball games. Sill, he has a soft spot for Tengen's classic.'The idea that every guy was a little fat guy that looked like a weevil, and you could hit a homerun that went off the screen, and the fireworkse exploded. There are so many little things to RBI Baseball that make it great. There's just a fondness.'"

Jon Schnaars takes us out to the best ballgame on any platform, RBI Baseball.

"Sports gamers are trapped inside the industry's version of The Matrix. The fact we see 'new' games every year almost guarantees only so much can be done, not only to add new features but also to fix problems from the previous edition. Each year, the hole gets deeper, and it gets harder for people not to see the spoon, as it were. As problems go unfixed, and new features are added, many of them also badly in need of fixes, it gets more and more difficult to justify spending upwards of $60 every year to buy the latest version."

Bill Abner spills some blood about the current, stagnant state of sports games.

"To the untrained eye, it looks gratuitous and barbaric, as though the promoters had simply swept the dregs of the local bars into a ring, to beat each other for the pleasure of the crowds. However, no amount of blood - or 'bloodsport' advertising - can obscure the elegant depth of the game, once you know where to look. Contrary to popular belief, cage fighting is indeed a thinking man's game, one no fighting game - not Street Fighter, not Tekken, and certainly not the dreaded Ultimate Fighting Championship: Tapout and Sudden Impact series - has adequately captured."

Pat Miller takes a revealing look at the sport of mixed martial arts, or ultimate fighting.

"And the trick is that football, more than any other major sport, is one of constant fluidity. Others have lots of handholding for the viewer, with regular stops and short bursts of play before the game comes to rest again, giving the observer a chance to consider. Football, compared to baseball or American football or even basketball, never stops. ... Sensible Soccer's simplified form showed me the structures to watch for, in platonic-perfection. Sensible Soccer explained it all."

Kieron Gillen explains how a simple soccer game for the Amiga made him a better son, soccer fan and Englishman.

"By the bottom of the first inning, my Rangers were down 13 runs and had changed pitchers five times. On occasion I'd throw a pitch that wasn't an automatic home run for my opponent, and would then be forced to attempt to field the ball. By run 8 or 9 I'd taken to manually switching to whichever player wasn't in the path of the ball, and then praying I could fade into the outfield and pretend the sun was in my eyes. In this way the game was very much like my limited experience playing actual baseball."

Russ Pitts attempts to play sports games on the Wii, hilarity ensues.