Top 5 Sports Video Games

Obviously, games today are much more realistic and complex than those from the Nintendo days. So these are the five games I enjoyed most at the time.

5. High Heat Baseball (Playstation 2)

They stopped making this a few years ago, but it was the baseball game of choice back in college. My roommate Blade was quite good at this game. One might say he was “born to play it”.

4. NBA Jam (Genesis)

A great heads-up game that generally came down to who was better at timing their two-handed shoves and goaltending. Much like the NBA back in the mid-90s.

 3. Madden (XBox 360)

No year in particular stands out for me. I’ll go with the most recent version, mainly because of the long-needed toe-dragging ability of the Wide Receivers.

2. Ice Hockey (Nintendo)

This game witnessed one of my proudest moments: my Soviet squad throwing up a complete game shutout against Weaf. Long-awaited redemption for the 1980 Olympics.

1. Tecmo Super Bowl (Nintendo)

The first football game to compile full season stats for all players. The possibilities nearly made my head explode. I would guess that I completed about 25 full seasons of this game.

The Inaugural List – Top 5 Movies

I figured I’d start things off with an old classic. Who doesn’t like to figure out their favorite movies? I always find the balance of “re-watchability” and “awesomeness” to be tricky. On one end of the spectrum, there’s a movie like “In The Bedroom” – phenomenal, intense, and gut-wrenching, but I never want to see it again. Conversely, I would always watch “Overboard” but it’s not exactly a cinematic masterpiece.

5. Pulp Fiction

Dialogue is very important to me and this one has some of the all-time great conversations. The “a pig is a filthy animal”, “foot massage”, and “royale with cheese” scenes are classics, not to mention Christopher Walken’s monologue.

4. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

I swear I could watch it every day. Will Ferrell has yet to approach this one in terms of consistent comedy and a watchable plotline.

3. The Silence of the Lambs

Creepy. Start to finish, creepy. Plus it’s always nice to think of Buffalo Bill whenever I hear “American Girl” by Tom Petty.

2. Good Will Hunting

It’s not just because I’m a math geek. More great dialogue in this one (“I don’t care if Helen of Troy walks into the bar!”) and the fantastic scene where Ben Affleck tells Matt Damon how it is.

1. The Shawshank Redemption

I know, I know…it’s such a standard pick. But I swear I was ahead of the curve on this one. My dad and I watched this back when it first came out on DVD and couldn’t believe how good it was. 

(You may have noticed that two of these came out in 1994…and both lost the Best Picture Oscar to “Forrest Gump”.  Eesh.)