Most sports fans dream of competitively stepping foot on a professional basketball court, baseball field or football gridiron. Unfortunately it will never happen, unless you are blessed with exceptional talent.

The only way to channel these dreams exists through one medium: Video games.

If you look back upon your childhood, you would realize that you spent an obscene amount of time playing these games, perfecting your play like it was an art-form. These games were guaranteed to cause many sleepless nights, future arthritis and they ire your parents.

Technology has changed immensely since the early days, where you were satisfied with 2-D figures, not quite the high-definition spoiled kids enjoy now. Now, systems like the Nintendo Wii make games seem unbelievably realistic.

Even with all the new technology these days, my all-time favorite will be the SNES system, which is an all-time classic. With that in mind, lets take a look at three of the most memorable sports video games over the years.

Tecmo Super Bowl

A classic football game, where most of the action was in 2-D, but it never fell short in terms of excitement. Sometimes you would not know if it was a reception or an interception, because if you throw it into a crowded area, your player and the opposing player would battle it out for a couple seconds for possession, while you frantically pressed B, hoping it would turn the tide in your favor.

Of course, if you had Jerry Rice, you didn’t have to worry, because he could catch everything, even if he was quadruple-teamed. You could run from goal line to goal line with Bo Jackson five or six times before going into the endzone as defenders bounced off him.

The only way to blitz was to hope that you called the play that the offense picked, which would guarantee a sack or a loss of yards.

Any game where you can throw a 100-yard Hail Mary pass to win the game with no time left on the clock is almost guaranteed to be a legendary football game.

Ken Griffey Baseball

There never will be a more fun video game animation than watching a batter break his bat over his leg, after striking out on a 52 mph pitch that you started 12 feet outside the strike zone, and brought back in to kiss the outside corner.

The crowds all looked the same, and sometimes you would hit a home run into a random blue region or into a building. If you weren’t careful, there was a chance that you could get thrown out at first even on a base hit.

If you wanted realism, every starting pitcher could start out by throwing a 100-mph, but then would automatically slow down after each inning. And Ken Griffey was unstoppable in the HR derby.

NBA Jam

An all-time classic, with great announcing to boot. There was nothing more awesome than hearing Marv Albert cry “He’s on fire”, because after that your player could rain threes from half-court, and block every shot of your opponent, even if you were a point guard.

The only way to score on a guy who was on fire was to throw an elbow that would send him flying and score while your opponent was down. It was always fun seeing how many injury points your opponent would have, after inflicting beatings on them for a quarter.

Every game was forced to be competitive because if you were up big in the fourth quarter, your dunk attempts would clank off the rim for no reason, and your opponent would start raining in full-court threes.

Of course there are many more great sports games out there that I failed to mention, especially as technology has progressed. But the simplicity of these games, and the nostalgia of childhood that they bring back, make them hard to beat.

Majesh Abraham is a junior in LAS. He can be reached at [email protected].