Good idea for a spinoff.....

[Rocky]

Who do you guys think are the best video game athletes of all time?

This could be a cool discussion. What athletes dominated the game they were represented in the most. Instantly a few stick out in my mind:

-Barry Sanders in Gameday '98. You could stiff arm and spin your way down the field with him in the game and he would never get tired. If you didn't get him down at the line, it was almost a big run every time.

-Juan Gonzalez in Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball. That whole Rangers team was stacked in that....Franco, Palmeiro, Pudge but Juan Gone was the beast. Dude was just so freakishly big and could just crush the ball. I remember my bro hit like 80 HR's with him in a season.

-Micheal Vick in Madden NFL 2004. Could throw 60 yards on the money every time and with playmaker you could take out every defender to open the lane for Vick. And of course the speed cheat normally in Madden games didn't apply to him. It was like everybody else was in slow motion.

And the mecca, the king, the granddaddy of them all....

Michael Jordan in Tecmo NBA Basketball.
In Tecmo Basketball there was this weird glitch that if the ball handler was good enough you could never cut the ball handler off. If a defender was next to you, you could just dribble your way to the basket unimpeded. Luckily, if you had MJ this wouldn't matter, because he alone could outscore your entire team. EVERYTHING he shot would go in. He would dunk on everybody(and this is when they had those nasty cutscenes.....you would see those at least 15 times a game with MJ alone). He could steal the ball at a whim and could outrun everybody on the court. Playing my brother, I scored, no BS, 137 points with MJ alone.

[bcruise]

Bo Jackson, Tecmo Bowl AND Tecmo Super Bowl. We've all seen the videos - does this require any more explanation? He'll either blow right by the defense or plow through them, depending on his condition. And with the whole diagonal running thing he could never be caught if you knew what you were doing.

[LiquidCrash]

Bo Jackson was the first to come to mind as well. It just wasn't fair.

[BlyGilmore]

The Sports Guy or another person on ESPN's Page 2 did this a couple of years ago. Bo Jackson was the easy winner, followed by Barry Sanders in one of the early 90s Maddens.

Might be a good topic for an OS Roundtable though

[DoomsDayD1978]

Ahhh...the infamous "Bo Jackson" rule comes to mind when I think of Tecmo Super Bowl. When we got together on weekends to play that game, NO ONE was allowed to use the Raiders because of Bo or the Giants because of LT.

[ehh]

Don't sleep on Glenn Rice in Live '98.

[MassNole]

I have a recent one, Reggie Bush (or I technically guess USC RB #5) in NCAA Football 2006. At least out of the box he is perhaps the most fun player to play with in that game and I would say in my NCAA playing history with default players that my sickest runs came with him. I can still remember a run against Hawaii where I more or less went Tecmo Bo Jackson on their defense, which was finished off with a Mike Alstott-esque backwards run driving a defender into the endzone (only time I ever saw that animation, it may have been a glitch as I was trying to spin at the time). I wish I could have gotten a video of it.

Lets also not forget Charles Barkley (wow the moment I typed that they said is name on Mike and Mike in the Morning, strange) in the Celtics vs. Lakers line of EA games and then into NBA Live 95 with his insane dunking ability.

I would also say Kobe Bryant in NBA 2k7 and 2k8.

Lets also not forget John Elway in John Elway Football, if he got to the sideline he went into hyper drive running down the sidelines.

And perhaps my all time favorite which is completely under the radar, former Giants 3B Matt Williams in one of the World Series Baseball games on the Genesis. I think it was the 1995 version of the game, he was like Barry Bonds on super steroids hitting on the moon. I think I averaged like 3 HR's a game with him. Total beast.

[MassNole]

Quote: Originally Posted by ehh

Don't sleep on Glenn Rice in Live '98.

Thanks for all of the bad memories you just brought up for me of my college roommate lighting me up with him. Every game we played he played like he did in the second half of the 1997 All Star game.

[ehh]

Yup, he was the highest rated player in the game. I believe the "fake" Jordan (who was 6'4) was 92 overall and Rice was a 98 overall and didn't miss three's.

We finally had to blackball the Hornets when I played w. my boys.

[BlyGilmore]

how about Vince Coleman in RBI Baseball? It was physically impossible to throw him out stealing second base.

or Jay Buhner in Ken Griffey Baseball. He had the best video game arm of all time - my brothers and I used to literally taunt each other when a ball was hit to right field, run back to the wall and dare each other to run on him.