Which game started it for you?

[Oilers9911]

Happy Easter all. I just thought i'd ask what game started it for you in sports simulations. I don't so much mean arcade/console games but text sims. It could also be board or cards and dice games.

For me it was purchasing Strat-o-Matic baseball back in 1991. It came with the 1990 season and that was it for me. I was hooked. My first career sim was the amazing (at the time) One-Nil from Wizard Games. I played that game to death and still fire it up from time to time on my old 486. I can remember the awe that i felt when playing One-Nil that I could actually buy and sell players and that players would age, retire and develop their skills. At the time it was like nirvana for me.

How about you guys?

[Draft Dodger]

no question, MicroLeague Baseball.

[Oilers9911]

no question, MicroLeague Baseball.

Ahhh yes good old MicroLeague. Another classic game.

[Flasch186]

no question, MicroLeague Baseball.

+1

[StLee]

Good thread question!

What started my interest in text sims was a vivid imagination as a boy that allowed me to endlessly create fantasy leagues. I would fill up entire notebooks with my fictional baseball, football, and basketball leagues. My first text sims were self-created, and I still play around with a world football league I created when the mood strikes me, keeping a record of past seasons and results to present day.

[Big Fo]

The first version of Baseball Mogul, I played that game all the time. Championship Manager soon followed.

[rowech]

MicroLeague baseball, then I went to the tabletop with statis pro and strat-o-matic, and then Baseball Mogul into the franchise type sims.

[Alan T]

For me it was using strat-o-matic as a kid. I think I got it probably 1982 or 1983 right when the Braves were their best before their huge fall off. I remember playing it for a few years just playing though wishing the braves had made other moves (Such as not trading Brett Butler).

I remember my first computer version of anything of the sort was Earl Weaver baseball for my Tandy computer in the mid-80s at some point. I remember trying various similar games in the 90s as well such as Tony Larussa baseball, etc

What got me into modern sim-sports games was actually Celeval (from this board) back in the late 90s or so (before FOFC existed) got me hooked up with the early versions of Baseball Mogul and OOTP (I think OOTP was actually on OOTP2 then).. He was also the one who got me to try out Front office football when it came out as well.

[MizzouRah]

Lance Hafner Pro Basketball on the C64. I remember writing a program in basic that showed the playoff brackets and stats.

[Calis]

The two that first stick into my mind are Tony La Russa Baseball and Omni-Play Basketball. I actually had the Magic Johnson branded version, but I think it was the same game. That was the first sports game I played that really had a strategic layer to it, and man I was impressed.

La Russa was the first one I become obsessed with. I went back and played Earl Weaver after that and was hooked.

I sort of stopped playing for a few years there though and didn't get back into it until Championship Manager 97/98, and I haven't stopped since then.

[Galaril]

For me it was apba baseball and strat-o-matic baseball.

[Calis]

Actually now that I think about it I had a little electronic game that I played the hell out of long before I went into the PC gaming side of things.

I can't remember the name of it for the life of me, but it was a football game shaped like a little stadium, and you had playbooks and such. I only had the pro bowl teams from that year and you'd input plays and such and it had a cheezy little announcer that would tell you what happened.

I played the hell out of that thing, can't remember what it was called though.

[Oilers9911]

Lance Hafner Pro Basketball on the C64. I remember writing a program in basic that showed the playoff brackets and stats.

Nice, I still have the LH Games on floppies.

Pro Basketball
Courtside College Basketball
3-in-1 Football
Full Count Baseball
Hat Trick Hockey
Rampage Wrestling.

I may have to fire them up for nostalgia purposes.

[Flasch186]

Omni Pro basketball had player aging and drafting if Im not mistaken.

[Calis]

Omni Pro basketball had player aging and drafting if Im not mistaken.

Yeah it definitely did.

I seem to remember being able to play college and pro level also. It was pretty impressive.

[MizzouRah]

Nice, I still have the LH Games on floppies.

Pro Basketball
Courtside College Basketball
3-in-1 Football
Full Count Baseball
Hat Trick Hockey
Rampage Wrestling.

I may have to fire them up for nostalgia purposes.

Yeah, great times!

[FBPro]

1969 APBA Baseball card set, during high school I played the he** out of that game, which has led to my current set of sports sim addictions.

[miked]

Microleague Baseball, Front Page Sports Football.

[markprior22]

Got Strat-O-Matic for Christmas in '75 ('74 season) when I was 11 years old and have been addicted ever since.

[miked]

There was also this hockey sim, I can't remember the name. It was a career sim, probably in the early 90s. You'd start out as an expansion team and try to build them up. They had a basketball version as well. I think it had some really cheapo graphics as well.

[kcchief19]

Nice, I still have the LH Games on floppies.

Pro Basketball
Courtside College Basketball
3-in-1 Football
Full Count Baseball
Hat Trick Hockey
Rampage Wrestling.

I may have to fire them up for nostalgia purposes.
Courtside College Basketball is one of my top five favorite games of all time. I also had 3-in Football and Full Count Baseball, but none were in the class of CCB to me.

Strat-o-matic got the ball rolling for me in the early '80s, then I found MicroLeague Baseball in 1985. Man oh man. Once I got the GM add-on disk that allowed you to create your own teams, it was all over. I got the Baseball Encyclopedia and create every team in Royals history and any other team I liked. I held several "all comer" tournaments where I put together a 256-team bracket and played it out. The first champion team was the 1963 Dodgers (they benefitted from my house rule of using three-man starting staffs for they tourney). MVP Sandy Koufax no-hit the '27 Yankees in the semifinals. Amazing.

[Coffee Warlord]

There was also this hockey sim, I can't remember the name. It was a career sim, probably in the early 90s. You'd start out as an expansion team and try to build them up. They had a basketball version as well. I think it had some really cheapo graphics as well.

It wasn't Superstar Ice Hockey by Mindscape was it?

Loved that game.

[MJ4H]

Andy fucking Dolphin's hockey game.

[Young Drachma]

Front Page Sports Football, then Baseball.

[Sweed]

If you don't count the games my brother and I made up using a deck of regular playing cards to get results than Strat-O-Matic Baseball was the beginning for me too. My first strat game was the 1969 season selector set which only included the Twins, Orioles, Braves, Miracle-Mets, and Cubs (couldn't talk Mom into buying me the version with all of the teams).

Played the hell out of that to the point of the cards almost having the consistency of toilet paper :D Then used my paper route money to buy my first full set of cards, the 1972 season and was in heaven. Bought every season set after that up into the mid 80's when I got my first c-64.

Played "Pure Stat Baseball" on the c-64 and moved onto Lance Hafner Baseball on my first pc along with a little "Earl". Like others here I also had Hafner 3-1 football and the college basketball game. Any of you guys ever subscribe to the Hafner news letter? Back in the day with no net it was kind of cool to get info and see that there were others out there that also had a love for sports gaming.

[Oilers9911]

While the Internet has been a great thing for this particular hobby, does anyone actually long for an earlier day sometimes? I remember finding out about One-Nil among others from Mark Cohen's (I think) magazine of which I can't remember the name but I still have some back issues.

Nothing can match the excitement of placing an order by phone and waiting and checking the mail every day to see if the game had arrived. Same thing with my Strat-o-Matic board games, waiting for the courier to deliver it and then spending time seperating the cards...ahhh good times.

[TheOhioStateUniversity]

Baseball Mogul 99, but I don't recall how I found out about it, being that prior to that I was a sports console game junkie

[lighthousekeeper]

Avalon Hill's Statis Pro Baseball (Commodore 64) ftw.

[Buccaneer]

Late bloomer: not until Football Mogul in 2000.

[miked]

It wasn't Superstar Ice Hockey by Mindscape was it?

Loved that game.

FTW!

I loved that game. Forgot to add Wayne Gretzky Hockey as well (with Hockey League Simulator?)

[NoSkillz]

I think the first game that really got me interested in season/career simulations was Pursue the Pennant, a pretty awesome baseball board/dice game.

From there, I went to Strat-o-Matic for my hockey fix.

From a computer perspective, definitely the Tony Larussa Baseball series was big for me when I first got a computer in university back in the early 90's and of course, Hockey League Simulator II teamed up with Wayne Gretzky Hockey.

Gosh, I spent so much time making rosters for those games...

Front Page Sports Baseball and Football got me completely hooked later in the 90s.

Great times...

[LastWhiteSoxFanStanding]

While the Internet has been a great thing for this particular hobby, does anyone actually long for an earlier day sometimes? I remember finding out about One-Nil among others from Mark Cohen's (I think) magazine of which I can't remember the name but I still have some back issues.

Nothing can match the excitement of placing an order by phone and waiting and checking the mail every day to see if the game had arrived. Same thing with my Strat-o-Matic board games, waiting for the courier to deliver it and then spending time seperating the cards...ahhh good times.

Mark Cohen's magazine was Sports Game Review which he later changed to PC Sports and Games. Great magazine, only problem was they ended up giving every game 5 stars.

[General Mike]

Got into the game late.

I joined a sim league that used High Heat Baseball in 2000, which eventually led to a couple of FPS Baseball leagues, and then eventually OOTP 3 and FOF 2001.

[hawk4669]

Super Sunday back on the C-64/128 as well as all of the expansions for the game.

The game kept stats, but for career stats etc....I had to print them out and compile them myself on paper. Also, players didn't age so I had to do that manually as well.

Loved that game though.

Cheers!

[kcchief19]

Super Sunday back on the C-64/128 as well as all of the expansions for the game.

The game kept stats, but for career stats etc....I had to print them out and compile them myself on paper. Also, players didn't age so I had to do that manually as well.

Loved that game though.

Cheers!
Completely forgot about Super Sunday. Had that for the Apple II. Fun game.

[Klinglerware]

SSI's Computer Baseball

Obviously not as sophisticated as today's replay sims, but still pretty impressive for it's time in terms of what it tried to accomplish--I would imagine that things like simulating pitching usage and the opportunity to input your own teams would be something state of the art for a computer sim first published in 1981.

[Fonzie]

no question, MicroLeague Baseball.

+1

Playing that incessantly on my old Apple IIc with its borderline-radioactive green screen monitor probably took a few years' worth of use off of my retinas.

[JetsIn06]

The first text/card based sim was with a super old strat-o-matic baseball set. It was a card set from I believe the 50's (or maybe a little later, if Strat didn't exist then), but it was a set of old-time teams, so I had the '27 Yankees and some Washington Senators teams. Then for my 7th or 8th birthday I got the 1993 complete MLB set, which I played to death. I got most of the MLB sets until around '97.

My first text sim was Baseball Mogul, which was absolutely mind blowing to me.

Then I discovered strat-o-matic football, which was pretty fun as well.

[cartman]

The first game I remember was the table top game "NFL Strategy". That was the one where you had a bunch of cards for offensive and defensive plays. The offensive play cards had a bunch of numbers, and the defensive play cards had windows that would show certains numbers on the offensive cards. You loaded them into a slot on the right of the board, and "ran the play" by flicking a fishing bobber type things on a pole. Where ever the bobber ended up, you traced it over, and the window revealed showed the results of the play. The rest of the game board had a field and scoreboard that you would update with the results.

Me and my cousins used to play the hell out of this game. We'd keep logs and stats in a notebook. That was back in the late 70s, a definite pre-cursor to getting into the electronic realm.

[Emiliano]

Championship Manager 93/94.

[Apathetic Lurker]

1st sports game was a little handheld game that had like 3 little red lines running around. the top part was shaped like a stadium. Wore out tons of batteries on that. 1st real sports game was statis pro football 1985 season.loved it to death.

[Izulde]

Whichever was earlier between Front Page Sports Football and the first Baseball Mogul.

I loved both those games and played the hell out of them.

[Oilers9911]

Mark Cohen's magazine was Sports Game Review which he later changed to PC Sports and Games. Great magazine, only problem was they ended up giving every game 5 stars.

That's the one. Yeah they were always pretty generous review wise but it was still a good mag. I still have some back issues somewhere.

[bhlloy]

There was a soccer game years back on my uncle's Atari that took half an hour to load every game from tape, but I was hooked. No idea what the name was, but for the time it was pretty cool (real players).

The first text sim I owned was Championship Manager 93/94, the first game I played the hell out of was Championship Manager 2. I must have logged 6 months of actual game time on that bad boy. God knows how my school work suffered. My life could have been so different if it wasn't for that game :)

In terms of US based sports, I got hooked on OOTP2 even though I had no idea what the rules of baseball were. A text sim actually taught me the rules of a game that I now really enjoy.

[hawk4669]

I also loved the Front Page Sports series. Heck, I even kept my copy of Front Page Sports Football '99 despite the recall. (I think it was the '99 version that got recalled anyways....)

Cheers!

[Coder]

I played a few soccer manager games on my C-64 before finding Championship Manager for the Amiga about 1990.. I remember having to have an extra 3.5" disk just for the saved game, and my buddy, who also loved soccer manager games, thought it was the worst game ever.. it was too slow, you needed the extra disk, the interface was terrible, but I was STUCK.. I can honestly say I've bought every CM/FM from the very beginning up until 2004, when I had experienced so many other textsims and found more interest in fictional sims and other sports than soccer.

[Subby]

We made up a simple game called hit and run that used 3 d6 and a chart that assigned an outcome to each roll. We played many seasons of that until we discovered fantasy baseball (I shoplifted the book when it first came out.) I had statis pro baseball but I think I was too young to figure it out.

I had Radio Baseball and Earl Weaver baseball for the Tandy and we played a ton of strat baseball and college football in study hall in high school. I didn't play sim games from probably '89 until I discovered FOF in 2000.

[MJ4H]

d6

lol

[Logan]

48 posts and I'm the first to answer FOF?

[Vince]

Playing Paydirt! and Superstar Baseball with my dad (both tabletop games) was by far the most fun I had with board games growing up. They paved the way for countless leagues in Baseball Stars for the NES, then a league we made up for Super Play Action Football for the SNES where I kept all the stats and such on paper. Finally, TCY was what really got me in to "Text Sims."

[gkb]

Front Page Sports Football

Although before that I vaguely remember playing a game that one of the guys in the dorms had. You could call plays, but all of the action was carried out onscreen by X's and O's. It was still a lot of fun though.

[Radii]

SSI's Computer Baseball

Obviously not as sophisticated as today's replay sims, but still pretty impressive for it's time in terms of what it tried to accomplish--I would imagine that things like simulating pitching usage and the opportunity to input your own teams would be something state of the art for a computer sim first published in 1981.

yup! I had that on the Atari 800 and played it a ton as a kid. Because of this game, and later microleague baseball, I used to have the entire roster, lineups, and batting averages of my favorite classic teams to play memorized(75 Reds and 27 Yankees in these games).

[larrymcg421]

For text sims it was Superbowl Sunday and Pure Stat Baseball. I played these things over and over again, setting up massive tournaments to find the best teams.

For career play, it was all about Omni-Play Basketball. I played this probably more than any other game. It was the first game I know of that had career play and I played one career for at least 90 seasons or so, eventhough the game would only track the past 9 seasons of stats.

[Glengoyne]

Have to give the credit to Earl Weaver Baseball. That really only lacked a real carreer mode. My friends and I did it manually instead. We sat and played head to head for hours and hours.

We did the same with XOR college basketball. I still don't think these newer BB games have matched the in game experience of XOR.

Front Page Sports football was really the first career game to fit my mold. When that went under I was essentially on hiatus.

Then I ran across Pure Sim baseball, because High Heat Baseball sucked so badly. While tooling around on the Pure Sim site one day, I saw mention of this football game with a career mode. There was a link that brought me ....Here.

From there I've discovered that while FOF may not be my exact "cup of tea", this community fits my particular gaming niche pretty darned well.

[miked]

Front Page Sports Football

Although before that I vaguely remember playing a game that one of the guys in the dorms had. You could call plays, but all of the action was carried out onscreen by X's and O's. It was still a lot of fun though.

XOR Football. Was about to mention that one!

[JeeberD]

I used to keep stats for seasons of RBI Baseball that my friend and I played out. Until recently I had notebook after notebook of fake stats from 1987...

The first "Text Sim" that I ever played would have to be FOF2. After playing tons of seasons of Tecmo Super Bowl and wishing that seasons would carry over, FOF was a dream come true...

[thesloppy]

I played about half of the games mentioned in this thread.

Anybody remember the 'TV Sports' series of games from Cinemaware for the Amiga? I think they were intended to mostly be arcade games, but made for more than capable graphical sims, considering the times.

[st.cronin]

Strat-o-matic baseball for me.

[BYU 14]

Two Avalon Hill games. Superstar Baseball that came with all the ATG's and Title bout, which was probably the most use I have gotten out of any board game.

First computer sims were Lance Hafners 3-1 Football and Baseball games, which still hold up fairly well IMO.

[lighthousekeeper]

One of the great things about Omni Play Basketball (which I also played the hell out of) was the pregame announcers. It was a nice little aesthetic addition that the current-gen text sims don't quite capture.

[Dr. Sak]

It wasn't Superstar Ice Hockey by Mindscape was it?

Loved that game.

Same here. I wish I could get my hands on a copy today.

[vtbub]

+1

Playing that incessantly on my old Apple IIc with its borderline-radioactive green screen monitor probably took a few years' worth of use off of my retinas.


+1

Even had the 1984 Roster disk and the GM/Stat disk

[AlexB]

The original Football Manager on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Closely followed by The Double and an international football manager that I forget the name of.

[FBPro]

Two Avalon Hill games. Superstar Baseball that came with all the ATG's and Title bout, which was probably the most use I have gotten out of any board game.

First computer sims were Lance Hafners 3-1 Football and Baseball games, which still hold up fairly well IMO.

I played the Haffner series like crazy as well, my main issue w/ them is that they are NOT forgiving at all....one mistake with a wrong choice and you are sunk. Too bad he never did windows versions of these.

[Oilers9911]

Same here. I wish I could get my hands on a copy today.

Here you go. http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=1107

[lighthousekeeper]

Same here. I wish I could get my hands on a copy today.


I still have my copy in the basement (along with every other c64 game i ever owned).

[Cork]

My sports game addiction started back in 1978 when I purchased the APBA baseball board game as a junior in High School.

-Cork

[Glengoyne]

Ah an excellent point about that Mindscape hockey game. I do believe that was actually the first career mode computer game that I ever experienced. It pre-dated Earl Weaver by a short span. I played it on my first ever computer with a 5 and a quarter inch floppy disk.

[Raiders Army]

TNM

[Buccaneer]

I reading through all of the responses (and being envious), I recall that I had Strat-O-Matic and ABPA type games back in the early 1970s, but I was more interested in the cards and not the game. In the early 1990s, I remembered that I tried to get into Earl Weaver (or LaRussa, I forget) but it didn't click with me. I was far more interested in Microprose/Maxis games, along with Jack Nicklaus. I played a lot of Tom Landry Strategy Football but that's not what this thread is about. Don't know why it took so long to get into text sims, maybe it was because of my very visual nature.

[Fonzie]

+1

Even had the 1984 Roster disk and the GM/Stat disk

That GM disk allowed most of my dreams to come true.

[IMetTrentGreen]

FOF2 with an assist to FPS Football '95

[Vegas Vic]

Someone mentioned the "Paydirt" game from Avalon Hill. The first sports sim that I ever owned was the earlier edition of "Paydirt", called "Sports Illustrated Pro Football". I also owned the college counterpart, called "Bowl Bound", also published by Avalon Hill. I played those games for hundreds of hours when I was a kid.

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3893/pic249043mdaf9.jpg

[LloydLungs]

Ahhh, I love this thread. Memory effing lane. Played MANY of these (even Radio Baseball!).

I too wore out the Haffner games to death, especially Courtside College Basketball. I even invented an elaborate career/recruiting system, though it only applied to my team while the rest of the college world remained static. It was imperfect but fun. For years, just the idea of adding the career element to games was my personal holy grail, and I never seriously saw it happening, so the arrival of Baseball Mogul was pretty damn incredible. When text sims changed forever.

[3ric]

Championship Manager 2,
Premier Manager 97
Front Page Sports Football

[cuervo72]

no question, MicroLeague Baseball.

Same here.

edit: also shoutouts to SB Sunday (played this at a friend's house, he had the NBA version too) and Superstar Ice Hockey. And the GM/O and Box Score/Stat Compiler disks for MicroLeague made anything possible. We had a league full of entertainment types even where we made up player attributes (Eddie Murphy was a OF with plenty of tools, Ahnold was a Dave Kingman type, Rosanne was a fat crappy catcher, etc).

[Passacaglia]

APBA Football, 1990. I took all the players and arranged them alphabetically, then put the first XX on one team, the next XX on another team, and so on, then started my way through a full season, which I got maybe halfway through before quitting. It was fun to make the boxscores and season stats as each week went on.

[Honolulu Blue]

Like others who have chimed in, I've played many of the games mentioned here. Two games that haven't been mentioned that I played when I was a young 'un:

* Cadaco All-Star Baseball - the one with the round cards and the spinners.

* The Monday Night Football from the '70s. This version had long, skinny cardboard cards with offensive plays and defensive formations. The offense would choose their play, the defense would choose there, and the game board (shaped like a stadium) had lots of numbers with a light underneath that would reveal the result of the play. It was a big honkin' game that took up most of my available floor space, and it looked like this:

http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic52183_md.jpg

Anyway, that was just an aside. I didn't do any serious statistical analysis with either of those games. Where that all started was with the Strat-O-Matic baseball game I bought at a flea market for $2. There were only two teams - the '76 Brewers and the '76 Rangers. I know more than I ought about the relative merits of Dave Moates and Pete Broberg, thanks to that silly game.

Many more board games followed until I got to my first computerized sports career sim - Omni-Play Basketball. AI! Trades!! Training camp!!! This was all a quantum leap for me. Oh, and the announcers were nice too - they repeated a lot of stuff that I already knew (e.g. they're faster, but we have better outside shooters), but I miss it too and wouldn't mind having it back in more modern text sims.

The first of the modern sims I played was Baseball Mogul Classic.

[clintl]

Tony LaRussa Ultimate Baseball. Although I did have another baseball game before that, but it sucked.

I had a dice and card baseball game back in high school, but I never really played it that much. Don't remember what it was called.

[MikeVic]

TNM

Yes! I played this with a couple of friends for awhile. We'd waste entire days sitting in front of the computer, drafting rosters and then creating cards pitting members from our "teams" against each other.

[path12]

All-Star Baseball with the paper discs and the spinner. I ordered the all-time player set and had a 16 team league that played 32 games each. Good times. From there I remember Foto-Electric Football, then Strat-o-Matic and eventually into most of the Statis Pro games.

[st.cronin]

I need to give a shout out to DMB, also. That was the game that got me started on pc gaming. I'm still hoping for a career mode.

[Godzilla Blitz]

APBA Football, 1990. I took all the players and arranged them alphabetically, then put the first XX on one team, the next XX on another team, and so on, then started my way through a full season, which I got maybe halfway through before quitting. It was fun to make the boxscores and season stats as each week went on.

I used to play APBA baseball when I was a kid. I set up a four-team, 21-game league, and played about eight seasons in all. I set up an aging formula, and drafted cards in from other teams each year to replace retiring players. Good times. I still have the notebook I kept the standings and stats in.

The first computer simulation for me was Front Page Sports Football, and then Front Page Sports Baseball, but those games seem to fall apart for me with multi-year play, so I don't really consider them to be "my start". The game that thoroughly got me hooked was Baseball Mogul, must have been around 2000. From there I got FOF.

[korme]

Whatever game started keeping career stats.

[Terps]

I'm pretty sure it was FOF 2K1.

[Groundhog]

Mine was, if I recall the title correctly, Road to the Final Four for PC. It was a pretty average graphical game, but I had much more fun inputting my own players and simming the results and looking at the box scores. If only I knew then where that would lead me today... :D

[BigDPW]

Front Page Sports Football followed by Baseball...

[larrymcg421]

Superstar Soccer and Superstar Hockey were from the same designer of Omni-Play Basketball. All were very entertaining career play sims back when that was something no one else was attempting. There was also Omni-Play Horse Racing, but I never tried that.

As for the Magic Johnson version of Omni-Play, I believe that version was sold with the Side view module, which I did not care for. It was easy to beat as all you had to do was get a fast center and run circles around everyone. The End View was more challenging because you had to make passes at the right time.

[Sgran]

I swear this thread pops up every year. Can we just choose a date and declare it "Sports Game Reminiscing Day"?
And no, I never get tired of typing the same things. Paydirt for me. I can still see the yellow scoreboard coming apart at the top. And there was electronic football, and what was that football game where each team chose one of 6 plays on transparencies and there was cardboard between them and you slowly revealed the ball carrier making his way downfield? Of course, none of these could touch the basketball game where you sprung the pingpong ball across the court, hitting 75% from fullcourt. And you'd overshoot on purpose to hit your friend in the face.
But honestly, my first multi-year sport franchises were in NBA Live 2000, where you could make up your own team and make fictional players with your face stuck on them, but it was always distorted so it looked like your team was full of Freddy Kruegers. I remember that the Clippers would always be the best team by 2010 because they would pick up Kevin Garnett and Kobe to play with Odom and Olowokandi.

[Tasan]

XOR NFL Challenge on an old pre 286 PC clone. I figured out how to modify the team names, and the players on the team. That game was great, and I still play it every now and then for old times sake.

[Huckleberry]

Got started late. Diamond Mind Baseball was my first text sim.

[G-Man]

SSI's Computer Baseball

Obviously not as sophisticated as today's replay sims, but still pretty impressive for it's time in terms of what it tried to accomplish--I would imagine that things like simulating pitching usage and the opportunity to input your own teams would be something state of the art for a computer sim first published in 1981.

Played it on my Apple IIC! That was my introduction into computer sports simulations. However my very first board game was APBA Baseball game in 1973. Played the APBA board sports games (baseball and football) until the mid 80's, whne computer simulations took over.:cool:

[G-Man]

The first game I remember was the table top game "NFL Strategy". That was the one where you had a bunch of cards for offensive and defensive plays. The offensive play cards had a bunch of numbers, and the defensive play cards had windows that would show certains numbers on the offensive cards. You loaded them into a slot on the right of the board, and "ran the play" by flicking a fishing bobber type things on a pole. Where ever the bobber ended up, you traced it over, and the window revealed showed the results of the play. The rest of the game board had a field and scoreboard that you would update with the results.

Me and my cousins used to play the hell out of this game. We'd keep logs and stats in a notebook. That was back in the late 70s, a definite pre-cursor to getting into the electronic realm.

I remember using the Flea Flicker like every offensive drive:p

[G-Man]

Someone mentioned the "Paydirt" game from Avalon Hill. The first sports sim that I ever owned was the earlier edition of "Paydirt", called "Sports Illustrated Pro Football". I also owned the college counterpart, called "Bowl Bound", also published by Avalon Hill. I played those games for hundreds of hours when I was a kid.

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3893/pic249043mdaf9.jpg

I remember playing this game for the 1970 season. Greg Landry, the running QB for the playoff bound Lions ran for well over 176 yards in one game against the Raiders:p I even made my own charts!!