OT - Manufactured competitions (reflections on a youth without computers)

[kcchief19]

Man, I'm so glad to learn after all these years I wasn't abnormal.

I was an only child, so most of my activities were geared toward solo play. Like others, I had football, baseball and basketball leagues based around the Nerf ball. My uncle called it YBH -- Yellow Ball Hustle. I would dutifully track statistics from all my games. I had rather intricate rules about how the games were played. I even had a Nerf Olympics.

Another favorite pasttime was to take my football and baseball cards and use them for competions. Sometimes I would create teams, sometimes I would just rank all the players based on their statistics in an effort to determine who was the best player.

I did undertake a couple of efforts at board games and "sims." I created a solo player shopping mall sim where I designed a mall. My most successful game was based on The Prices Right using a deck of cards and the JC Penney catalog.

My most bizarre hobby was creating charts and rankings. When I was around 8 or 9, my mom bought me a computer game magazine that had the rankings of the top selling Atari games and most popular arcade games. Disappointed to see my favorites not on top, I decided to create my own rankings. I did video games off and on through the 1980s and I later added pop music, publishing my own charts from around when I was 10 through college. At the peak, I would publish four or five charts a week. At the end of the year, I would tally up all the points based on chart position. When I was much younger, I would also produce an awards show for my family featuring all my favorites.

My future as a journalist was probably sealed in 1980 when I "covered" the Super Bowl between the Eagles and the Raiders. That's the first time I know of where I wrote a news story. I watched the game and wrote a story about it and delivered it to my family immediately after the game -- had to beat those deadlines! Amazingly, I still have that article in my scrapbook.

[Dutch]

Man, I'm so glad to learn after all these years I wasn't abnormal.

I guess somebody needs to tell you this. We are an abnormal bunch. Sorry, have a beer, it won't hurt so bad.

[Suicane75]

One last one for me. I had the entire AWA set of wrestling figure including many doubles and from 4th to 8th grade I would book an entire federation on paper and then wrestle the matches, I still vividly remember the upset of Jimmy Garvin shcoking Terry Gordy to win the world title only to lose it back the next month. I had the Road Warriors chase the team of Steve Regal & Ric Flair (The Electric Dream Team) for 2 years before finaly winning the tag belts in a blood cage match. I would do most of the matches in me bedroom but when I relized that with the generic figures I could make them be anyone I wanted I held a super card that saw Tully Blanchard & Arn Anderson & Barry Windham join Ric Flair, as well as the debut of The Hart Foundation & The British Bulldogs, I put the ring in the center of my yard and made a little cart that i attached to the end of a remote controled car and had them driven into the "stadium", I had theme music for everyone that I would play on my boombox as they arrived. I would sit in 8th grade match class writing out the cards and booking future storylines, it's no wonder i didn't do very well.

[vex]

There was a "pro" basketball game on the NES, before Bulls vs. Blazers and such. All I remember about it was that there was a team named the Chicago Zephers and it was actually kind of difficult.

Anyways, I would create an entire 82 game schedule on paper and play all of the Zephers games out. Even had a playoffs


I loved basketball when I was younger and since my dad is a pastor, I had a full court basketball court to myself at the church. I would bring my basketball cards out and play 9 vs. 9, by myself, using the players on the cards. On one sheet of nine would be the Knicks with Vandeweigh, Oakley, Starks, Mason, Ewing, etc, the Bulls would have Jordan, Pippen, Paxon, Cartwright and whoever the other guy was at the time. I would go fullcourt, and as someone else said, would time myself, I even had an imaginary shotclock. Ah, the days.

[Dutch]

Oh yeah, I would play out full seasons using the Super Bowl Sunday game on the C64.

Then I went overboard when NFL Challenge came out on the PC back in 1987 or was it 88? Maybe 89, anyway...I updated every single roster by hand. It was a labor of love!

Of course, the lousy Buccaneers went 15-1 and both running backs (I think they were Reggie Cobb and an ex-Packer both had 1,500 yard rushing in the same season!)

[Mota]

At the age of 14 I wrote a wrestling "dice" game. I even wrote myself into the game, being the only wrestler ever to win the AWA, WCW and WWF titles! (go figure)

By the time I got to grade 11 at high school, we had a small army of people with their characters in the game and we started a fictional league with all our characters. I think we played about 50 shows (still have the binders of course) at school and on weekends during high school.

During college many of us still got together every Monday night at a local comic book shop and played the game for 3 hours. We had up to 10 people playing every week, and this went on for 2 years until I moved out of town. It got pretty serious at one point, and after the night's action I would carefully put together the next week's lineup, posting it at the store if I made it there early, so everybody could get pumped up about their next week's matches. Unfortunately I haven't been able to play the game since I moved (9 years ago), but then I got involved in the world of e-wrestling so it kinda replaced my rules set.

In e-wrestling you have thousands of players in hundreds of leagues across the net, all intertwined through the e-wrestling newsgroup. Your success is judged by the quality of your "interviews" (which you type out), and the storylines you come up with the other players, as judged by the federation owner. It ends up being exactly like real pro wrestling, the top ranked guys win the titles, and in a good league it is a real interesting read. It's funny to see how a "star system" forms, and the top ranked leagues' stars reputations extend into many other leagues. At it's worst it is also like pro wrestling, full of cliques, partiality, bickering between players and leagues closing down.

[Suicane75]

Originally Posted by Mota

At the age of 14 I wrote a wrestling "dice" game. I even wrote myself into the game, being the only wrestler ever to win the AWA, WCW and WWF titles! (go figure)

By the time I got to grade 11 at high school, we had a small army of people with their characters in the game and we started a fictional league with all our characters. I think we played about 50 shows (still have the binders of course) at school and on weekends during high school.

During college many of us still got together every Monday night at a local comic book shop and played the game for 3 hours. We had up to 10 people playing every week, and this went on for 2 years until I moved out of town. It got pretty serious at one point, and after the night's action I would carefully put together the next week's lineup, posting it at the store if I made it there early, so everybody could get pumped up about their next week's matches. Unfortunately I haven't been able to play the game since I moved (9 years ago), but then I got involved in the world of e-wrestling so it kinda replaced my rules set.

In e-wrestling you have thousands of players in hundreds of leagues across the net, all intertwined through the e-wrestling newsgroup. Your success is judged by the quality of your "interviews" (which you type out), and the storylines you come up with the other players, as judged by the federation owner. It ends up being exactly like real pro wrestling, the top ranked guys win the titles, and in a good league it is a real interesting read. It's funny to see how a "star system" forms, and the top ranked leagues' stars reputations extend into many other leagues. At it's worst it is also like pro wrestling, full of cliques, partiality, bickering between players and leagues closing down.

When i first got internet access I played in EFeds all the time. In fact i wrote for a friend of mine, I would generate the matches in TNM and then go and edit them to get a better flow, i love doing that, but alas i got burned out on the politics of most of them, ironic.

[lighthousekeeper]

Well this thread certainly fills me with chills, not so much because I now see what I wasn't able to see as a kid (that there were other lonely kids out there coping with lonliness in the same way), but at the eerie similarities between what has been repeatedly posted here and what I've done...in particular:

-the random button on a calculator: When I learned about that, I was set for a long time in baseball simming heaven. That was the button that my adolesent mind was yearning for so strongly.

-pages and pages of college ruled spiral notebooks (why always college ruled?)

-tennis ball thrown against the steps turning into a Major League Sim

...but the one that really gave me chills...

...Quick's M&M game. I swear I played that exact same game, complete with the same motivation that Quick alluded to. Played it many many times. It's so darmn eerie, because it's such an odd, random, unnecesasry diversion. I would never have imagined that someone else would partake in such an innane activity. Also, I would never have remembered doing it, until Quick mentioned it. But it makes me feel good that someone else out there did the same thing.

You realize that we're all borderline autistic, right?

[sabotai]

There was a "pro" basketball game on the NES, before Bulls vs. Blazers and such. All I remember about it was that there was a team named the Chicago Zephers and it was actually kind of difficult.

Now I feel old. Someone said "before Bulls vs. Blazers" to describe a really old video game...to me, Lakers vs Celtics was the old one (or Dr J. vs. Larry Bird).

Anyway, I remember that game I think, but I can't remember the name of it...Chicago Zephyrs were a real basketball team (who are now currently called the Washington Wizards, and before they were called the Zephyers, they are the Packers).

I just searched through my collection of NES roms. The game was call All-Pro Basketball.

[vex]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Now I feel old. Someone said "before Bulls vs. Blazers" to describe a really old video game...to me, Lakers vs Celtics was the old one (or Dr J. vs. Larry Bird).

Anyway, I remember that game I think, but I can't remember the name of it...Chicago Zephyrs were a real basketball team (who are now currently called the Washington Wizards, and before they were called the Zephyers, they are the Packers).

I just searched through my collection of NES roms. The game was call All-Pro Basketball.

Well that was what, '92? I was in I think 3rd grade, maybe second


Yep, All-Pro Basketball

[sabotai]

3rd grade in 92? Now I do feel old! I was starting high school in 92 (And I just made someone else feel old.)

[fantastic flying froggies]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

You realize that we're all borderline autistic, right?

I think you just summarized FOFC in 1 sentence...

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

-pages and pages of college ruled spiral notebooks (why always college ruled?)

I hadn't picked up on that in the thread, but you're very right.
And I suspect I know why.

College ruled had more lines per page than standard ruled.
Which meant we could cram more stuff onto a single sheet.

Well, at least that's why I always used 'em.

Now I wonder ... do we have a group tendency toward smaller, cramped writing styles today?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by sabotai

3rd grade in 92? Now I do feel old! I was starting high school in 92 (And I just made someone else feel old.)

Grrrrrrrrr.

Sincerely,
Jon - PHS Class of '84

[Celeval]

Can I just ditto all of this?

Aside from the games with baseball cards and the like, we kept statistics for summer Monopoly leagues, as well as multi-season leagues of "SockBall", involving a block of wood as a bat, rolled up socks wrapped in electrical tape as balls, and a small basement with a low ceiling.

[Alf]

I have to post here of course (missed it the first time).

I created a multi League European Soccer competion (running 1 division for 16 euro countries), and then making them play in European competitions. All this was dully noted on a text book which I stumbled upon a few weeks ago when moving boxes at home.

I was also guilty for running several Formula 1 Leagues (both with pen and dice), and also with real miniature cars and "billes" to move the cars.

Last one I remember was a BasketBall game I was playing while I was in the US (94).

Guess that finding guys playing text sims was an obvious ending for me

PS : it all started when I found the first Championship Manager on Amstrad in the early 80s. I made my own version of this game for Atari (wow, memories).

[QuikSand]

*chuckles*

[Young Drachma]

I used to do pen and paper baseball leagues with invented stats. It wasn't until BBPro Series that I was able to finally get rid of all of my paper. My best friend and I had countries too and we'd sit and create the stock markets, run campaigns, radio shows and so forth. (and record these things on cassette, of course) and all of the other intricate details for weeks and years on end.

When I was visiting for a few weeks this summer, I sent him to his basement for hours because he was looking for the notebooks he'd written of his old country stuff that he'd kept moving with him from home to his own house as a grown up. He enjoyed the flashback and yeah...this thread is a good flashback of "no, you weren't the only dork doing that."

Good stuff.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Did anyone out there just sort of "invent" your own kind of competitions, just as a way of generating the stuff we love -- winners and losers, standings, records, stats, and so forth?

My answer to the question is yes. I will say no more on the grounds that it might incriminate me (in the court of FOFC, in any event).

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

This probably didn't count, but I used to try to sim an entire baseball season by thowing a tennis ball against the steps of my house. I'd usually get through 2 or 3 games a day. I'd keep all the stats, records... depending on how the ball bounced. If I caught it on the fly, it was an out, over my head, depended on how far it flew. I think I got through 50 games for each team one season. Needless to say I can't throw a baseball for more than 10 minutes anymore without my arm falling off.

I also did the same thing for Basketball on the basketball goal... but the ball kept hopping the fence and landing in the neighbor's pool.

I did almost exactly the same thing, except it was against the wall of our garage. Caught was an out, otherwise each bounce was worth one base. I wore down the grass in my throwing spot doing that.

I also had a football league, where I'd roll 4d6 for each team for each quarter, and if the result was something reasonable to score in a quarter (7, 10, 14, 17, 21, or 24), the team scored that many points in that quarter, otherwise zero.

So now that computers and video games are all over the place, do our kids have any chance of doing stuff like this?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

So now that computers and video games are all over the place, do our kids have any chance of doing stuff like this?

Only if we work at it I think.

I introduced mine to (professionally done) dice & chart games at a very early age so that he could pick up on the basics. We developed our own tweaks to those, which led to making sure he was kept in the loop when I was working on a game of my own at one point. Have had numerous discussions about design related issues that come up with games, how they compare to other design choices, etc. And from all of that, from time to time, I discover that he's worked out some variant to some of the d&c games he still plays when the mood strikes.

On their own? I'd say the number who would do it would be much smaller than a generation or two earlier. We didn't have a lot of choices, today's kids do.

[Ksyrup]

Actually, I just thought of one I can talk about. Kinda odd and random, but whatever.

This was back in law school. This story could probably go off-track fairly easily, but suffice to say, 97% of our law school class was young 20-somethings, while the rest were older. Some were embarking on second careers. Among them was this 50ish woman who used to wheel around a briefcase from class to class. The typical know-it-all, but in the body of a middle-aged mother. Oh, and a diehard Cowboys fan, too. It was a glorious combination, I can assure you. Condescending, acted like law school was a piece of cake and everyone would be choking on her fumes while she left us in the rear view mirror.

Eventually, she would end up stealing exam questions, get turned in by a professor's assistant who saw her do it, take out a hitman to kill the assistant and her husband, and get arrested for attempted murder (queue the off-track stuff...). But this pre-dates that.

Anyway, so in law school there's a lot of questioning the students - the so-called Socratic Merthod - where participation is encouraged, if not demanded. I had a tax class with this bitch, and holy shit, she would talk at any opportunity she could get, to prove to the professor and everyone else that she was so fucking smart. Often, it was to prove she was smarter than the professor. Eventually, a couple of friends and I got so bored during class that we started what was eventually known as Plachy Football. Basically, we each took turns evaluating each time she spoke and converting it into a "carry." So, if she waxed poetic on something for a couple of minutes, she gained 12 yards. If she gave a short answer, maybe 3 yards. If she was (God Forbid) wrong about something, -3. At the end of class, we'd add them all up and figure out how good a game she had - 16 carries, 122 yards and a TD (TDs were assigned either for a particularly longwinded discussion, or after so many yards), for example. Then we'd keep track of her "season" and add up her stats at the end of a 16 game run.

But all that kinda came to an end when she, uh, you know, tried to have people killed.

[Fidatelo]

Like lots of you guys, in the summers my brother and I created games based on sports and dice. Well, my brother did most of the creating, but I did tonnes of playing.

My favorite was a dice hockey game that I still play once in awhile (and keep intending to create as a web or mobile based game). But basically you created a league of 20 players, then split a season into 4 quarters. Each quarter you rolled 2 20-sided dice for each player, 1 represented goals and the other assists.

At the end of the year you would get semi-realistic season totals for each player. I'd create little boxes to highlight the top 5 in goals, assists, and points. Then I'd usually retire the lowest 3-5 scorers and add new players into the league. After every 5th season I'd create boxes for the top 5 in goals, assists, and points over the 5 season span. It was always a blast to see how many seasons you could play with someone still around from season 1 (never having been retired due to poor performance).

[Radii]

I love this thread. I went back and read my old post and brought back a bunch of memories and love seeing that so many other people here did similar things.

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Only if we work at it I think.

I introduced mine to (professionally done) dice & chart games at a very early age so that he could pick up on the basics. We developed our own tweaks to those, which led to making sure he was kept in the loop when I was working on a game of my own at one point. Have had numerous discussions about design related issues that come up with games, how they compare to other design choices, etc. And from all of that, from time to time, I discover that he's worked out some variant to some of the d&c games he still plays when the mood strikes.

On their own? I'd say the number who would do it would be much smaller than a generation or two earlier. We didn't have a lot of choices, today's kids do.

My 9 year old made a game last year based upon Adv. Squad Leader called Robots & Infantry. The game had different nations and ROBOTS! He made different maps with terrain and hand cut units. Each nationality had its own quirks. The robots had different abilities as well. The only thing my wife and I had to contribute was the need for a rule sheet. So he got on Word and banged one out.

He entered it in a local convention game design contest. While simple, the rule set was more complete than many of the other games. The only problem was he got discouraged due to the polish some of the other games had.

[larrymcg421]

I ran a dice based football simulation league back in junior high. Management aspects were mostly non-existent, but I had lists of percentages for people to decide when to run/pass and who should get the ball, etc. I kept up with season long stats and even wrote a Sporting News type journal for the league ("Baker Bakes Boston" being my favorite headline). I ran the league for a few years, but I moved alot so it was hard to keep long term continuity.

[digamma]

I was awesome at that game, mostly because the management aspects were non-existent.

[Buccaneer]

Someone at CivFanatics called me a digital hoarder when I mentioned that I have kept logs of every single Civ game I have played since 1998 (not to mention other strategy games and every text sims as well). When I was a kid, I had a bookshelf full of 3-ring binders from games I made up. Nothing has changed, I still have dozens of 3-ring binders from games.

[dzilla77]

Didn't see this the first time around, but when I was a kid I had one of those vibrating football games. I used to keep offensive stats for all the games I played solitaire.

I also used baseball cards to playout baseball games with percentile dice determining whether or not the batters got hits, etc. I had a method for determining extra base hits.

In the 90's while prepping for a fantasy hockey draft, I stumbled on a play by mail hockey sim called Alphasim. They eventually sold it to somebody and it died. I failed to discover these computer sims until around 2005. I could have wasted some serious time if I had found these things earlier.

[bob]

I had an entire college football universe around the Wheaties football game on the back of the box when Joe Montana was on the cover. As much as I hated them, Tennessee seemed to always win. It was a sad day when the cardboard thing that flung the football at the box broke.

[Pyser]

love this thread. i played lots of football seasons based on football cards. would buy the entire year from tops, spread them out in formation, and run entire games.

played a similar game to quik's football team pencils. just simply ran an ncaa tournament based on the real teams at the time. my ny giants bias came into play some, but i was always amazed how different teams would win every time just based on the seeding.


when people talk about dying and heaven, they always say they want their relatives there, everything to be all white, etc, etc. you know what i want? a giant book with stats about how i spent my entire life. how long i slept. sat at a red light. how many times i said "what". how much money i lost in change. i want it all. and that would be my heaven.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by Pyser

when people talk about dying and heaven, they always say they want their relatives there, everything to be all white, etc, etc. you know what i want? a giant book with stats about how i spent my entire life. how long i slept. sat at a red light. how many times i said "what". how much money i lost in change. i want it all. and that would be my heaven.

amen

[sovereignstar v2]

I have fond memories of playing out NCAA tournament games against myself in Nerf hoops. I'd never get very far (63 games hello!), but I did keeps stats. Jamal Mashburn used to rip shit up!

I got this talking football game when I was 9 or 10. A couple years later I bought a fantasy football guide and divvied out players to 8 different teams. If a team got the top QB they'd get the worst WR and an average RB. I proceeded to play games against the computer taking control of random teams and keeping tracks of all the stats I could. Of course the actual game only had the AFC and NFC All-Pro teams...

I was importing rosters into Earl Weaver Baseball by age 12. Then came Football Pro and Baseball Pro. 'Nuff said.

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Actually, I just thought of one I can talk about. Kinda odd and random, but whatever.

This was back in law school. This story could probably go off-track fairly easily, but suffice to say, 97% of our law school class was young 20-somethings, while the rest were older. Some were embarking on second careers. Among them was this 50ish woman who used to wheel around a briefcase from class to class. The typical know-it-all, but in the body of a middle-aged mother. Oh, and a diehard Cowboys fan, too. It was a glorious combination, I can assure you. Condescending, acted like law school was a piece of cake and everyone would be choking on her fumes while she left us in the rear view mirror.

Eventually, she would end up stealing exam questions, get turned in by a professor's assistant who saw her do it, take out a hitman to kill the assistant and her husband, and get arrested for attempted murder (queue the off-track stuff...). But this pre-dates that.

Anyway, so in law school there's a lot of questioning the students - the so-called Socratic Merthod - where participation is encouraged, if not demanded. I had a tax class with this bitch, and holy shit, she would talk at any opportunity she could get, to prove to the professor and everyone else that she was so fucking smart. Often, it was to prove she was smarter than the professor. Eventually, a couple of friends and I got so bored during class that we started what was eventually known as Plachy Football. Basically, we each took turns evaluating each time she spoke and converting it into a "carry." So, if she waxed poetic on something for a couple of minutes, she gained 12 yards. If she gave a short answer, maybe 3 yards. If she was (God Forbid) wrong about something, -3. At the end of class, we'd add them all up and figure out how good a game she had - 16 carries, 122 yards and a TD (TDs were assigned either for a particularly longwinded discussion, or after so many yards), for example. Then we'd keep track of her "season" and add up her stats at the end of a 16 game run.

But all that kinda came to an end when she, uh, you know, tried to have people killed.

Wow, I would have LOVED this during 1L year.

The competition I remember most vividly took place every summer at the pool. Me and a couple friends bought some big foam noodles and concocted a kind of fencing game where you had to touch the guy with the end of the noodle while also "sitting" on the back end of your noodle (realistically, holding it between the legs). Made for a fun physical challenge in a pool. We played first-to-7, so we were able to keep points for/against while also keeping records over the summer.

The other great pastime was a game called floor hockey, which involved a soft rubber ball the size of a ping-pong ball. It basically worked like one-on-one hockey -- two players would lie down across their own goalmouths and try to roll/skip the ball past the other guy. Got lots of carpet burns in that one... it was also pretty tiring since we played every game to 21. Standings were kept and playoffs were held, of course. Eventually, we grew to the point that we couldn't find a set of goalmouths in my friend's house that we couldn't completely cover.

Ooh, one last one. A friend (also involved in floor hockey) had NHL2K for the Dreamcast. That game had secret, 99-overall developers' teams. We'd play as those... with the goalies pulled. We must have played about 150 times, keeping up with the series and perhaps the total goals scored, which was no small feat when game scores were something like 90-85.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by britrock88

The other great pastime was a game called floor hockey, which involved a soft rubber ball the size of a ping-pong ball. It basically worked like one-on-one hockey -- two players would lie down across their own goalmouths and try to roll/skip the ball past the other guy.

My god, that brings back memories of 5th or 6th grade. We had most of the boys in my class in a NHL-like league and used one end of the classroom (where the low cabinets were) that had a natural goal at both end. We used an electric tape roll since that glided easily along the non-carpeted floor and looked/acted like a hockey puck. I think we had a small block of wood that acted like a goalie stick and we crouched down like one.

[TroyF]

I can't tell you how good this thread makes me feel.

Remember the mini basketball hoops you could hang on your door? I used to get the sporting news and I would play a tournaments with the top 40 teams every week. I'd have shooting contests to determine the winner. (I would try like hell to not play favorites and remember being so mad if Georgetown won in the finals) The lower teams would get handicaps thrown at them. For teams below 35 through 40, I would shoot sitting down. Teams 30-34 I would shoot from one knee. I would only shoot standing up with follow through if it were the top ten.

Throwing a tennis ball off the wall as hard as I could took care of baseball games. When I was just sitting, it would be games like Pursue the Pennant board game that I would play. I printed out scorecards and would score each game. I don't care what the sport was, I would find a way to make a game of it. Xor NFL football for the PC was my game of choice on the PC. I could play that for hours and hours.

Whenever I play FOF or FM or Wolverine games or anything and get frustrated by something, I think back to those days. The reality is if I hadn't found games like this, I'd have been a 39 year old replaying seasons with dice or something of the sort.

I don't feel so alone now

[DaddyTorgo]

The APBA computer game (for DOS) was the fucking shits.

[Coffee Warlord]

Ahh yes, my pen and paper (lots and lots and lots of paper) Hawaii Islanders of the NL West had many prosperous years under my expert management. Hell, I had their entire corporate structure mapped out (for several seasons they were owned by Upper Deck, I forgot who "bought them" in later years), I drew stadiums, logos, had their minor league affiliates, the whole schabang. Played out seasons with a d6, as I recall.

And it was fun later on when we started getting computer games that you could change player names on...they moved straight into the digital world.

[JPhillips]

I don't at all remember the mechanics, but when I was probably mid-elementary age I had a game where I laid out baseball cards at the players' positions and used a mini-bowling set to determine hits/outs. I'd separate the cards into positions and draw random teams. For some reason it was really important to me to actually lay out the cards to make it look more like a real baseball game.

I'm pretty sure I cheated to make my favorite players perform better.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by TroyF

I'd have been a 39 year old replaying seasons with dice or something of the sort.

Not that there's anything wrong with that

{looks at a four door cabinet filled with too neglected but not entirely ignored d&c sports cabinet}

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I'm pretty sure I cheated to make my favorite players perform better.

If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'

[Butter]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar v2

I have fond memories of playing out NCAA tournament games against myself in Nerf hoops. I'd never get very far (63 games hello!), but I did keeps stats. Jamal Mashburn used to rip shit up!

Yes. I used to do this same thing. Although I would simulate whole seasons of the Dayton Flyers, but then when we got to the tournament, I would always play out many games of the entire thing. With full 20 minute halves. And I had string in my room that noted the free throw line and 3 point lines.

I remember one year I put UD in the tourney as a #1 seed because they went something like 29-2 that year. But then I couldn't make shit for them in the game I played (by myself) in the first round. It all came down to 5 seconds left, UD was down 50-49... I vowed to myself I was only giving myself one shot to make this free throw fadeaway jumper, and if I didn't make it, so be it. I simulated the pass, faded away from the FT line... CLANK.

I punished the team that beat UD by calling about 72 fouls in the next game against them. You don't just walk into my bedroom and beat the #1 Dayton Flyers, dammit!

[Suicane75]

Gosh, I wasn't even thinking of solo nerf basketball or football when this thread first came up.

I must have played countless basketball games playing as both teams. Most of the time I'd just skip to the final 10 minutes. Other times I would pretend I was the Sixers and we'd just made a bunch of absurd trades (1st round pick for Magic Johnson) and I'd play out games with Barkley and Magic on the same team.

But man, football was my thing. I loved playing out entire games by myself, running up and down my grandmothers yard, I had the Doug Flutie flag football playset that had little plastic cones for yard markers I would use. I had a tether ball pole and a bush that I used as the goal posts for when i needed to kick field goals or extra points. I think most of the games that I played came down to me needing to kick a FG from as deep in the yard as I could get. And I don't mean I gingerly tossed the ball to myself or ran and then stopped, no, I fucking went down on every play. Sprint to the outside and get ankle tackled? I would hurl myself down. Get popped over the middle? I would jolt myself back first down on the ground. I'm sure I looked like a bit of a mental case. Hell I even played a lot of the games in my thermal underwear cause they looked the most like uniform pants.

[Suicane75]

Dola, someone mentioned the throwing the ball against the wall game. I'd do that as well, pick two teams and throw the ball against the wall and progress through an entire game. Grounder to short, hot shot to third, oooh, that one went through for a single.

Pretty much played that same game with friends instead of a wall. One of us would be the thrower and the other the fielder. Throw a ball to his left or right, if he fields it and throws it back in normal time it's an out (The thrower always did running pbp). If you threw it over his head and he didn't catch it in the air it'd be something like "High fly ball, over Jeff Stones head, ooh McGee is going for third, trying to stretch it into a triple!!" Good times.

[Ksyrup]

Wasn't really a stats game, but along those lines, my old roommate and I used to play a game called "Break the Window" in law school. We had a sliding glass door leading out to a porch at our apartment, and we'd take turns throwing a football from about 10 feet away as hard as we could at the window, and the other person would have to catch it before it hit the window.

[MIJB#19]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

*chuckles*

M&Ms for lunch this week?

[Bradley]

Great thread, brings back tons of memories.

Growing up in Arizona, my summer vacations consisted of playing outside or swimming in the mornings and evenings, and being stuck inside mostly during the 105-110 degree afternoons. Here's a few of the weird games I came up with:

I had a book with the box scores of every NFL game for one season, probably 1978 or 1979. I created entire careers where I was the star by taking a random game each week of the season and recording the stats of the chosen position I played (RB, QB, WR, sometimes a K or P). I would track the stats for entire seasons and careers. Sometimes I would get traded or cut based on performance. I added in modifiers or themes (highest scoring team of the week, losing team with the most points, etc). It was real hard not to cheat and choose the best performances.

I also had a game with those wonderful NFL pencils. This one was done at school on those desks where the top opened up to keep your books and stuff. The top was angled down toward the seat, and I used gravity to set up two-team (pencil) matchups where each would roll down the desk top and "attempt" to break the tackle of the opponent pencil which was set up perpendicular to the rolling pencil. I kept full stats and standings. My teacher must have thought I was insane. My Raiders pencil (as Mark van Eeghen) was unstoppable of course!

I had a ball-against-the-wall game as well. Mine was a superball against the side of the house in the back yard. The crazy bounce of the superball was awesome for this baseball simulation. Occasionally the ball would fly over the fence for epic home runs or game saving catches against the wall. That was a blast.

I also had a version of that nerf hoop game too that easily transitioned outside to the real hoop when desired. I spent many hours as Walter Davis (Phoenix Suns) swishing shots over imagined opponents. Full stats were tracked of course.

I had a football game on the school bus where I would use a book to simulate the scores of a game by quarter based upon the last number of a randomly turned page. Add up the quarters and you have final scores, wins and losses, standings and championships! What a goofball.

Lots of others too, but if you have ready this far I won't bore you any further. Discovering APBA in 1981 and the family purchase of an IBM PC jr (and XOR Football, APBA DOS Baseball, etc) changed everything of course.

Great thread. My parents would have been very encouraged to know at the time that I wasn't the only kid on the planet spending entire weekends in their room pouring over tiny numbers on volumes of college ruled paper!

[Dutch]

Lots of others too, but if you have ready this far I won't bore you any further.
Discovering APBA in 1981 and the family purchase of an IBM PC jr (and XOR
Football, APBA DOS Baseball, etc) changed everything of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF_YEq5nkio

I have never successfully embedded a video at FOFC...so here's the link.

[Bradley]

Originally Posted by Dutch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF_YEq5nkio

I have never successfully embedded a video at FOFC...so here's the link.

That's awesome, thanks for the link! I remember editing the rosters in Word Perfect to make the rosters and ratings more accurate, one character out of place and it wouldn't load.

I still have the game in excellent condition in the garage. 5.25" inch floppies - it's a whole new world now...

[digamma]

He is my son!

On vacation last week, we got my son a ball for playing the pool. Surrounding the pool they had tiki torches, set up two by two, in a V shape. I'll be damned if the little guy doesn't start trying to throw his pool ball in between the two torches like a field goal. Match box car race leagues and the like are only just around the corner.