As a child of the '80s and early '90s, the majority of my earliest sports-gaming memories were forged on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I can remember countless hours spent with games like Pro Wrestling, Punch-Out!!, Excitebike, Baseball, Ice Hockey and many more first-party, non-licensed, titles for Nintendo's first home console.
When the Genesis was released, followed by the Super Nintendo, the days of first-party Nintendo sports titles seemed to be scaled back drastically. Starting with EA's NHLPA and Madden series, licensed sports games became more of a necessity in a market clamoring for realism in the sports-gaming sector.
This trend was the beginning of the end for unique sports titles on the Nintendo consoles, and also served as the end of the fictional players and teams of yesteryear. One of the more disturbing results of this shift in sports gaming was that Nintendo, in many ways, even abandoned its own first-party sports titles -- I would argue that there has not been a relevant sports game on a Nintendo system since the N64 days.
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