In the 1980’s It seemed whenever software companies were stuck for ideas they’d always bring out a new sports game, the concept still rings true today. Matchday was the essential football / soccer game on the CPC in the early years then there was the sequel Matchday 2 that boasted much more enhanced improvements to the same game. It was a huge success and other software houses caught onto Ocean’s strategy with the Matchday license and you could say that sports gaming launched into its very own industry.

Just about every conceivable sporting game was adapted and could be found on the CPC.  From bowling to darts. From golf to tennis.  Basketball and squash, table tennis and Aussie rules football.  Sports games were a dominant part of the CPC games list they started out as arcade style games and branched out into simulation and sports management.

It got to the point that so many arcade style sporting games were released they became to predictable.  So the software houses and coders became quite clever and put the different styles of play together mixing the arcade play with management.  As coders became more adventurous in trying new ways to portray sports games, new styles were invented such as the overhead view in Kick Off which was quickly to become the norm in new football games.

Most of the early years of sports gaming centered on just playing one sport but then came the sporting challenge series of games where you were able to play a variety of sports like that in

California Games – surfing, skating, hacky sacking or  in Daley Thompson’s Decathlon Challenge or Hyper Sports testing your skill in a number of different sports.  Many of these games would be waggle the joystick types and it would be fair to say that quite a few joysticks would have been broken playing these types of games.

The CPC has quite an extensive list of sporting games which makes an interesting change from blasting aliens or bad guys to death – there’s a sporting game on the CPC for everyone to enjoy and most of the CPC sports games are quite challenging and a lot of fun to play.  So if your looking for something different to play or just love sports and you cant get enough of playing sports games then check out this must have CPC list of sporting games that will guarantee hours and hours of fun gaming.

The essential CPC sporting games to play

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Steve Davis Snooker

Emlyn Hughes International Soccer

Football Manager 2

Cyberball

Microprose Soccer

Pro Tennis Tour (cart)

Tennis CUP 1 & 2

Leaderboard Golf

180 Darts

10th Frame

Basket Master

Bobsleigh

Daley Thompson’s Super Test

Hyper Sports

Run The Gauntlet

Ping Pong

Footballer of The Year

The Games Summer Edition

Graham Gooch Test Cricket

Hardball

Jack Nicklaus Golf

Slap Shot Ice Hockey

Italy 1990

Skate Wars

World Class Rugby

Epyx World Games

Italia 1990

California Games

Epyx World of Sports (cart)

Match Point

3D Pool

720 Skateboarding

Tracksuit Manager

Matchday 2

Galactic Games

RBI Baseball

Daley Thompson’s Decathlon

Geoff Capes Strongman

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