In a somewhat baffling turn of events, I've found myself glued to MLB 08: The Show on the PSP in recent weeks. Normally baseball is an exercise in boredom and mediocrity, but Sony's recent MLB games have some interesting new ideas, mainly the Road to the Show mode, where you control a single player and skip everything where your guy is not involved. You take the player from his rookie Spring Training with a Major League club of your choice, through the world of Minor League Baseball and (when you're good enough) into the Majors, living the dream of suburban kids all across America.

My self-diagnosed addiction to The Show led me to thinking about the level of progression (or lack thereof) of sports games in recent times, which is our main topic for the week. We'll also take a look at LucasArts' superbly budget-priced Sam & Max Hit the Road and revisit Nintendo's oft-overlooked Game Boy masterpiece Donkey Kong.

Building a Better Sports Game

Pro Evolution Soccer's next-gen debut was a disaster

When the jump was made from PlayStation to PlayStation 2, sports games were leading the charge. Madden NFL 2001 was easily one of the most impressive launch titles on Sony's second system, while the rest of EA's line-up were well and truly beyond what was possible on the older hardware. Now compare that to the first and even second generation sports games on the latest hardware. They couldn't even match what was available on the PlayStation 2/Xbox/GameCube, let alone exceed it – on both the gameplay and visual fronts.

The two biggest offenders were EA's Madden NFL series and Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series. Both leaders in their field, these games were essentially guaranteed sales, regardless of quality (even more so for Madden, which had just secured the exclusive NFL license). Both games have significantly reduced feature sets, slower and less consistent frame rates, incremental visual improvements if any, and they just didn't play as well as their equivalents on the lesser hardware of the PS2 and Xbox. Even the second releases of both of these series couldn't match what was done on the older hardware two years earlier.

Part of the problem with sports games is the annual release cycle. It maximises revenue, but it comes at the cost of a tight development schedule. You're really only going to get incremental feature upgrades in each year of your sports games; major changes are only going to come from two sources – jumping to new hardware (which didn't really happen this time), or a developer deciding to drop a game for a year to build a new engine or re-design a game from the ground up. Dropping a game from the line up for re-development is extremely costly – it has happened, but only in cases where the previous game bombed (Triple Play and Knockout Kings, which returned as MVP Baseball and Fight Night), or did not meet the deadline (Madden 96 for PC, Saturn and PlayStation). At best, these incremental features can have dramatic effect on the way a game plays, like NHL's shot stick, Madden's QB vision or UEFA 2008's pitch deterioration. At worst, they can be the re-introduction of features the developer previously took away from players, such as the ability to edit players in EA's NBA Live series. Sometimes awesome features are taken away with no explanation, like FIFA 97 and 98's indoor soccer mode.

Ricky Ponting 2007 has ridiculous official licensing restrictions

A big factor in recent years has been licensing. Exclusive licensing effectively removes competition, which in turn eliminates a lot of the innovation that was driving sports games. There is a perception that a lack of licensing makes for an inferior product, which is not true as any long-time Pro Evolution Soccer fan or retro gamer would tell you, but it certainly impacts the level of sales a game enjoys. It gets worse when licenses get split between games; EA's cricket game has licensed player names and kits for ODI and test matches but no licensed World Cup mode while Codemasters has the rights to all of those things, but only in the World Cup and ICC Challenge. Certain European soccer leagues and clubs will only license to one of Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA, not both. Licensors also place certain restrictions on what players can do in a game, and how matches can play out, for example until recently the NFL had a restriction in place on Madden NFL where the weather and playing conditions could not have a significant effect on the game.

Sports games are headed down a road where license restrictions will get tighter and feature additions will get less noticeable; EA has already taken to highlighting menu items with a "New!" bubble. Meanwhile, there are still a lot of new features and improvements that could really change the atmosphere of the sporting genre without needing to rebuild everything or wait til the next hardware jump. I've thought of a couple of new (and forgotten) features that I'd really like to see implemented into future sports games that I think would push the genre forward. While each individual sport is obviously very different, there are a number of general features I think could benefit every game.

The main thing that needs to be fixed or improved in the majority of sports games is player movement. Not all sports games on the market have implemented true 360 degree player movement – this really needs to be standard now. Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series is the worst offender as it still functions on an eight-way movement system. Player movement also needs to look believable; every developer likes to claim that their game has x number of new animations in this year's edition, but let's face the fact that that means that legacy animations are still hanging around, stinking up the place like off milk. Packages such as Euphoria could benefit sports games in a big way – every tackle and shot is not the same, and now there's no reason to have a set of 10-15 canned animations for each.

Sports game presentation seems to have gone backwards since ESPN NFL 2K5

Video games have tried to capture the atmosphere of sporting events, but they've never really nailed it. Crowd reactions are forced and generally don't reflect the venue or event you're playing in. A club match at Olympic Park is going to have a totally different atmosphere to the FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, and games really need to address that. Crowds need to react more dynamically to the play that's happening on the field; boos on away team scores and dodgy decisions, ecstatic cheering on a home team game tying score or game-winning goal and cheering unique to a particular ground. It's also about time the look of game crowds was improved – we're still seeing games where the same members of the crowd are repeated. 2K Sports' NBA 2K series has improved on this in recent years by mixing up the crowd parts (with unintended hilarity in some cases), but why not go for all out procedural generation of crowds? Many grounds also have different qualities of playing surfaces; a pitch at the WACA is not the same as a pitch at Lords, and games needed to differentiate between them.

Commentary in video games has been fairly static for the last 15 years, even taking the occasional step backwards. It needs more depth and needs to pay attention to a team's performance to date and the efforts of individuals in past matches. If I stole the game with a match winning TD off an interception, or blew the club championship by ringing a penalty off the crossbar, I want the commentators to mention it – during the end-of-match analysis, and in matches further down the line. Every player name needs to be announced by the commentators. Commentators need to talk with more intensity in close matches and scoring situations. ESPN NFL 2K5 had an integrated version of ESPN's SportsCentre, which would show the best plays of the game at half-time and at the end of the match, and then show the best plays of the week after the round is over – I'd like to see more things like that. EA has really squandered the ESPN license by not doing something similar.

If you have more ideas of how to improve sports games, please share them in the forums.

Budget Gaming Highlights

Cat lovers would be best advised to not click on this feline

LucasArts could be considered to be the driving force behind the adventure games of the 90s. While Sierra On-line continued to pump out sequels to its many established "Quest" series, LucasArts experimented with a number of different adventure game scenarios, ranging from serious adventures, to offbeat comedic tales. One of, if not the best of these was Sam & Max Hit the Road.

The game, adapted from a little-known comic book by artist/writer Steve Purcell (who also did design and visual work for a number of Lucas outfits), stars a 6 foot tall anthropomorphic dog named Sam and a mentally unstable lagomorph ("rabbity-thing") named Max, who collectively run a detective agency. Their latest case concerns a kidnapping at the local freak show. It seems Bruno the Big Foot has kidnapped Trixie the Giraffe-Necked Girl and escaped. The case takes the duo through a bunch of whacky touristy destinations including The World's Largest Ball of Twine, the Mystery Vortex and the Mount Rushmore Dinosaur Tarpits.

Sam & Max Hit the Road was the ninth title to use LucasArts' SCUMM engine, and the first to do away with the traditional bottom screen menu in favour of a more intuitive command system. The player has direct control over Sam, with Max trailing behind, often investigating the scenery on his own. Most of the game revolves around doing fairly standard adventure game stuff – travelling here and there, solving puzzles, and conversing with strangers, but Sam & Max does it in a way that is much more compelling than it sounds. Arguably the main strength of the game is its humour, most of which comes from Max's bizarre nature – not that Sam doesn't have his occasional moment in the sun. The game features a couple of mini-games, including a Battleship clone called Car Bomb, Highway Surfing and a Sam & Max colouring book.

Sam & Max Hit the Road is available as a part of the LucasArts Classics collection, a range of LucasArts' best games from the mid to late 90s that have been patched to work on modern operating systems. For a measly $9.95, you'd be crazy not to give it a try.

Great Games Remembered

Donkey Kong and the Super Game Boy worked well together

Donkey Kong was Nintendo's first successful video game, so you'd expect they'd put the character on every one of their formats. The 1994 release of Donkey Kong for the Game Boy was expected to be a straight conversion of the original arcade game – nobody was surprised with the original construction site level appearing first. Yet they quickly discovered that this version of Donkey Kong was not just another arcade port. In the arcade version, when you dropped Donkey Kong off the top level of the construction site in the fourth stage, that originally spelt the end of the game. However, in the Game Boy version, Donkey Kong gets up, kidnaps Pauline again and continues making Mario's life a living hell.

After the completion of the original four levels, Donkey Kong '94 reveals its true identity; a gigantic 107-level puzzle game. The game plays a lot like the original arcade game, but greatly expands Mario's abilities; he can now do backflips, high jumps, and handstands and throw his hammer up in the air to catch it later. The main goal of the game is to collect a key to unlock a door in order to pursue Donkey Kong. Every couple of levels, you get an opportunity to fight the giant ape and rescue Pauline. This normally involves figuring out a way to launch DK's barrels back at him.

Donkey Kong was the first game released for the Game Boy which was designed with Super Game Boy compatibility in mind. As a result, playing on a Super Game Boy (or Game Boy Colour/Advance) allowed you to play in (limited) colour, with extra sound effects and different music. While it's not one of the most famous Game Boy titles, it is certainly one of the highest quality titles on the system, and is well worth seeking out. A sequel, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2004 and features similar gameplay, but removes any ties to the original game.

Next Week

We'll run through another list of random video game facts. Warning: May be educational.