3. Mutant League Football/Hockey - Sega Genesis 1993
Hands down, without a doubt the best sports games ever made ever. Shut up, Madden fans. Shut up, FM fans. Shut up, everyone. Don't bother posting about how I'm wrong. If you don't agree with me, then you're clearly insane, and I therefore don't care about your opinion. Go score a goal or something, because while you're doing that, I'll be kicking exploding severed heads into the infinite void of space, because that's how my sports games work. Don't believe me? Just ask
allthese review sights that I found when I
googled "mutant league, best game ever". They ALL agree. Crazy, right? I hope you didn't actually click those links, because I didn't read any of what they said. I just assumed they said it was amazing, as you should. The Mutant League sports games were by far the most morally/scientifically questionable sports games ever made, and perhaps the same goes for the
Saturday morning cartoon as well. They took (stole) the Madden style of football gameplay and turned it upside down. Then, they shoved dynamite in its eyes and laughed. Where most games gave players strategy and tactical thinking on a playing field, MLF gave players land mines. Teams competed on fields with out of bounds lines that bordered open space, were made of slippery ice, and had possessed human skeletons for goal posts. The football players themselves were aliens, orcs, humans, and zombies who spent more time throwing grenades and farting on each other than doing anything that might actually look like a football game. The result was pure gold. It was just enough football to feel like a football game, but more than enough havoc to entertain people who really couldn't give a rat's ass about football. Throw in some sticks, a few robots, and a shark under the ice, and you've got yourself the sequel, Mutant League Hockey. The game might not have been as well made, but it did give an extra minute in the penalty box to whomever lost the fight.
How The Sequel Could Work...
Like most of these games and my wife, all it really needs is a few upgrades. There's nothing wrong with the basic mechanic of it. It cooks, it cleans, it is nice enough to those smaller versions of myself, but it could at least not delete my Tivo programs. Oh yeah, we were talking about something. MLF really wouldn't need much. Games like NFL Blitz, or Blitz: The League have already paved the way in a game mechanic sense. All a sequel to the Mutant League games would really need to do is the same thing they did nearly 20 years ago: steal everything that Madden is doing, and add a few grenades. Bingo Bango you've got the next biggest party game. Sadly, MLF probably won't ever happen. Since EA owns the rights to both Madden and MLF, the likelihood that they would ever release two competing products is practically zero. Although........
there is always NFL Blitz.