8 Popular Video Games The Industry Doesn’t Make Anymore

4. Arcade Sports Games

NBA Street, Def Jam: Vendetta, Redcard, SSX, Windjammers, Def Jam: Fight for New York, Freekstyle, WWE All-Stars.

Sure, you can point to one release in almost 10 years - WWE Battlegrounds - as "flying the flag" for arcade sports games in the modern era, but 1. The game itself was pretty terrible, and 2. 2K only made it as a way to maintain unit cost profits in 2020, after their 2019 WWE game fell the EFF apart.

Go back further though and even mainline wrestling games were far more over the top. The Smackdown series used to be adored far and wide for its overblown animations and room-shaking slams, and that's before you get to EA dedicating an entire wing of their company to "EA Sports BIG", a label purpose-built to make the whackiest sports titles possible.

From here we got NBA Street, SSX and Def Jam Vendetta, all larger than life titles with elasticated animations and satisfying game mechanics, designed to take a sport you loved or enjoyed watching, and crank it to unrealistic proportions.

Why this approach to sports titles went away I'll never know, because if Rocket League proves anything, it's that people love out-of-nowhere twists on established rulesets, that prioritise fun over all else.