The Top Ten Video Game Athletes of All Time

After 27 years of extensive research – from Atari to PS3 – and many hours of deliberation, I compiled a list of the Top Ten Virtual Athletes of All Time. Now I know how Proust felt when he finished the seventh volume of In Search of Lost Time. You’ll notice that the list includes an inordinate number of players from Sega Genesis games. There’s a reason for that. Sega Genesis was the greatest sports gaming console ever invented. You’ll also notice that not one baseball player cracked the top ten. That’s easy to explain. In the hierarchy of cultural relevancy, baseball falls somewhere in the neighborhood of powdered wigs, The Iron Maiden (the instrument of torture...not the band), Hammer Pants, Rupaul, Rickets and Scurvy.

Without further ado, here is the list. Please feel free to agree, disagree, or post your own list.

10) Robert Edwards – NCAA Football '98, Playstation – Over the course of one glorious season in Stockard Hall on the Ole Miss campus, the University of Georgia tailback averaged over 1,000 yards per game (per game!!) on his way to a 13-0 record, a Heisman Trophy, an SEC Championship, and a National Championship. Every kickoff and punt was fielded and run backward to Georgia’s own goal line. On first and ten, without fail, Edwards received the handoff on a halfback dive. On first and ten, without fail, Edwards bounced outside and raced 99 yards to the end zone for a touchdown. Every time. Literally. Georgia’s offense did not face a second down, much less a third or fourth down, during the entire season. It got so monotonous that I generally had to ingest an astonishing amount of strong cappuccino (purchased from Maybelline in the Stockard lobby store) in order to stay awake during the games. Still, it’s hard to argue with that kind of production. If I left him off the list, my credibility in judging fake talent would be destroyed, in the same way that every single Mississippi sports journalist who voted for Delta State QB Scott Eyster over Ole Miss LB Patrick Willis for the 2006 Connerly Trophy has absolutely no credibility in matters of sports for the remainder of his or her career. Period. Without equivocation.







9) Mike Tyson – Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Nintendo Entertainment System – Say what you will about the modern day Mike Tyson. In the mid 1980s, defeating Tyson – and particularly the virtual version of Iron Mike – seemed as improbable as watching a John Woo film starring Ben Affleck without being subjected to gratuitous close ups of Affleck’s grotesque visage. King Hippo, Bald Bull, Great Tiger, Dom Flamenco, Von Kaiser, Sandman, Super Macho Man, Soda Popinski, Piston Honda. These hacks left Lil’ Mac ill-prepared to deal with Tyson’s furious fists. Until, one fateful day, the one kid in your neighborhood who actually possessed some semblance of rhythm sauntered into your home, nonchalantly sent Tyson to the canvas, and left you feeling as deflated and disappointed as the day you found out that Santa Claus did not exist. Still, for those first few confounding weeks, when Tyson’s invincibility was responsible for the mutilation of innumerable Nintendo controllers in living rooms across the world (including two in my own den, whose hardwood floors were tailor made for destroying Nintendo controllers in fits of adolescent rage), Tyson earns a spot on this list.







8) Randy Moss – Madden 2004, PS2 – With apologies to Jerry Rice, Randy Moss was simply the most dominant virtual wide receiver in history. Tall. Fast. Explosive. Soft hands. Throwing a post corner to Moss for a TD in this particular installment of the ultimate sports video game serial was as automatic as having your intelligence insulted by a Michael Bay film. Your opponent, human or artificial, could know what was coming at them play after play. Let them drop six men into coverage. Let them audible and move a physical cornerback up to “bump” Moss at the line of scrimmage to disrupt his route. Let them double cover him on every single play. And laugh at these futile adjustments, as the post corner route to Moss works perfectly again (Armageddon)…and again (Pearl Harbor)…and again (Bad Boys II)…and again (The Island). You get the point.







7) Matt – Super Tennis, Super NES – Unlike everyone else on this list, Matt was not based on any real world athlete, which leads one to believe that his creator had prophetic visions of Roger Federer at a time when Federer was still a carefree youth, schooling kids at table tennis in suburban Münchenstein, Switzerland. Matt had it all: great service game, killer forehand, serviceable backhand, range, poise, grace, fluidity, tenacity, and fortitude.













6) Mike Dunleavy – March Madness 2000, Playstation - Maybe he didn’t amount to much in the NBA, but for one glorious year in the virtual world, Dunleavy did to opponents what the Bush administration has been doing to the American populace for the last six years. One hundred point games were routine, even in five minute halves. In fact, anything less than 100 points was considered a disappointment for Dunleavy. Double team him. Triple team him. Squirt acid in the eyes of the man sitting next to you with the other controller in his hand. All exercises were as futile as Earth’s attempts to destroy invading alien ships before Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum heroically disabled their impenetrable shields in Independence Day.











5) Tony Rice – (’88 Notre Dame) Bill Walsh College Football, Sega Genesis - While he was not on the “current” Notre Dame roster (the rosters reflected the ’94 college football rosters; Rice was a member of one of the special all time great teams), he simply can’t be left off the list. Any player who can take a snap, run backward to his own goal line, run to his right, run the length of the field to the opponent’s goal line, take a hard left turn, run to the opposite sideline, turn left again and run the other way 99 yards, and continue running laps around the field, with all 11 defenders in pursuit, for the duration of the entire quarter, deserves a spot on this illustrious list. After learning of this trick, I didn’t leave the house for 3 months. Run, Tony, Run!









4) Reggie “Dhalsim” Miller – NBA Showdown '94, Sega Genesis - For reasons as mysterious as the contents of Al Capone’s vault, EA Sports chose a generic announcer for this highly underrated game. Maybe Marv Albert had already signed an exclusive with Acclaim to serve as commentator for NBA Jam. It’s a shame, because it would have been a real treat to hear Marv shout, “From downtown…YES!” 6,987 times – one for each three that Dhalsim buried. Even so, filling it up from behind the arc with Dhalsim was much more fun than actually going outside to engage with the other kids in the neighborhood. One hundred point performances were the rule, rather than the exception, for Reggie.















3) Bo Jackson – Tecmo Bowl, Nintendo Entertainment System. You can’t stop what you can’t catch, and you can‘t catch what you can’t see. Bo was so fast that if you blinked or looked down to grab a handful of Beddar Cheddars, you missed his incredible sprint to the end zone. One year, I kept a notebook by the TV and actually stopped after every offensive play to record the length of Bo’s run. I was like Rainman – obsessed with the statistical possibilities. I intended to keep Bo’s stats for the entire season. If weeks one and two were any indication, this was going to be a banner year, even by video game standards. By week 10, I resigned myself to the harsh reality that, even with my private school education and a calculator as bulbous as George Costanza’s head, I was not prepared to calculate numbers as astronomical as these.











2) Jeremy Roenick – NHL ’93, Sega Genesis – The greatest one man show on ice. The Penny Hardaway of hockey video game stars. Roenick was like Sonny Chiba in The Street Fighter – unstoppable. It didn’t matter that the Blackhawks didn’t have anyone else worth mentioning, with the possible exception of Steve Smith. Smith’s pugnacious predilections were good for one fight per game. He was more destructive with his fists than Ivan Drago, and he had a tougher jaw than Rocky Balboa. If you started a fight with Smith, you could get up, casually stroll to the kitchen, grab a Dr. Pepper and some Cheetos, answer the ringing telephone, hit the restroom, saunter back to the television, pick up the controller, languidly tap the C button a few times, and watch as Smith painted the shimmering ice with the blood of yet another opponent foolish enough to engage him in hand to hand combat. But I digress. Roenick was fast, quick, and athletic. He was at once graceful and brutal; poetic and savage. If Smith didn’t bludgeon an opposing star with his fists, Roenick did so with a murderous check. Roenick routinely scored in double figures in goals per game. A hat trick in the first period was a given. Sure, there were better overall teams – the Redwings, Penguins, Rangers, Devils, and Kings, to name a few - but no NHL roster was stocked with enough manpower to overcome the singular talent that was Roenick. And how many other video game athletes have commanded an entire film sequence about their virtual prowess, as did Roenick in Doug Liman’s 1996 Cult Classic Swingers (“Y'know, it's not so much me as Roenick; he's good,” said Vince Vaughn’s character, Trent, as he gleefully spattered the ice with Wayne Gretzky’s blood, and then subjected his opponent to slow motion replays of the carnage)?







1) Lawrence Taylor - Tecmo Bowl, Nintendo Entertainment System – Mozart. Michaelangelo. Weird Al Yankovich. Shakespeare. Socrates. Lawrence Taylor. These were artists at the top of their craft, whose respective bodies of work evoke a myriad of emotional responses from the human race. The most common response to Taylor’s was overt terror. For thirteen seasons in the NFL, Taylor inspired fear in the hearts and minds of opposing quarterbacks, left tackles and offensive coordinators. Beginning in 1989, the year Tecmo Bowl’s release changed the Universe, he inspired fear in the hearts and minds of millions of adolescent boys as they watched their friends scroll down the list of NFL teams and settle, finally (as if they even considered any other option), on the New York Giants. Why were the Giants such a popular choice, you ask. Phil Simms? Dave Meggett? Joe Morris? Mark Bavaro? Think again. With the exception of LT, the Giants’ Tecmo Bowl roster was stocked with slow, mediocre players. But LT changed everything. He was the sole reason anyone chose to play with the Giants; but he was a damn good reason. He was, quite simply, the most dominant and disruptive force in the history of sports video games - aberrant phenomena that differed greatly from the real world of sports they were supposed to approximate, due to the unrealistic impact one player could have on the outcome of the entire game. This unrealistic impact was never more apparent than in Taylor’s devastating virtual performances. He collected innumerable sacks. Field goals and extra points were rendered meaningless – merely a foiled formality – because Taylor blocked every single one of them. And perhaps the most amazing fact of all was that he tackled running backs behind the line of scrimmage before they were able to take the handoff; however, because Tecmo Bowl’s archaic programming parameters were not advanced enough to account for the probability of fumbles in these situations, Taylor’s immeasurable prowess literally transcended the game itself.