Underrated Video Game Athletes

First off, a correction from last week—the show “Not Just Another News Show” isn’t a typical “shout at someone” show—it’s more of a “Best Week Ever” for news, so sorry for the misinformation. 

Onto this week’s list–when you talk video game athletes, there are a few who come to mind immediately—Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl, Little Mac, and Paste from Bases Loaded are three. 

But as in real life, there are also some other guys who are quite underrated and can hold their own.  This week’s Top 7 pays tribute to the most underrated video game athletes of our time.

7. Chris Mullin, NBA Jam

1993-1994 were the glory years of video games.  NHL ’94 was the most randomly good sports game of all-time.  Madden football was just coming out.  And NBA Jam crowded kids into arcades like Neon Beaudeau did at that gym in "Blue Chips."

Shaq stole the show in that game (though he didn’t make it into the home version), but Mullin could drain them with the best of them, and played on a darn good Warriors team with Tim Hardaway. 

They didn’t have the size, but they were quick, and would destroy you from the outside.   It’s just too bad that sometimes you would have to wait an hour to get to play with them.

6. Janco Tianno, FIFA International Soccer

Top 7 consultant Ian Crelling helped me out with this one—I am familiar with the game but have no idea who this guy is. Apparently, he was absolutely unstoppable for Brazil in another good 1993 Nintendo sports game.

5. Bay, Bases Loaded

SOMEONE had to protest Paste in the lineup!  Bay hit 35 homers for Jersey and they had to have had the most back-to-back homers of any combination of players in baseball video game history. 

A skinny guy, Bay used his wrists to generate his power, and was a big clutch player.  He sure helped Valez get a lot of victories (of course it sure helped that he was an innings-eater too).

4. Randall Cunningham, Tecmo Bowl

He couldn’t run out the entire clock for a quarter just by running around like Bo, but Cunningham had some serious running skills of his own.  He didn’t have a whole lot of help, as I believe that two of their four default offensive plays were simply Randall taking off. 

Had he had more help, he may have become just as legendary as Bo, perhaps more famous for an 8-bit video game than any real-life accomplishment.  That is good for society as a whole.

3. The Black Guy, Double Dribble

Anytime anyone got the ball in Double Dribble, they turned black.  Therefore, any of the action that happened offensively was done by a black guy, with the exception of the close-up dunks.  And what happened on the close-up dunks? 

They were missed approximately 65 percent of the time, even when completely wide open.  The coaches of Double Dribble had to be the worst of any game ever because you would think that they would start demanding that their players simply lay the ball in.

2. Tim Legler, NBA Live ‘97

This is the most random entry on the list, but you have to trust me—Legler could absolutely torch some people in this game.  He didn’t even start, but you could count on him to mercilessly drop threes as your sixth man.

The Washington Bullets, amazingly enough, were the most fun team to play with in this game (probably the best Live version for Playstation)—Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Gheorghe Muresan, and the man Legler.

1. Dennis Eckersley, RBI Baseball 3

It was a tough call on which RBI player to include—Vince Coleman in the original RBI could get a hit every single time if you placed the ball correctly down the third base line, and was also impossible to throw out. 

But Eckersley has to take it simply because the game itself made an exception basically just for him.  Well over 90 percent of the pitchers in RBI 3—the most underrated game ever—threw with the exact same motion. 

To compensate for Eckersley’s real-life insanely unhittable ways, the programmers of RBI 3 had The Eck drop down to a sidearm, and throw filthy fastballs with movement.

And if you wanted to press up and change speeds, his forkball/changeup bounced almost every single time and was literally unhittable. 

If a bar had an RBI 3 tournament night, there would be a four-week waiting list to get in.