This question first came to me when a group of friends and I got together during the winter break of our freshman or sophomore year of high school to hold a video game tournament. It’s not that we needed an excuse to play video games, let alone video game tournaments. We’d done that plenty thanks to our fantasy basketball league, our need to have even more tangible control of our teams, and our idea that we should hold a video game tournament with our fantasy rosters so that when our teams fell out of contention in the fantasy league, we could at least rebut with mature responses like “Yeah, but I clearly have the best video game team.” No wonder we’ve since become dependant on alcohol (among other things).
Nonetheless, it made for some good times. Amidst the endless waiting for your games to start, many PlayStation controllers were broken, many fights started, many celebratory pig piles ensued and many insults slung. It was the worst of times — something none of us were about to go bragging about to the ladies at Needham High School — but still somehow the best.
Seeing how entertaining this system could be, someone (I have my guesses, but I’d rather not start an argument) came up with the concept of holding the video game tournament to end all video game tournaments. And so it was announced: over winter break, we would each select a city name out of a disgusting hat doused in Dave Fialkov’s hair grease and sweat, and we would play as that city’s team in each of the holy trinity of EA Sports’ professional sports video games: The Madden Series, The NBA Live Series and The NHL Series.
Surely, the good people over at EA Sports would have been proud and possibly honored to hear of this event. In retrospect, we could have promoted it, made ourselves some entry money, got tons of free stuff out of EA and laugh all the way to the bank. But none of us thought of that. We were too busy salivating at the prospect of this tournament and ignoring the fact that one of us had an erection building up in his pants that had nothing to do with the fact that the Needham High School’s immortal sex goddess Kristin Kumor probably wasn’t wearing too much clothing that day. No, we were in it for the love of the game from the first second. Plus, we were like 14 years old.
It’s a simple concept: pick a city, play everyone in each sport once and develop a record. The player with the best record in each sport would move on to the finals, along with one wildcard player who successfully compiled the best record over the three without winning any one sport’s title.
Tonight we’re holding the event for, I believe, just the third time. Three times in 6 years? You’d think this were the Olympics. To us, it might be. It simply can’t be done more often. It’s just too emotionally draining. Plus, we hold it in such high esteem that to do it any more often would simply hurt the integrity of the tournament. And the last thing we want to do is grow bored of it.
Generally, each city seems to have at least one redeeming team to make up for its other lousy two, but there are certain cities no one wants to be. No one likes Chicago, despite the fact that it’s a lovely city and also the name of one of our favorite poker games.
Everyone has his favorites. Usually, if one player is dominant at one video game sport, he will bide by that team. For instance, were I confident in my Madden skills, I would surely select Boston (for the Pats), Philadelphia (for the Eagles) or Atlanta (for Michael Vick).
But without a preference to any one athletic endeavor, which city/region boasts the best options?
Oh yes, before I finish, there is one loophole: New York and Los Angeles, because of their multitude of teams, each have two different sets of teams, disallowing players from having a wider range of options. For instance, in New York there are Squads A (the Knicks, the Giants and the Rangers) and B (the Nets, the Jets and the Islanders). We broke down LA, too, but I forget exactly how. The point is we took this seriously. We still do (which is either really cool or really sad depending on how you look at it).
Some powerhouses simply don’t make the cut for one reason: a lack of multiple in-town sports. There’s no Indianapolis, because, even with the Colts and Pacers, there’s no hockey team. Likewise, St. Louis has no hoops.
Then again, some would-be powerhouses, like Detroit, seem great — until you realize that the Lions haven’t had Barry Sanders for almost a decade and that their defense looks more like a huddled mass of kittens than a pride of the kings of the jungle. The same goes for Dallas, except it’s fault lies in the legs of Quincy Carter, which simply aren’t fast enough to make up for his Jell-O mold of an arm.
Conventional wisdom points to just two cities as across-the-board powerhouses: Philadelphia and Denver. And that’s only because the Broncos’ defense makes for a solid Madden team.
Still I’d rather have Philly. The Eagles may be the best Madden team, and if they’re not, they’re damn close. Ditto for the Flyers. But I like Philly because of the 76ers. Video game basketball is not a complicated game. You really just need three players: one to get open for threes, one to get to the hole and a third to block shots. As far as I can tell, this little guy named AI has pretty much got the first role all wrapped up, while shot-blocking sensation Samuel Dalembert is pretty capable of taking care of the third. And Kyle Korver, while certainly not of French Lick descent, can knock down a trey or two when his number’s called.
Yeah, my choice for top video game sports city is definitely Philly. And the cheesesteaks are a sweet bonus.
But ten bucks says I end up with Chicago. It’s a good thing I’ve got ridiculous directional control with my left thumb. I’m thinking of getting it bronzed. No joke, I’m dominant.
