THE MOST UNDERRATED VIDEO GAME OF ALL TIME

In honor of National Video Games Day, I thought I would write a blog post to honor one of the least talked about, mostly forgotten, classic video games of the 1990's; ESPN EXtreme Games!

Let's start off by discussing the fact that this game didn't even make much sense. It was released around the same time as the inaugural X-Games in the Summer of 1995, and while many of the sports featured in the real X-games were available to play in the video game, I would say it was "based on a true story". It was just really a racing game, and that is it. You would try to hit gates for extra points and swipe cash for new gear and equipment, but there were no tricks or style points to be had. Again, just a racing game.

It would start out with the noise of a garage/warehouse door opening, and inside would be a few different T.V. monitors (heads up, they aren't flatscreens, they are the ones that had a very deep backside and weighed about 90 lbs.) you used a giant ESPN microphone to select which sport you wanted to play.

You could rollerblade, skateboard, mountain bike, or even luge in the video game, but none of it was organized. No matter what apparatus you chose, you were going to be racing all of the others at the same time. I have never seen a guy on rollerblades racing a guy on a street luge, that's just me.

After selecting which activity you wanted to do, you would then select your rider (this was before most video games used real athletes so they were fictional), and then you would select the course. The courses were made up of various cities/states throughout the country, including San Francisco, Utah, Tahoe, and Rhode Island. Once all of this was selected, the downhill race would begin.

One of the greatest aspects of the game was the ability to knock your opponents down as you sped past them. This made it particular enjoyable when playing against your friends rather than the computer.

I remember playing this game for hours on end in my friends basement, and the excitement never stopped. After doing a little research, I discovered that shortly after the game came out Sony lost their marketing agreement with ESPN. Because of this they had to lift ESPN's name and logos off of everything and change the name to 1Xtreme. That is super lame, especially since at the time ESPN was just becoming the MOTHERSHIP that it is (was?). They were the only game in town and they were the shit, having the four letter network tied into the game made it that much more badass.

A quick Ebay search led me to one copy of the game for a whopping $7.95, but it is the non-ESPN version so no thank you. Watching YouTube clips will have to be enough for this trip down memory lane. Let me know if you have a copy, and the original PS, and I am down.