Best NES sports games - Excellent blasts from the past

You’re feeling nostalgic. You want to play the best NES sports games. Or maybe you just want to read about them until the clock hits 5.30 and you can stop pretending to work on that deck. But how well do they really hold up today?

8 bits of information isn’t much. But within those narrow margins the Nintendo Entertainment System’s greatest creators conjured worlds for an early generation of games to lose themselves in. And in that landscape, a games industry where the rules weren’t close to being drawn up yet, the sports game genre took form.

Playing these 8-bit sports games is, let’s face it, an exercise in nostalgia. They haven’t aged like those artful 16-bit sprites that came after them, their controls are often stiff and their level of interaction very basic. But within their cartridges lie parts of our childhood. And that’s enough, isn’t it?

If you want more retro sports goodness, check our list of best Sega Genesis sports games. Of course, we have a list of overall best NES games too.