Believe it or not, there was actually sports news today that did not involve Brett Favre.

At least I think that there is.  After much research it turns out that today, August 8th, 2008 is the opening of the Olympics.   My first foray into the wide, wide world of virtual sports was the title: Summer Games by Epyx.

Summer Games was released in 1984, just in time for the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.   There were a total of seven events ranging from pole vaulting to skeet shooting.  My fellow employees and I would close up the used computer store early, making certain to turn the lights out so it really looked like we were closed.  Then, we would grab a couple of sodas out of the little dorm refrigerator in back, pull up a couple of chairs and settle in for some Olympic events.  We would play some of the games for hours until we would get cramps in our wrists from pressing the fire button so many times to win a race.

Long before that the advent of home consoles or personal computers, we had model versions of sports games.  I am sure that most of you have seen, or even played, the table hockey game.  During the cold winter months, we would bring it out and play for pretzels.  We lost the original puck for the game with in the first two weeks, and were forced to utilize an old substitue.  The checker actually worked well as a hockey puck because it was about twice the size of the original and it allowed us to really send it flying.  That was until we sent it flying underneath the refrigerator and had to look around for another puck.

Football was another favorite at my house, and during half time of the Sunday game, we would pull out the old vibrating electronic football table.  I would play as the Green Bay Packers and my dad would play as the team that we were playing that week.  The game would start out with the same score as the current Packer game and we would flip a coin to see who would kick off.  Invariably I would get to kick off because my dad would do the flipping and he just wanted me to kick off to him.  It was just amazing how much fun that stupid little game was.  We would take our players and bend the little plastic tabs underneath each player in an attempt to actually employ some sort of strategy.  These "strategies" seldom worked, but it was funny to see the little figure vibrating down the field and suddenly, without warning, start moving in circles.

Today, the only sports that I seem to play are either a little bit of baseball on the Xbox or golf on a warm summer day.  Whatever your pleasure, "Just Do It".  But if you are more of a gamer than an athlete, stick to a modified version of another Nike slogan: “No Sports, Just Games”.

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