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[edit]1980s
Between 1980 and 1984, Atari and Mattel's Intellivision waged a series of high-stakes TV advertising campaigns promoting their respective systems, marking the start of the first console wars. Atari prevailed inarcade games and had a larger customer base due to its lower price, while Intellivision touted its visually superior sports games. Sports writer George Plimpton was featured in the Intellivision ads,^[26] which showed the parallel games side by side. Both Atari and Intellivision fielded at least one game for baseball, American football, hockey, basketball, auto racing and association football.

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  Activision Tennis (1981)
  
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  Track & Field (1982)
  
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  Pole Position (1982)
  

In 1981, Taito released Alpine Ski, an early extreme sport game, based on winter sports. It was a vertical scrolling game that involved maneuvering a skier through multiple events: a downhill ski course, a slalomracing course, and a ski jumping competition.^[27] That same year, Sega's Turbo introduced a third-person perspective into the genre,^[28] with Namco's Pole Position then popularizing the now common rear-view racer format and introducing AI opponents the following year.^[29]
In 1982, Taito released an early golf game, Birdie King,^[30] Tehkan released an early swimming game, Swimmer,^[31] and Data East released an early fishing game, Angler Dangler.^[32] That same year, ZX Spectrumreleased the first association football management simulation, Football Manager, while Konami released an early athletics game, Track & Field, which featured multiple Olympic track & field events (including the100-meter dash, long jump, javelin throw, 110-meter hurdles, hammer throw, and high jump) and allowed up to four players to compete.^[33] In 1983, EA produced their first sports game Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One,^[34] which was also the first licensed sports game based on the names and likenesses of famous athletes.

One of the various angles of Intellivision World Series Baseball, the first sports game to incorporate more than one camera angle in a manner resembling a television broadcast.
Also in 1983, Mattel released Intellivision World Series Baseball (IWSB) by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, the first game to use multiple camera angles to show the action in a manner resembling a television broadcast. Games prior to this had displayed the entire field on screen, or scrolled across static top-down fields to show the action. IWSB mimicked television baseball coverage by showing the batter from a modified "center field" camera, the baserunners in corner insets and defensive plays from a camera behind the batter.^[35] It was also one of the first sports games to introduce audibly-speaking players (as opposed to text) using the Mattel Intellivoicemodule.
Another early sports game to show multiple camera angles in 1983 was Irem's MotoRace USA, a motorbike racing game that switched between vertical-scrolling and third-person views depending on the player's location on the map, switching to third-person view when near a city and to a vertical-scrolling view when on country roads.^[36][37]Another early sports game to feature digitized voices from that year was Alpha Denshi's Exciting Soccer, an early influential soccer football game, which let one or two players choose from six teams, featured a control scheme where they could tackle, shoot, short-pass, and long-pass, featured an overhead view, and had realistic touches like corner kicks, throw-ins, penalty shots, and cheerleaders.^[38] Another early soccer football game from that same year was Data East's Pro Soccer.^[39] Two early water sport games, both based on waterskiing, were also released that year: Taito's Water Ski^[40] and Irem's Tropical Angel, the latter also featuring a female player character.^[41] That same year, Taito released Joshi Volleyball, an early volleyball game,^[42] and they released Irem's 10-Yard Fight, an American-football game that featured an early career mode, where the player progresses from high school, to college, professional, playoff, and Super Bowl, as the difficulty increases with each step.^[43] Meanwhile, Kaneko released Roller Aces, an early roller skating game played from a third-person perspective.^[44] An early wrestling game, Technōs Japan's Tag-Team Wrestling, was also released that year,^[45] and was followed by another wrestling game, Sega's Appoooh, the year after.^[46]
In 1984, several early sports laserdisc video games were released, including Universal's Top Gear which featured 3D animated race car driving,^[47] while Sega's GP World^[48] and Taito's Laser Grand Prix^[49] featured live-action footage. Sega also produced a unique bullfighting game, Bull Fight,^[50] and a multiple-watersports game Water Match (published by Bally Midway), which included swimming, kayaking and boat racing;^[51]while Taito released a fully third-person motorbike racing game Kick Start,^[52] an early female sports game based on high-school track & field, The Undoukai,^[53] and an early dirt track racing game Buggy Challenge, featuring a buggy.^[54] Other early dirt racing games from that year were dirt bike games: Nintendo's Excitebike^[55] and SNK's motocross game Jumping Cross.^[56] Nintendo also released an early four-player racquet sport game, Vs. Tennis (the Nintendo Vs. System version of Tennis),^[57] while SNK released an early horse racing game, Gladiator 1984.^[58]
That same year, early ice hockey games were also released: Alpha Denshi's Bull Fighter^[59] and Data East's Fighting Ice Hockey.^[60] Data East also released a unique lawn sports game Haro Gate Ball, based oncroquet,^[61] while Nichibutsu released a unique game based on roller derby, Roller Jammer.^[62] Meanwhile, Technos Japan released a unique game based on sumo wrestling, Syusse Oozumou,^[63] and the firstmartial arts combat-sport game, Karate Champ, considered one of the most influential fighting games.^[64][65] That same year, game designer Scott Orr founded GameStar, a game publisher specializing inCommodore 64 sports games, and served as its lead designer. GameStar was the most successful sports computer game company of its era, until Orr sold the company to Activision in 1986.^[66]
In 1985, Sega released Hang-On, a popular early Grand Prix^{[disambiguation needed]} style rear-view motorbike racer,^[67] considered the first full-body-experience video game.^[68] That same year, Nintendo released an early arm wrestling game, Arm Wrestling,^[69] while Konami released a table tennis game that attempted to accurately reflect the sport, Konami's Ping Pong.^[70] That year, Tehkan also released Tehkan World Cup, the first multiplayer soccer football game featuring a trackball controller,^[71] where a button was used for kicking the ball and the trackball used for the direciton and speed of the shot, with gameplay that was fairly realistic.^[72] In 1988, EA released Earl Weaver Baseball again developed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, which for the first time combined a highly accurate simulation game with high quality graphics. This was also the first game in which an actual baseball manager provided the computer AI. In 1996 Computer Gaming World named 'EWB the 25th of its Best 150 Games of All Time, the second highest ranking for any sports game in that 1981–1996 period (after FPS Football).^[73]