Accolade Sports Collection Review (Xbox Series X)

STAFF REVIEW of Accolade Sports Collection (Xbox Series X)

Thursday, February 13, 2025.
by Adam Dileva

Depending on your age, you’ll have fond memories of a number of different games. While I’m dating myself, I grew up in the 8 and 16-bit era with endless fond memories of classic NES, SNES and Genesis games. I’ll admit, when Genesis game out, I gravitated more towards that console, as the saying went “Genesis does what Nintendon’t”. Because of this, I played a number of sports games growing up, some of which are in this collection.

Accolade was a developer and publisher with a number of titles that came from their studio in the 80’s and 90’s, probably best known for the Test Drive and Bubsy games. Many of their early games were for the Apple II, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64, eventually releasing a number on the Sega Genesis (or Sega Mega Drive if you’re from Japan) when it was at the peak of its popularity.

Checking a list of their released games, they did a surprising amount of sports titles, so it shouldn’t be a shock that this Accolade Sports Collection came to be. While this collection doesn’t have every title they released, it’s got arguably the more popular ones from the early 90’s. Featuring five sports games, you can prove you’re the best at 90’s sports games to your friends with Hardball!, Hardball II, Hoops Shut Up and Jam!, Winter Challenge and Summer Challenge. While I question placing two baseball titles in the same collection, the varied sport events from the Olympic games somewhat offset this.

While not realty a ‘remaster’, as the games are left untouched and straight from the 90’s, there are a number of other options we’ve come to expect in nostalgic collections like these. Save states if you want to stop playing and resume later, a number of filter options to make it appear like it’s being played on an old CRT TV, digital manuals, and even a rewind function that makes it simple to try once again if you strike out or crash during some downhill skiing.

Hardball!

Originally released in 1985 for Commodore 64, 1987 for Atari, and 1991 for Genesis. If you’re a big fan of the movie 'The Princess Bride', this was the title Fred Savage was playing at the beginning. While I was never really into too many baseball games, I’ve played my share, and what stood out for me right away with Hardball! was that the main camera view when pitching and batting is actually from behind the pitcher’s mound like a real broadcast, not behind the batter like in virtually every other baseball game. This of course took a little getting used to, especially when batting, but that’s where I made much use of the rewind feature, until I could learn the timing better for hitting the ball.

There’s a number of different modes and options to choose from: Play Ball, World Series, Batting Cage, Normal or Corked bats, enable or disabling Errors, and even the classic Password option to resume a game at a later time (though this is moot with the collection’s save state feature). You’re able to pitch from a few different types and even where you want to throw based on where the batter is standing. Pitchers even had stamina, becoming less efficient the longer they played. For its time, it had a lot of impressive features, especially its animations, but I found the controls awful, though not as bad as its music. I do keep in mind the era and platform it’s from, but I didn’t care for it overall versus other baseball games I grew up playing.

Hardball II

Originally released for PC in 1989 and 1990 for Amiga and Mac, a second baseball game in a collection with only five titles seems like an odd choice. The main change from the first game is that the pitching and batting viewpoint is what we’ve come to expect from baseball titles, being behind the batter. There were a number of additions and improvements, from updated stats, pickoffs, team editor, more animations, more viewpoints when it comes to fielding, and more. That said, I found the overall game much worse than the original. I didn’t find the animations were all that improved, fielding was terrible, and I found the controls to be much more sluggish.

Hoops Shut Up and Jam!

Released in 1994, the game was originally titled Barkley Shut Up and Jam!, titled after the iconic NBA star, Charles Barkley. Due to licensing deals ending, subsequent ports were subtlety changed to Hoops Shut Up and Jam! to avoid any issues. Let’s be honest, NBA Jam came out a year prior and is vastly superior. While Hoops Shut Up and Jam! instead focuses on street basketball, it certainly wasn’t terrible by any means, it just simply got overshadowed by the greatest NBA game of all time.

Able to play a single game or series, you can choose the length of quarters, scoring method, and the roster of 16 players will show you their skills in Twos, Threes, Dunks, Rebounds, Stealing, and Speed. You then choose a city to play in, each with its own style of court for a 2 on 2 match. There’s no fouls, so try and steal at every opportunity. Since you don’t directly control your teammate you’ll want to pass to your controlled player if you want any of the action. There’s turbo and dunks to be had, but even after a few matches I found I’d rather be playing NBA Jam instead.

Winter Challenge

Released for MS-DOS in 1991 and then Genesis in 1992, Winter Challenge is one of the more interesting titles in this collection. Made to mimic the Olympics, Winter Challenge has eight different events to participate in, though more like seven since Luge and Bobsled play basically the exact same. For the events, you have Luge, Bobsled, Downhill Skiing, Cross-country Skiing, Speed Skating, Giant Slalom, Biathlon, and Ski Jump.

Keep in mind that games from this era rarely told you how to play, as they used to come with instruction booklets back in the day. I highly suggest checking out the manual before the events, as you won’t have any idea how to play, eventually crash, and lose the event. This is where you can use the handy rewind feature for mistakes like these. Of the events, I enjoyed Speed Skating, Biathlon, and Ski Jump the most. Some of the other events were quite challenging to control, and honestly, hasn’t aged very well. Framerates feel like they are in the single digits, and I understand the game is a product of the time, but there clearly wasn’t enough power in the hardware at the time for what they were trying to accomplish.

Summer Challenge

Exactly the same setup as Winter Challenge, but with completely different events you’d find in the Summer Olympics. This game too has eight events which felt much more varied overall. You can compete in Kayak, Archery, 400m Hurdles, High Jump, Pole Vault, Equestrian, Javelin, and Cycling. These too had some instant fail events that were challenging to control, and earning a medal really felt like you earned it, though goodluck.

The standouts for me were Archery, which was actually quite enjoyable to try and get those bullseyes, and Javelin, running fast as you can then holding the button to get the perfect angle to toss. This game too seemed to struggle with its hardware limitations at the time, as some events really seemed laggy and controls didn’t feel accurate. Even placing the bar on the lowest setting for High Jump or Pole Vault, I was lucky if I could even leap at the right time or place my pole accurately without failing.

While each title in the collection is accurate for the time and untouched, it’s welcome to have some modern quality of life additions, especially save states and the rewind feature. Being able to change filters to make it look like an old CRT screen is novel at first, and I’m glad the manuals are there for reference so you can actually figure out how to play, but special unlocks or behind the scenes bonus stuff would have been a welcome addition as well.

I can appreciate that the Accolade Sports Collection is trying to preserve some classic sports titles and bring them to a new audience, adding some modern features along the way, but the games have not aged very well at all, some downright awful. Gamers that grew up with these titles will surely enjoy the nostalgia hit, as well retro fans, I just don’t see myself going back to play it anytime soon when there’s access to many other superior titles that I have fonder memories of.

**Accolade Sports Collection was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 4.2 / 10
Gameplay: 4.0 / 10
Visuals: 5.0 / 10
Sound: 3.5 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Accolade Sports Collection (Xbox Series X)

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