Accolade Sports Collection Review

Accolade Sports Collection is a bundle of five classic sports game: Hardball!, Hardball II, Hoops Shut Up and Jam!, Winter Challenge, and Summer Challenge. Each game offers players an option to save mid-game in order to pick up at a later time.

While older sports games, especially baseball ones, are known for their difficulty and insanely accurate A.I., both Hardball games are easier to pick up and play and more forgiving. As far as the basketball game goes, Hoops Shut Up and Jam!, it’s a unique take on the genre.

Hoops Shut Up and Jam! is a 2v2 street basketball game; unlike most games in the genre where you pick a familiar team and play in an arena. Here you have to select both players of your team; each with strength and weaknesses. And then you head off to the street court. It does feel a bit easier than most basketball games, current or old school. It’s also very fast paced.

And then there’s two mini bundles of games: Winter Challenge and Summer Challenge. The former includes luge, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, bobsled, speed skating, giant slalom, biathlon, and ski jump. All sport have a train and championship mode. The gameplay holds up surprisingly well, but given their age, it does take a bit of time to (re)acclimate yourself to the controls.

And finally there’s Summer Challenge. This game includes kayak, archery, 400m hurdles, high jump, pole vault, equestrian, javelin, and cycling. With this diversity, you’re sure to find something to suit you. Archery is an absolute blast to play. Akin to the Winter one, you can either train and go hunt some medals. Again, controls require a bit of adaptation period, especially kayaking.

While all games show their age in terms of visuals, QUByte managed to do a great job in terms of bringing the visuals up to date. They managed to maintain the retro styling while making it up to par with more recent (re)releases of old school types of game. In terms of soundtrack and audio, well there isn’t much. There’s some generic soundbytes and tunes that will hit old school gamers in the feels with its DOS sound.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this nostalgia collection aside the variety. It would’ve been nice having a more diverse and complete collection alongside these little gems; two baseball games feels a bit redundant. Accolade also developed and published racing, boxing and golf games. I can understand having licensing hurdles, so I can forgive them for that, but yes a bit more variety would’ve been ace.

If you’re looking for a proverbial nostalgia shot in the arm, Accolade Sports Collection is a great way to go. All five games’ gameplay mechanics hold up surprisingly well by today’s standards. Sure, there are a few events that in both Olympic games that require a bit of adapting, but other than that, this is an addictive collection. Sure, I wish there would’ve been a bit more variety, but whether it be solo or with friends, this guarantees a few hours of fun. Highly recommended.