Who Is The Greatest Video Game Athlete Ever?

One of the perks of my job is that I get to spend a good part of my day interacting with athletes that I grew up idolizing. In some cases, I even played as their character in a video game. This past week was perhaps the best example of that in my fifteen months with OverDog.

On Monday, I spent some time at a golf outing with Bo Jackson, who some might argue is both the best athlete ever to put on shoulder pads and maybe the most dominant video game athlete ever with his unstoppable zig-zagging in Tecmo Super Bowl. I mean seriously, the dude could take it 99 yards and run out the entire clock in the same play.

A few days later, I spent some time on the phone with Jeremy Roenick, a huge gamer in his own right who has been immortalized in video game lore with this scene from Swingers:

It also helps that EA's NHL 94 is one of the best-received sports video games ever. I thought it was cool to have Roenick remind me that this year's NHL 14 will actually have a throw-back mode to play the iconic version from 20 years prior.

I talked later that same day to Booker T.

Yes, that Booker T. I've had the debate a few times about whether pro wrestlers are athletes. While that's a separate debate, Booker T is an athlete! He's also the nicest dude ever, which was shocking, given that he talks trash for a living. I wanted him to drop just one, "Can you dig it, sucka!?" before we got off the phone.

It was funny though, and maybe this is just a trait in uber-competitive athletes, but all three conversations veered at one point to how good these guys were in "their" games. Booker was adamant that he could hold court with his fans in most any fighting game; Roenick claims he was pretty serious in NHL 94, and, since Bo is good at everything (except golf) I've got to assume he is pretty legit at Tecmo Bowl.

Rather than have the standard debate about what the best sports games of all-time are, I'd like to pose a slightly different question – two questions actually. Who is the greatest video game athlete ever? And perhaps related to that, what athlete would you most like to play against in the video game they star in.

For me, Bo Jackson takes the first question, though the fact that the Roenic-led Blackhawks could beat a team 22-0 makes me apt to reconsider.

My final four would be:

- Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's punch-out (even though I don't recall a multiplayer)

- Tony Hawk in Tony Hawk Pro Skater

- Roenick/Gretzky in NHL 94

- Bo Jackson in Tecmo Super Bowl

I also think racing a NASCAR or Indy car racer in a racing game would be pretty epic, but none of my favorite racing games (like Top Gear on SNES) had real drivers in the game. What am I leaving out? Is there an awesome fencing game I forgot to mention? What is your opinion? Let me know in the comments below.

Hunter Hillenmeyer is an avid gamer, former Chicago Bears Linebacker and President of The Overdog, a site dedicated to bringing gamers and athletes together. Follow him on Twitter and try to score 22 goals in ten minutes with him at OverDog.

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