Never Outdated: Text-Based Sports Simulators

Several years ago, I was at a quick haircut place waiting to have my ears lowered when I happened to pick up a copy of a magazine that was highlighting sports games (Computer Gaming World, perhaps?). This magazine was highlighting some of the best sports games of the year, and among the list was an EA distributed text-based NFL simulator called “Front Office Football“.  I had had some exposure to text-based sports simulators. In fact, back in the pre-WWW years, myself and some British exchange students found a Premier League soccer simulator on a university FTP server and mailed the creator a physical check in order to unlock the full-version key. I knew very little about soccer, but the mechanics of the simulation and the ability to manage a team based on statistics and salary stuck with me enough that the magazine article became intriguing.