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Editor’s note: Every year, we get new iterations of college football and college hoops games. Snore. What about the real sports college kids play these days? Rachel gives us her take on two other sports that deserve the video game treatment. Developers, are you listening? -Brett
Now that I’ve nearly completed my undergraduate studies at Ohio University, I’ve been reflecting on all of the useful skills I’ve learned at school. Skills like, say, how to play two unique “sports” popular at OU that would make great video games: cornhole and broomball. Seeing how the Nintendo Wii has managed to make video games out of several drinking games, turning these southern Ohio pastimes into games doesn’t seem all that preposterous.
Cornhole:
What’s that? You’ve never heard of cornhole?! In that case, congratulations! You’ve clearly never spent a significant amount of time in southern Ohio. Heck, I grew up in northwest Ohio, and I never even heard the name until college. That’s how specific to southern Ohio it is.
One of the first things that I learned upon arriving at Ohio University was how to play this noble game. During the first week of school, as I wandered the campus with some of my new dorm neighbors, I innocently commented that bean bag toss is really popular around here. Everyone stopped in their tracks and looked at me with offended expressions. I immediately flushed red, thinking that I hadn’t recognized some drinking game. “Shit,” I thought. “Now everyone knows what a freshmen I am.”
Thankfully, it just meant I wasn’t from southern Ohio.
Cornhole is essentially bean bag toss, except the bags are filled with corn and the rules are more complicated. Two boards (like the one shown in the picture) are placed roughly 27 feet away from each other, and you perform your toss by standing next to one board and throwing towards the other. The first team to reach 21 points wins the cornhole match. We usually play the game in teams, with each teammate throwing four bags per inning.
Innings proceed as follows: You and your opponents alternate throwing the bags. A bag in the hole counts for three points, and a bag that lands on the board and stays there counts for one point. The catch is that as opponents alternate turns, points can cancel each other out. So if I land a shot on the board and then my opponent immediately does the same, neither of us scores any points. Finally, although this is not an official rule, most of my friends state that if a team ends up with 20 points after an inning, their score goes back down to 13.
According to the American Cornhole Association, cornhole is a family-oriented game. While that may be the case, I’ve never played it — or even witnessed anyone playing it — without alcohol being involved. That said, a word to the wise: Do not play with a teammate who is completely trashed. Drunk people have the unique ability to suck the whole game then somehow bring the score to 20 — thereby knocking the score back to 13. This can lead to a game taking hours to complete if both sides are inebriated.
How would cornhole work as a video game? I can easily imagine cornhole on the Wii. The bags can be thrown either overhand or underhand, so playing with the Wii remote would be extremely easy. Who knows, maybe exposure on the Wii is all cornhole needs to become a nationwide phenomenon!
Broomball:
Broomball can best be explained to the uninitiated as field hockey on ice. For the intramural version I’m familiar with, officials also make sure that the ice has been skated on before play in order to give our shoes some grip.
In all honesty, the main reason I want someone to make a broomball video game is because I’m extremely bitter. You see, last year my women’s competitive intramural broomball team was very, very good. We managed to get to the championship game undefeated, shutting out all of our opponents in the process.
The game was set for a Monday, so on Sunday night I ate a hearty, carb-loaded pasta dinner and went to bed early.
At 3 a.m. I woke up feeling terrible in a way I’ve never felt before or since. I realized I had to run to the bathroom to vomit. In short, I ultimately wound up in the hospital with a gastrointestinal stomach virus. There would be no broomball for me.
When I finally got back to my apartment, I swallowed some meds and immediately fell asleep on the couch. I woke up sometime after midnight. One of my roommates was still awake and leaned into the living room to check on me. I didn’t even have to ask. “We lost,” she said.
I was so doped up on meds at the time that the news didn’t really sink in. But once I was healthy again, I was crushed. I needed something to take my mind off the loss, so I decided to game away my sorrows. If only I could play a broomball game!
My broomball team (I’m front and center). This is what champions look like.
A broomball game would be much more complex than a cornhole one. Broomball is incredibly difficult to learn; it’s all about incremental improvements. For example, during my coed team’s first game, we all fell on the ice constantly. I couldn’t sit properly for a week. But this past season, I only fell once.
The video game should reflect that. You should have to learn how quickly a player can run on the ice before losing control and falling. In this way you would gradually improve your team through the college years, from inexperienced freshmen to seniors capable of tackling a championship.
A video game based on broomball may not be for everyone, but if it in any way captures the incredible joy that comes from scoring a goal while the other team has fallen on the ice, then it’s a game I want to see made. Maybe I could even recreate that fateful Monday — this time with a different result.