The Rise and Fall of 989 Sports

[stlstudios189]

MLB 98 was one of my all time favorites

[Armor and Sword]

The first Gameday for PS One was a ground breaking title. I remember buying both Madden 97 and Gameday 98 and I played Gameday far more. The second version of Gameday gave us a full on season mode with stat keeping IIRC.

In any case once Madden 99 hit the shelves I never went back to Gameday. For it's time though it was a great football game.

[SmittyD81]

Actually, 989 Studios didn't take effect until Gameday 99, NHL Faceoff 99 and MLB 2000. So in-between calendar years of 1998-1999 is when 989 started to make the Playstation sports games and as we all seen, the quality decreased yearly until SCEA came back into the fold. The problem was that they only took back and redefined the baseball franchise.

Just to set the record straight, SCEA was making the games from 95-98 (when the games were the best IMO). Then 989 took over for the next 5 or 6 years until SCEA came back into the fold, creating "MLB The Show" series of baseball games.

[maddmattrix]

Yup, I have some nice memories of GameDay. If I remember correctly, it was first to allow you to save instant replays. And the presentation, for the time, was top-notch.

Really wish the NFL would re-think the need to have the license cornered by one company.

[Herky]

989 brings back a lot of memories when I was in college with their 1999 and 2000 titles. I loved NCAA Gamebreaker, NCAA Final Four, and NFL GameDay. I liked those titles better than the ones that EA put out at the time.

[HuntTaker14]

Quote: Originally Posted by SmittyD81

Actually, 989 Studios didn't take effect until Gameday 99, NHL Faceoff 99 and MLB 2000. So in-between calendar years of 1998-1999 is when 989 started to make the Playstation sports games and as we all seen, the quality decreased yearly until SCEA came back into the fold. The problem was that they only took back and redefined the baseball franchise. Just to set the record straight, SCEA was making the games from 95-98 (when the games were the best IMO). Then 989 took over for the next 5 or 6 years until SCEA came back into the fold, creating "MLB The Show" series of baseball games.

I know, I was thinking the same thing. 989 studios killed Gameday and the other sports franchises. Not to mention them doing Twisted Metal 3 and 4. The author of this killed all his cred thinking that 989 made the original Gameday, do some research buddy. If SCEA would of stayed with Gameday instead of hand it to 989 it would be better than Madden today. 989 was a garbage company with title like NFL Xtreme.

[jyoung]

989/Sony Imagesoft/SCEA/Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA)

etc.

Are all the same studio.

They just had a lot of name changes and corporate shuffling over the years.

[youvalss]

I had NBA Shootout 2002 and 2003 on the PS1, then 2003 and 2004 on the PS2. They could have been good, if only I could edit players and make them more like real life, rather than everyone dunking all over the place. Then it became NBA '06 (actually, "NBA" was the 2005 edition) until NBA '09, which in my opinion, were a waste of time/money (mine and theirs).