16 Best PS Vita Sports Games

Real Boxing comes from Vivid Games, and it was a phone game before it reached the Vita. Critics said the Vita version looked and moved much better than the mobile one, which made it the version to get. You build your own boxer and take them through a career mode. There are training mini-games and online matches too.

Reviews were split. Game Revolution said its biggest sin is that it is "just too boring", while COGconnected praised its "fairly authentic feel" for a boxing game on the PS Vita. It is a casual boxing game that does not ask you to memorize combos, and it is the only boxing game on this list.

Madden NFL 13 was the 23rd game in the series and the first and only Madden on the PS Vita. EA put real work into the presentation of Madden NFL 13, with more than 200 new cutscenes between plays and Nantz and Simms in the booth before the game. Colin O'Malley wrote a fully orchestrated soundtrack for it, which replaced the licensed EA Trax songs on the menus.

It was also the last Madden for any handheld that was not a phone. One player who stuck with it summed up the appeal: "Awesome to play a fully featured Madden game on a portable system."

Handball 16 is exactly what the name says. It comes from Eko Software, a studio that has been making games since 1999, and Bigben Interactive published it. Its own store blurb calls it "the first handball simulation" and promises all your favorite teams. Bigben liked the studio enough to buy it in 2018.

Its spot here says more about how few sports games the Vita had than about the game itself. It is the only handball game on this list, and probably the only one most Vita owners ever saw. If you want a sport almost nobody plays on a handheld, here it is.

FIFA 14 on the Vita was sold as FIFA 14: Legacy Edition, and the name was honest. EA kept the game from earlier years and mostly updated the squads and kits. The new Ignite Engine went to the PS4 and Xbox One, not to the handheld.

That still made it a fine pick for anyone who wanted current teams in their pocket. FIFA 14 itself won Sports Game of the Year from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, though the Vita edition had little to do with that. Underneath the new kits is a solid game of football, and it plays the same as the year before.

Windjammers is an old arcade game from Data East, and Dotemu brought it to the PS4 and Vita in August 2017. The idea is Pong or air hockey with people in it. You throw a flying disc at the other player's goal zone, and they dive to stop it. Each of the six characters has their own speed and power ratings and their own special throws.

You cannot move while you hold the disc, and you cannot hold it for more than a few seconds, so matches move very fast. Players say it is great for short bursts, which suits a handheld perfectly. Dotemu later made a sequel, Windjammers 2, in 2022.

MLB 14: The Show was the ninth game in the series and the first one on the PS4, with Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera on the cover. Canada got its own cover again, this time with Brett Lawrie of the Toronto Blue Jays.

The PS4 version got most of the attention, and it became the fastest-selling game in the series in its first week. The Vita version gave handheld players the same season on a smaller screen. It was nominated for Sports Game of the Year by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the third Vita season of The Show in a row to get that nod.

MLB 15: The Show was the tenth game in the series and the last one to come out on the Vita. Its big new idea was licensed equipment, so fielding gloves and bats now had real brand names on them. Sony also built a reward system into it, with player cards for Diamond Dynasty, the game's fantasy baseball mode.

The Vita version holds a 71% score on GameRankings, ten points behind the PS4 game. Sony did not send out review copies until the day it came out, which never looks great. For Vita owners it was still the newest season of baseball they would ever get on the handheld.

MLB 12: The Show was the first game in the series on the PS Vita, and the first year it skipped the PS2 and PSP. Adrián González of the Boston Red Sox made the cover after hitting 27 home runs with 117 runs batted in during 2011. Then he was traded to the Dodgers halfway through the 2012 season, and the cover was out of date before the season was over.

It was nominated for Sports Game of the Year, the start of a run for the series on the Vita. Players say The Show is easy to pick up and keep going back to it, which is what you want from baseball on a handheld.

FIFA Soccer was a PS Vita launch game in March 2012, also sold as FIFA Football. Despite the new name, it was a port of FIFA 12. EA picked a good year to port, since FIFA 12 holds the record for the fastest-selling sports game ever, with more than 3.2 million copies sold in its first week.

So the Vita had a full modern FIFA from the start. It is an older season now, but it is the one that showed a console-sized football game could run on a handheld. EA kept making a Vita FIFA every year until it stopped after FIFA 15.

FIFA 15 was the last FIFA on the Vita and the last game Electronic Arts published for the system at all. The big versions were the first FIFA fully licensed by the Premier League, with Lionel Messi on the cover. The Vita got its own port, released in September 2014 alongside the others.

The Vita edition is a much smaller game than the PS4 one, which scored 82 on Metacritic. Players still rank it above both of the other FIFA games on this list. If you want one football game on the Vita, this is the newest season you can get.

MLB 13: The Show put Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen on the cover, while Canada got José Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays for the second year in a row. PS3 owners also got a Home Run Derby expansion that was exclusive to the PS3, which must have stung a little for Vita owners.

It was nominated for Sports Game of the Year, like every other season of The Show that reached the Vita. Of the four seasons on the handheld, players rank this one highest. It came out in the middle of the run, after the first Vita season had shown what worked and before the series moved its attention to the PS4.

Hustle Kings is a pool game published by Sony. It started on the PlayStation Store for the PS3 in December 2009 and later came to the Vita. It has a career mode plus trick shot and tournament modes, and you can play anything from eight-ball to killer pool. Buy it once and you got both the Vita and PS3 versions.

Critics liked it more than you might expect from a pool game. Game Revolution called it "almost the perfect handheld game", and GamesRadar+ called it "no doubt a niche offering" while saying it does what it sets out to do really well. It later went free-to-play on the PS4 and even got a VR version.

OlliOlli2 was announced in September 2014 as the sequel to OlliOlli and came out on March 3, 2015 in North America. PlayStation Plus members got it free. It later came to PC and Android, and in 2019 both games came to the Switch together as OlliOlli: Switch Stance.

Players name it as a game for playing on the go, in short runs whenever you have a few minutes. It keeps the same rule as the first game, where a sloppy landing costs you most of your points. The series kept going with OlliOlli World in 2022, on much bigger consoles than the one it started on.

Virtua Tennis 4 reached the Vita as Virtua Tennis 4: World Tour Edition, released in Japan on December 17, 2011, in time for the handheld's launch. The Vita version added things the others lacked. You can play in first person and swing with the gyroscope, or take a photo of your face with the front camera and let the game build a player from it.

The career mode is laid out like a board game, and the training sessions are arcade mini-games, including one about picking up eggs. As of July 2017 it was the only tennis simulation game on the Vita. Players praise how good it looks and how well it plays, years after the Vita launched.

OlliOlli is a 2D skateboarding game from Roll7, and it was first meant for iOS. Then Roll7 founder John Ribbins pitched it to Shahid Ahmad at Sony, dropped iOS and made it a Vita exclusive. It came out on January 21, 2014 in North America.

The trick is the landing. Land badly and you get only a fraction of the points, and there are no checkpoints, so one fall sends you back to the start of the level. There are over 120 tricks and grinds across 50 levels, and RAD Mode wants a perfect landing every time. Reviewers kept bringing up Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and OlliOlli earns the comparison in two dimensions.

Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational was the eleventh game in the Everybody's Golf series and a launch game for the Vita in all regions. It has all-new courses, and two courses came back from earlier games. You can leave comments for other players through the LiveArea and look at a course with the Vita's augmented reality feature. The first game in the series was made by Camelot, the studio that later made Mario Golf.

Famitsu gave it 38 out of 40, and Digital Spy called it "an accessible golfing experience that anyone can enjoy." Players describe it as relaxed and easy to pick up. It is the Vita sports game players recommend most, by a wide margin.