Rugby 2005

Rugby 2005 is a sports title from EA Vancouver released under the EA Sports label. It belongs to the annual line the company built around rugby union at a point when it already owned most major sports and was looking for one more it could ship every year.

Rugby is a harder problem for a video game than football or hockey. Passing is only allowed backwards, ground is gained by running and kicking, and a large share of the match happens inside piles of players wrestling for possession. Scrums, rucks and lineouts all have to be mapped onto a handful of buttons without collapsing into a cut-scene the player merely watches.

The annual model came with licensed squads and competitions, so the value over the previous edition usually lay in updated rosters, refined controls and reworked defensive play. Multiplayer is supported, which matters more in sports games than anywhere else, because a match against the person next to you remains the main reason people keep them installed.

Landing in 2005 put the game in a period when sports titles on that hardware generation already looked convincing and the differences between yearly editions were getting harder to spot, which put extra weight on simulation detail and roster accuracy.

This entry on OldGame.cz carries the year, the developer, the publisher and match screenshots, and it is documentation only rather than something you can start in the browser.