Brian Lara Cricket

Brian Lara Cricket is a 1994 sports game for the Sega Mega Drive, developed by Audiogenic and published by Codemasters. It carries the name of a leading cricketer of the day – attaching a sportsperson's licence to a title was routine practice in the nineties, because the name on the box instantly communicated both the sport and how seriously the game intended to treat it.

Cricket is an unusual design problem. Unlike football it is not continuous motion but a sequence of isolated moments: the delivery, the shot, the run between wickets. A game therefore has to alternate several camera positions and control modes while staying legible to someone who does not know every law by heart.

1994 found the Mega Drive at full maturity. The console had been on sale long enough for developers to know it thoroughly, and British studios were strongly represented on it – both Codemasters and Audiogenic belonged to a domestic scene that knew how to address the European market with its own subjects.

That makes this release interesting geographically as well. Cricket had a huge following in Britain, India, Australia and the Caribbean, and virtually none in Japan or North America, so games built on it demonstrate that a console's catalogue was never the same worldwide.

This one runs straight in the browser window here on OldGame.cz, and the page beside it lists the year, the studios and screenshots.