Like everyone else outside of Nintendo, the first time I saw Blast Ball was at the Nintendo World Report Championships last Sunday. But then, as footage and hands-on impressions of the Metroid Prime: Federation Force special game mode rolled in over the next couple of days, a strange thought occurred to me: hadn't I heard of this sort of game before in real life? (Perhaps while reading an edition of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader?)

Maybe the lack of sleep is starting to get to me.

But this morning I dove into the internet to test my hunch. This involved plenty of false starts and dead ends, and relentless link surfing on Wikipedia and Google and Youtube. But I think I finally found what I was looking for: the great game of Pushball.

Pushball was invented in 1891 by M. G. Crane in Newton Massachusetts and apparently featured prominently in collegiate circles early on. I had been expecting a wacky and young, ridiculous sport, so I was quite surprised to find the sport had a venerable history, especially at Atlanta's Emory University.

Wasn't this essentially the core of the game of Blast Ball? Two teams, two goals, and an oversized ball they had to manipulate down the field? And it would get physical too, how could it not? Just like in Blast Ball, sometimes the most dangerous things wouldn't be the flying limbs of your opponents, but the immense momentum of the oversized ball bearing down on you, knocking you to the ground, and rolling right over you.

Sure, people aren't playing this game with laser guns and giant mecha, but they're pushing, kicking, screaming, punching, flailing, slamming, jumping, rolling, and just generally doing everything they can do sans the science fiction elements that Nintendo is adding. Heck, everyone from kids to seniors to the United States Marine Corps play this game apparently.

And to be honest, there are real life versions of the sport of Pushball that have definitely played around with ways to innovate and transform the sport.

How about Pushball... with automobiles?

Or an equestrian version of the game?

The developers of Blast Ball may just be the latest in a long line of Pushball innovators.

So while Blast Ball may have been a surprise at E3, perhaps it's not a surprise to the greater sports world. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the arches you fly through in Star Fox found their origin in Japan's Torii shrine gates. Sometimes the real world can be a boon companion to creativity. After all, didn't a spoony bard once write:

What do you think?