Ranking the 10 Most Dominant Video Game Athletes of All Time

There were a few NBA Jam candidates to nab the top spot for this legendary game. Reggie Miller was solid all-around, hitting threes consistently and adding plus-speed and dunking ability to boot. Isiah Thomas was maxed out in terms of speed and three-point shooting. Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing were dominant in the big man stats.

But it was almost impossible to stop Scottie Pippen, who took advantage of Jordan's absence from the game to steal the spotlight. Paired with Horace Grant, whose three-point ability was literally at the minimum and whose other skills were barely over the halfway mark, Pippen had to do all the work if you chose to play with the Bulls. But he made that easier to stomach with maxed out dunking ability and near-perfect ratings the rest of the way.

Here's the slight exception in our list. Jon Dowd and Anthony Friese are names that diehard baseball fans and/or dedicated gamers are very familiar with, but that might cause the casual fan to scratch his/her head in wonder.

Barry Bonds and Kevin Millar were two players who were not included in MVP Baseball 2005 because of issues regarding their standing with the MLBPA. Millar's replacement was Friese, while Bonds was replaced with Dowd, and the rankings of these two fictional figures accurately represented the players they were meant to portray. Pitchers had to work around Bonds in real life, and it's fair to say that it was probably best to work around Dowd in MVP. He would absolutely annihilate anything thrown his way with top-tier power on both sides of the plate. It's only right, considering Bonds averaged 52 home runs per season in the four years leading up to the game's release.

Think USC football was tough to beat in real life in 2005? I mean, they were, considering they went 12-1 and finished in second place out of 119 teams, losing in the Rose Bowl against a stacked Texas Longhorns team.

But in NCAA Football 06, which was released prior to the 2005 season, the Trojans were even tougher than their real-life counterparts. Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush were two of the game's three 99 overall players. Quite frankly, Leinart could have been replaced by a 70 overall quarterback and the Trojans still would have been the most dominant team in the game. Bush's speed, agility and juke/spin abilities made him nearly impossible to bring down and frustrated countless opponents in this much-missed video game franchise.

Another game with a number of worthy candidates, it was hard not to give this honor to the throwback versions of Michael Jordan. He's a 99 overall throughout several different stages of his career. The same goes for LeBron.

But while their 99 overall ratings do not translate to their three-point abilities, Steph Curry's prowess from deep is always a 99 overall. Add that to his quick release and he's possibly the most annoying player to face in basketball video game history. He's one of those rare video game athletes who can help an otherwise clueless, first-time gamer succeed. Give the ball to Steph, press the shoot button from anywhere past half court, and watch the magic happen.

Not to sound like a broken record, but Messi kind of acts in the same way that Curry does. FIFA games are naturally tougher games to just pick up and play, but there are a handful of guys throughout the history of the series, including Arjen Robben and Neymar, who can make first-time players seem competent.

His ability to stop on a dime and change directions countless times make him impossible to track on the field, and his weak foot is practically indistinguishable from his strong side, allowing clueless gamers to compete when he's in their arsenal.

The man in picture is Kevin McBride, who famously beat Tyson after the all-time legend bowed out of the match abruptly in the seventh round despite looking to be in the lead. McBride was 6'6" and outweighed Tyson by nearly 40 pounds at the time of the match.

Now, replace McBride with Little Mac, a 17-year-old kid from the Bronx who stood at around 4'7", who you control throughout the game. You finally get through a slew of increasingly tough opponents, including the brutish Bald Bull, the sickeningly pink Soda Popinski, the impossibly quick Mr. Sandman, and others. It probably took countless saves, restarts and codes to finally get to the final stage of the game. It couldn't get much harder, right?

And somehow, the developers of Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! made Tyson so, so, so much harder than any other boxer in the game. Just listen to actor Jerry Ferrara's testimony to understand just how devoted you had to be in order to have a chance of beating Tyson.

Lamar Jackson is pretty unstoppable in Madden's latest release, and Colin Kaepernick, Russell Wilson, and others were nearly untouchable with the series' introduction of the read option around 2013.

But Vick's character in Madden 04 set the precedent for mobile quarterbacks and how to exploit them to the fullest and dominate the game -- kind of like how he did that in real life, too.

I can't say it much better than David Dennis Jr. of The Undefeated did: "If you pick Michael Vick, you're cheating."

Any time there's a cheat code with one player, and with one player only, that allows you to hit a home run on any swing of your choice, there's a slightly unfair advantage. But that was exactly the case with Ken Griffey Jr. in the all-time great baseball game Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. for the Nintendo 64.

You didn't need the cheat code to dominate with him, though. His five-tool skill set was taken quite literally by the game's creators, seeing as all five of his attributes -- batting, power, speed, defense, and arm -- were given perfect 10 ratings.

That said, there were a few pitchers that were worthy opponents to Griffey. The late Darryl Kile threw a 106-mph super fastball, while there were pitchers like Pedro Martinez whose super changeup reached as low as 46 mph.

I have to be candid here. I've never played this game. But I've read about it, thanks to my coworker and crazed hockey fan BJ Barretta, who shared a Roenick interview regarding his NHL '94 character.

Roenick told Sal Barry of Beckett Hockey that he has "more people come up to (him)... because of NHL '94" than because of his actual hockey playing prowess, going so far as to call it his claim to fame. Barry further details that a programming mistake known as the "weight bug" made Roenick's speed and agility ratings fly off the charts while simultaneously rendering him nearly impossible to take down AND boosting his own hitting abilities.

His character in NHL '94 is literally a glitch in the system. And still, it's not number one.

The reason why Roenick's buggy character isn't number one is because he could still be stopped, though it was nearly impossible. You can say the same about Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl, except you have to get rid of one word.

Bo Jackson wasn't nearly impossible to stop. He was impossible to stop. That's all there is to say.

Actually, it's not. His Tecmo Bowl character has literally become a part of our modern lingo when discussing players who go into some other dimension of their game.

It's become a part of greater pop culture.

And it's generated highlights that we just can't get enough of.