SportsCore — 19 Playable School Sports for RPG Maker MZ

Your RPG has a school. Now it has a sports program.

SportsCore drops 19 school sports into any RPG Maker MZ project — and they’re playable, not text menus. Walk your party up to the coach, pick a sport, pick a rival school, and take the field: move your athlete with the arrow keys, pass with OK, shoot with X, dash with Shift. Teammates make runs, defenders chase you down, keepers track the ball. Win, and your actors earn skill XP that carries into the next match, the next season, and the playoffs.

Part of the MZ Minigame Collection. This plugin is one of a growing library of themed minigames for RPG Maker MZ, from board games and puzzles to sports, casino and crafting. Mix and match to fill your world with things to do.

👉 See them all: https://itch.io/c/8090415/mz-minigame-collection

One file. No dependencies. Works with your existing actors — they play as their own character sprites.

19 sports, 6 ways to play

Football, Soccer, Basketball, Ice Hockey, Field Hockey, Lacrosse, Water Polo, Ultimate

Top-down real-time possessions. Pass, shoot, dash, tackle. Football runs as a drive with downs; ultimate forbids running with the disc; basketball has a three-point line.

Baseball, Softball

Watch the pitch come in — aim the bat, swing on time. On the mound, aim the reticle and mix in breaking balls. Balls, strikes, fouls, walks.

Volleyball, Tennis, Badminton

Move under the ball and hit it on time; hold a direction to aim, Shift for power. Your volleyball teammates bump and set to you.

Wrestling

Drive the bar, answer the arrow prompts for takedowns, push to the edge for a pin.

Track & Field (12 events incl. relays), Cross Country, Swimming

Start on the gun, alternate Left/Right to run, manage your stamina. Time the wall in the pool.

Golf, Bowling

Aim, power, accuracy. Play the hole with water and sand; hook the ball into the pocket.

Prefer to coach instead of play? Two more match styles ship in the same file: Visual (animated arena with timing mini-games on key plays) and Text (classic play-by-play). Switch per project or per event.

It’s a season, not a mini-game

• Athletes — eight attributes (Speed, Strength, Agility, Stamina, Accuracy, Awareness, Teamwork, Composure) plus a skill per sport. Derived from your actors’ stats automatically, or set with notetags. Skill grows from matches, MVPs and training.
• Rosters — position slots per sport (QB/RB/WR…, GK/DF/MF/FW, weight classes…), auto-fill, preferred positions, letter grades.
• Rival schools — six sample teams included; add your own with a rating, colours and league. NPC athletes are generated once and remembered.
• Seasons & playoffs — round-robin schedules, standings with PF/PA, single-elimination brackets, a champion.
• Story hooks — every result lands in variables, switches and a common event. Rank, record, next opponent, MVP name, champion — all there for your cutscenes.
• Sports Hub menu — Roster, Athletes, Standings, Schedule, Last Match.

Set-up in one minute

1. Copy SportsCore.js into js/plugins and enable it.
2. Put the plugin command Open Sport Select on any event.
3. Talk to it.

That’s the whole tutorial. Everything else is optional: notetags for hand-tuned athletes, custom sports built entirely from parameters, difficulty and animation-speed sliders, your own character sheets for rival teams.

Extend it

Custom sports are data: pick an engine, list the positions, write the outcomes, choose an arena look. Script calls and hooks (SportsCore.on('matchEnd', …)) let other plugins react to every play.

Compatibility

• RPG Maker MZ (1.x). Uses core scripts only.
• Adds one main-menu command (can be disabled).
• Includes a headless test suite (node test/harness.js) if you like to see green ticks.

License

Free for commercial and non-commercial projects. Credit appreciated, not required.