Football Games

I'm a fan of the NFL, but I'm not a fan of sports video games. I prefer arcade sports games to more "realistic" ones. Also, I've hated Madden since he started praising Dallas at every moment. So let's look at the threes or fours of football games that I've owned.



Joe Montana Sports Talk Football (Genesis) - This game was fun just to hear the announcer call plays. Of course, it was stiff and repetitive, but at the time it was huge. The game had a vertical view of the field which I thought was the standard until I played other football games. This game wasn't NFL licensed, so Joe was the only name player on a no-name San Francisco team. You continued the game by password, and I probably still have my perfect 19-0 Washington team passwords in the box.

There were few plays, but just enough that you had enough passing and rushing plays. My favorite play was the fake field goal. The computer would fall for it EVERY SINGLE TIME, and the announcer would be like, "It's first and ten, and I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! ... It's a fake!" Even more fun was playing the computer in easy mode. The computer would tell you what play it's calling, and then show you the exact poin where a ball was going to be thrown. I even found a glitch in the game that caused turnovers by having one of your defensive players stand on the ball before the center hiked it. Plus the game wasn't that hard when I played it on hard mode without using 3-4 back to back fake field goals.



NFL 95 (Genesis) - I was a fan of Montana, so I really rooted for him after he made his comeback in Kansas City. Sadly, we got a boring rematch of Dallas and Buffalo instead of a more interesting San Francisco vs Kansas City.

Anyway, this game had a horizontal field and faster game play. It also added taunting, which was repetitive, but some of the taunts were so goofy that I still smile when I think of them. (I wish I could take "HAW! CAN'T TAKE THE HEAT!" and remix it into a song.) There were far more plays, an NFL license, battery back-up, and the game had the ability to draft, trade, and make up players. Sadly, this last option was useless. My dad and I took Dallas's big three and sent them to other teams, yet when we let the computer simulate a season, Dallas still won everything. It never made any sense.

NFL 95 gave you a more sophisticated season then Sports Talk Football did. You can pick any game you wanted to do, and it saved stats and player of the game afterwards. (It's half time show wasn't as memorable as Sports Talk Football though.) I once made the dumb mistake of thinking that I could play every game in a season. I probably made it to week three before I gave up on that, and I was only playing 20 minute games.



Madden 94 (SNES) - This is my least favorite football game, and the only Madden game I ever got. This game was slow and defensive, not something I want in a football game. It was almost impossible to complete a throw, and I've never been a fan of the triple split screen on top of the screen. It's just way too much to keep track of before your sacked. Interceptions were plentiful. I don't remember if there was an option to trade players, but I doubted it mattered. Like NFL 95, this game was made in the middle of the Cowboy dynasty, so I'm sure that team would be impossible to beat. I played mostly by plugging in the second controller and having the opponents QB head for the wrong end zone.

This game had a horizontal field, long passwords, licensed teams (but only numbered players.) It had cheerleaders, but not very good looking ones. I think it had a better instant replay option then NFL 95, but I may be reaching for compliments. It had all-time teams, but the lack of names hurts it.

I later read in a magazine that the Genesis version of this game was faster and more offensive. This was around the time that EA released a Madden game that was filled with all-teams but was only available at Blockbuster. Either of those game would have probably been better then the SNES version of Madden 94. (The SNES has a slower clock then the Genesis. Hence the silly "Blast Processing" campaign Sega had.)


Football (Atari VCS) Primitive but fun game. Sadly, it's only a two player game, but I did enjoy it when I could play it. For some bizarre reason, throwing an incomplete pass seemed to result in a turnover.

Feature a small horizontal field, blocky football players, and only 4 players for each side. You only had five plays total, and I could never remember them. It was just easier, and more fun, to just snap the ball and run around avoiding the defenders.

This game is part of Atari Anthology.



Will I ever get another football game? Sure, but I have a rule. I'll get a new football/basketball/hockey/baseball game whenever a Washington team wins a championship. (Or make it to the finals, in the case of NHL Faceoff 99.)

Translation: Not for a long time.