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Are you ready for some footballll!? Video game football that is! Since there have been video games, there have been football video games. From early stuff like this.  To more recent developments like, I dunno, ever heard of John Madden Football?  So do you play football on your console of choice? I do, though I'm stuck in the past and these days my go-to games are either the original Tecmo Super Bowl or Madden 2005. Sports games are an unceasing cash cow for  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLqcwq5stPM This is the absolute best 1985 could do at home. Only 9 players per team, at most, on screen at once. During a kick return you use your blockers more like a force field; they move at the same rate and keep the same distance from your ball carrier until they encounter an opponent, at which point the two get locked up. It's fun for maybe ten minutes. Don't like it? Tough poo poo, there wouldn't be another football game on the NES until 1989!  And the worst part is, both games released that year sucked. Titled simply National Football League, it was published (but perhaps not developed, more on that later) by LJN, a toy company that bought up the rights to make quick cash-ins on licensed material. The long and short of it is that the graphics are alright, the sound is passable with a short tune between plays and a little ambient noise during game action. It plays atrociously though and your tiny football men move as if they're plodding through a foot of mud. With the visual polish it feels like it's meant to be more of an arcade style experience but it fails pretty hard at that. NFL looks like loving Blitz compared to the next game on my list though. For all of the sins John Elway has committed, none is as bad as John Elway's Quarterback. Ported from an arcade game simply called "Quarterback", they slapped Elway's stupid face on the cover and, well, that was the extent of his involvement. National Football League the game didn't have named players but it at least had the proper names of the teams at the time. In Elway's you can select a city (among only 15!) in the locker room screen but it's completely meaningless. The game will always consist of a red team vs a blue team. There is no music past the city select screen and only a short tune on the title screen. Game noise is like sitting in the lower bowl of a Pats preseason home game, dead and listless, like the crowd knows this is bad. The big difference is that every five seconds or so in this game, there is a shrill bugle noise. There are no differences between the "teams" and, like 10-Yard Fight, each team only has 9 slow players on the field at a time. It fails as an arcade-style action sports game. It fails as a more simulation like title. It just loving sucks. You had four years to improve on football and you blew it. gently caress you John Elway. I have two copies of this game. It was dire. Things would get a little better in 1990 with the original Tecmo Bowl on the NES and apparently the first ever iteration of John Madden Football on the Genesis, which people like for some reason. But those two series deserve their own effort posts and I'd like to mention a few notables here before moving on. Play Action Football saw releases on the NES an Super NES. To my knowledge it's the only 4-player football game on either system. Fun-ish but suffers from what a lot of games did at the time with slow players, no real teams/players and overly complicated gameplay. Touchdown Fever came out, again on the NES, in 1991 and... okay look, you know how people say that if Shakespeare hadn't been around then probably we would be gushing over Christopher Marlowe all the time instead? Well, that's what we have here. A sort of Salieri to Tecmo Super Bowl's brilliance, Touchdown Fever is a fun, fast-paced game with a good soundtrack and colorful graphics that is just missing a bunch of stuff that Tecmo had. It onyl has twelve teams, marked by their city, and that brings us to the next point. No real players, no team names. In an alternate dimension where people are remembering this fondly, but still probably not as fondly as Tecmo. Joe Montana's Sports Talk Football Hit the Genesis with something no other game at the time had: commentary. It's a neat trick, but a bit repetitive and the game offers nothing major over Madden. Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl "Hey Jerry, you want to make twenty bucks?" "Yeah sure." "Okay, we're gonna put your name on the cover of this game." "Is it about football." "Kinda!" Barely football related, JG's PF is about teams of five...vikings? Knights? Picking up a rock on a field littered with debris and trying to run it into the end zone. Was called Pigskin 621 AD in arcades and seems to have more in common with rugby afaict. Not bad but also not really football. I bet Jerry bought himself a nice car with the money he got from slapping his name on this. Anyway, let's talk about TECMO SUPER BOWL!  As mentioned above, Tecmo Bowl got its start in 1990. But the game almost everyone thinks of when they hear "Tecmo" is, of course, Tecmo Super Bowl. The original had a nice soundtrack, great graphics for the time and quick, intuitive gameplay. Like many others, it lacked a license and you're stuck with city names, but the uniforms colors are all correct. And then boom, hitting the 1991 scene like a motherfucking freight train was the behemoth itself. TSB improved on its original by including all 28 NFL teams at the time with thirty real players per team. Backups for offensive line and defensive positions are not included on rosters, and even some deep bench spots on offense were ignored. This was still a hugely impressive feat as most games of the time were at best just using player numbers. It's a hell of a lot more of a rush for you to score a TD with Thurman  Thomas than with just #34. But it didn't just have their names, it had stats! Any game could just slap a name on a weeble that controls like all the other weebles in the game, but you know that playing against Bo Jackson or QB Eagles or Barry Sanders means you're gonna have your hands a hell of a lot more full than if you see Steve Grogan, Barry Word or Louis Lipps. They packed a ton in here and it just hadn't been done before. Full seasons with stat tracking was just not something happening anywhere else.It is a joy to listen to. The music gets you going and the sound effects are exactly what is needed. Crowd noise is minimal and only around in major moments like when a TD is scored. IT does have a couple of minor issues though such as tackling. Your computer controlled teammates refuse to tackle ball carriers from the front and will instead let them go by to try and chase and take them down from behind. Difficulty scaling is handled in a kind of bullshit way as well, with games getting harder the further you get into a season. That team you cremated in week 2 is not going to be the same beast if you meet them in the divisional round. Opposing defenders automatically move into position to counter whatever play it is you just picked. It's frustrating, and I'm sure more experienced players can work around it, but I personally couldn't win a playoff game with the terrible 9-7 New England Patriots squad that TSB has on offer. Tecmo Super Bowl was further ported to the SNES and Genesis, where it was based on subsequent NFL seasons (the NES one was based on 1990, of course), and also given two sequels on those systems, simply called Tecmo Super Bowl II and Tecmo Super Bowl III. I have minimal experience with the second one but the third installment changed some things; some for the better and some for the worse. In TSB III you can trade players and even make your own superstars, a welcome addition and really cool to see for sure. The graphics get a big upgrade, but the sound takes a hit with the lack of any music during games. I still played the hell out of it a long time ago, but these days if I want a Tecmo fix I pop in the original. Tecmo's final installation came on the PS1. Haven't played it and don't know anything about it. Do you? These days there's a spiritual successor in the mobile game Retro Bowl, but we'll get into that later. Apropos of nothing, gently caress the Cowboys. But you don't like action-y arcade-style gameplay do you? Fine! Have a dull simulation with the John Madden Football series.  Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins wanted to make a football game, so who did he call? That's right, Joe Montana! Montana was already working with another company on a football game and refused. So naturally Trip called up his second choice. That's right, former Minnesota Vikings QB Joe Kapp! Who also refused. The project was shelved for a couple of years until Trip managed to rope in John Madden who was apparently interested in using it as a way to teach people about football. Boom! In 1988, the first edition of Madden hit home PCs on DOS. The project almost didn't exist and what is now a massive cash cow for EA was for a time known internally as "Trip's folly." The game found its way onto 16-bit systems in 1990 and then once again every year until, well, now! Unlike Tecmo Madden is played vertically. I have nothing else to say about the 16-bit editions. Everything about them seems calculated to put you to sleep and it is nowhere near as intuitive as something like TSB. Well, it survived long enough to get good. I have not touched the early 3D versions for the PS1/N64/Saturn era. But I'll say this: I lost interest in football in the late 90s and didn't come back to it until 2007. On a whim I grabbed a copy of Madden 2003 for the PS2 and it sure looks like John Madden got his wish. Included is a feature that allows you to select certain plays to train on, with commentary from the man himself as to how a specific play is supposed to work, where players have to be to make it work and so forth. It's simple, straightforward and clear and while I honestly feel like a schlub in terms of football knowledge, I will still say that I learned a lot from it. Seeing a play develop a piece at a time really gives you a sense of how cerebral football is. I've since moved on to Madden 2005 on the Gamecube and it's franchise mode, and barely ever play an actual game now. There's an amazing amount of depth in management; everything from roster decisions to coaching changes to draft scouting and picks is there. While I also have a copy of it on the PS2 I've found the Gamecube version better simply because of much shorter load times. Madden has hosed around with it's formula in bits and pieces from year to year. 2006 introduced the QB vision cone, a poorly received feature which had you aiming a Metal Gear Solid-esque sight beam on the portion of the field where you wanted to throw the ball. 2008 (and possibly 2007 but I've yet to play it) reworked the rookie scouting portion of franchise mode to require a prospective scout to play a minigame to determine a rookie's ability scores. This takes too much time, the games are boring and overall it loving sucks and ruins what is the most rewarding part of that mode. Rookies are kind of like the loot you get at the end of a season. Having to play the same games and wait through the same load screens over and over again sucks the fun out of it.  And if there's one thing I learned between Madden 2003 and 2010, the PS2 version is the last Madden game I ever bought in 2013, it's that the franchise doesn't really change much. Oh sure, there's new modes every now and again or minor tweaks but it's basically a roster update. Anyone who's more up on the more recent editions should absolutely chime in. For that matter, I'll leave it up to others to fill in the blanks on where football games are these days. For a quick, easy to get into experience that actually even has a little bit of depth, Retro Bowl is a fun time. Clearly taking it's cues from Tecmo Super Bowl, Retro Bowl serves up a dish of quick, intuitive gameplay with a small side of team management. It's pixelated fun!  There's way, waaaaaay too many games and series to get into and we've barely scratched the surface with the above. Not just popular and semi-dormant series like NFL Blitz but also odds and ends like the Master System's Great Football, and football-adjacent games like the wonder that is Blood Bowl. Have at it! I've been informed by Oberst that there is a Goon Madden League for those of you with consoles that were released more recently than 20 years ago. Football! Now it's even for fat people who rarely leave the couch!
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May 5, 2021 03:09
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 09:12 |
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ShakeZula posted:
Paint Crop Pro posted:
Same. I don't often play out the actual games at this point and am personally a mediocre player anyway. It's way more fun trying to build a perennial Superbowl team. Mentioned above but I tried Madden 2010 years ago and noped back to 2005 in part because of the draft changes but also because the load times on menus are loving ridiculous. It's all moot anyway since after several years of fake players most of the league is pretend regardless. 2005's franchise mode isn't perfect. There are some issues that crop up, particularly the longer it goes. The generates players will almost never be as good as the existing ones, so in 10-15 years you have teams starting 65-70 OVR players at a bunch of positions, most notably on the offensive line. O linemen develop very poorly on computer controlled teams. 10 years into franchise mode and the top players at the position are all real guys in their mid-late 30s. After that, offseason free agency only contains a handful of 80-ish players and maybe one or two 90+ OVR guys I booted from my team because I couldn't afford them anymore. It's also easy to cheat by taking a linebacker with high strength and acceleration scores and switching them to DE. It's almost always a guaranteed 10-15 point jump in their OVR.
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May 5, 2021 15:51
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fartknocker posted:Fair Warning: I may fire up the emulator and effort post on some of the later Tecmo Super Bowl editions when I get home from work. Please do! There's so.mich more I wanted to add but I realized if I held.off any longer I'd probably never post the thread. quote:That’s generous, they’re actually based on a 1-15 team. I meant to say that I took the team to a 9-7 record. 1-15 doesn't surprise me that squad is a trash fire. And the worst of it is at QB. The only team in the game where the backup is arguably better than the starter, and they're both putrid.
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May 5, 2021 17:49
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My favorite ever pick was a CB way downfield from a WR who stopped on a curl route. Ball is about to hit the receiver right on the numbers. It is intercepted when the corner does a last second Superman dive from behind, punching his hands straight through the receiver's chest and pulling the ball back through him.
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May 5, 2021 19:36
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General Dog posted:Retro Bowl is a lot of fun, but it's too easy even on the hardest setting and I wish the roster management aspect of it was a just a little bit deeper. IME the hard setting is too easy but the dynamic is kinda bullshit after a certain point. The granularity is right there and I wish I could just set it myself.
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May 5, 2021 20:01
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fartknocker posted:No, the max level on dynamic, which I think is 16, is equivalent to Hard. Really? I'm not saying you're wrong but I always felt like hard was easier for me than dynamic 16 and now I'm trying to figure out why that would be.
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May 5, 2021 20:32
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Silly Burrito posted:Is Blood Bowl any fun? I see it advertised every now and then on Xbox for 5 bucks, but it seems to have a strong love/hate relationship with some reviewers. I played the first one and liked it. It's not quite football but a sort of football/rugby/grid-based strategy mash-up. The announcers are great but have an extremely limited repertoire so they get old kinda fast. One issue with the league/franchise mode is that, barring death, your players tend to retire at about the same rate. Meaning you suddenly lose all of your most experienced players within a few games of each other and are back to square one.
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May 7, 2021 20:05
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I wish I did. I've been stuck in a rut with Madden '05 after being disappointed with the subsequent games. How's Football GM?
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Jun 6, 2021 22:41
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Chucktesla posted:It's five bucks and the pre order discount brought it gotten to $3 when I got it. It'll probably be in the $1-$2 range on sales pretty frequently if I had to guess. They are also going to add defense at some point so it might be worth it to wait if you're on the fence That's a price point I'd just pick it up and be totally happy with it. It's become my go-to game when I'm waiting in line to pick up my kid from school.
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Feb 12, 2022 00:21
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 09:12 |
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Cavauro posted:i thimk it needs more violence You say that about everything. You sad that about my nephew's bris.
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Jul 24, 2022 19:40
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