Football Games

You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

How bad was the first football video game? How does it stack up against today’s contenders? It’s worth a laugh to look back at the granddaddy, a tough little LED handheld from 1977 called Mattel Football. In retrospect, its size was pretty much the only thing it had going for it, but it was still madly popular in the U.S.

What was it like to play? It was an exercise in abstrction and imagination. The quarterback was a bright LED line, kind of like a red hyphen. The dimmer red hyphens represented blockers and defenders. In a crude top-down view, you jammed on the buttons to propel the QB toward the end zone, avoiding defenders. Playbook: quarterback scramble, each and every time. Passing: not included. Audio and music: blips and bleeps.

You know how the Xbox and PlayStation 3 will be able to run at 1920 x 1080 resolution? Technically, since the smallest individual picture elements - or “pixels” - in Mattel Football were the hyphens, the game ran at around 8 x 6 resolution. That, friends, is retro.

Winning Isn’t Everything... It’s The Only Thing

Visual detail is still incredibly important to modern football games. But on top of that, refinements abound, and gamers now expect all kinds of features and goodies in their pigskin games.

The main game experience is so real, it’s easily confused with a Monday Night Football broadcast. Players hear the same commentators, see the same stadiums and crowds, and teams even use the same playbooks they use in real life. The only things missing are the smell of hot dogs and the commercial interruptions.

The game camera generally follows the action from an over-the-shoulder perspective on the principle players - mostly up the center of the field at the current down marker. In most modern games, this can be customized and altered to fit the player’s preferences - or even the play of the moment.

On offense, the game player controls the quarterback at the snap, and then chooses to run, pitch, or pass. Icons identify the onscreen players that represent the different options, and control moves to the receiver if the ball changes hands. More advanced players can change the pitch, lead, and velocity of passes as well as pull out a dizzying variety of running moves like spins, jukes, fakes, leaps, and stiffarms.

On defense, the game player controls one of the defensive players at the snap, and can switch players with the press of a button. Some people prefer to play defensive ends trying for the sack; others like the linebackers, attempting to shoot the gaps for a stop or a sack; and some enjoy controlling safeties and cornerbacks, hoping for a play on a blitz or interception. Once the ball is snapped, the button that switches players will intelligently switch the human control to the defensive player nearest the ball.

Of course, it’s a blast to play football games with your friends. In such circumstances, the game camera is positioned by default over the offensive players’ shoulders. The human participants can opt to play against each other, or cooperate against the computer, and multiple people can each control a different position.

Still Polishing The Pigskin

With so many players on screen and all the frantic action, there are still changes and innovations taking place in football video games. Developers are adding more realistic collisions and physics - linemen don’t scrub up against each other like two man-sized blocks of concrete, but rather push limb against limb. The opposing players and “manager” AI routines learn your strengths and weaknesses and attempt to adapt to situations and run successful plays with greater frequency.

The quality of some of the peripheral gameplay tends to vary as the games evolve. Franchise mode, a now-common feature that allows gamers to act as team management, making trades and signing and developing new players, can be a realistic challenge or a surreal experiment in clumsy interfaces, unrealistic AI, and hard-to-read statistics. Game commentaries can be uneven, too; the computer commentators have made incredible strides, but at times, they can prattle on repetitively or make observations that leave you scratching your head. Still, a football video game really is made or unmade on the field, and even there, weaknesses can be found by the experienced eye. One friend of this writer went to a video game expo and, denigrating the hype about the new Madden game, claimed to the EA personnel there that he could score on the brand-new product with his eyes closed. They were happy to accept this challenge, and sure enough, he took the controller, turned his back, and scored a touchdown. He used what’s known as a “money play” - a play selection and sequence of control movements that the computer defense and AI have little or no capability to stop. Certainly, realism is lacking when a play can score almost every time it is executed.

Too Many Players On The Line

Football is a difficult visual problem for video game developers. There are almost a dozen players on the field for each team at any time. No matter what your television’s resolution, only the largest screens can show all the action adequately. Most football video games leave some action offscreen, forcing gamers either to ignore or to throw desperately to outside receivers that can’t even be seen. Even Joe Montana didn’t have to face that kind of challenge.

To focus the action somewhat, a few popular franchises have sprung up, most notably NFL Blitz and NFL Street. These two over-the-top titles take the pro gameplay to simpler street-ball scenarios, reducing the number of players drastically and bringing the game camera up close to the action.

Buying The Game

The most recent salvo in the vicious turf battle for football video gamers was fired in December 2004 when Electronic Arts bought the exclusive rights to NFL players, stadiums, and teams for five years. This megadeal destroyed the mainstream competition for American football. ESPN, Midway, and Sega cannot use any of the real players or teams in their products, leaving EA with a vice grip on the ball for half a decade.

Midway’s announced that they’ll fight this with Blitz: Playmakers and/or Blitz: The League, football titles that will use fictional teams and players and feature all the bad-boy antics, drug abuse, and flamboyant lifestyles that make the NFL blanch. It’s a courageous move, and the reviews on Blitz: The League are impressive. It's the arcadey, hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners action that made Blitz a huge arcade hit when it first arrived.

But will EA be the only game in town when time runs out? We shall see.