The History of Football Games

he story of sports gaming is the story of football gaming. Ever since the console and computer games industries got off the ground in the later 1970s, developers have been trying to build a better football title. No other sport was given the attention granted to the gridiron game. Even baseball, the national pastime for nearly a century and an apparent natural to be reenacted on a TV screen or computer monitor, lacked the prestige of its younger brother.Part of this was due to the way that the National Football League surged in popularity at the same time as the video game era dawned. Thanks to the efforts of commissioner Pete Rozelle and innovations like ABC TV executive Roone Arledge's Monday Night Football, the NFL was enjoying an unprecedented explosion in public support. So when the Atari 2600/Video Computer System (VCS) and Mattel's Intellivision brought video games to our living rooms in 1977 and 1979, respectively, there was really only one sport that people wanted to play on them. The idea that those little black boxes would be able to drag Sunday afternoon and Monday evening through the rest of the week was a huge selling point for the console systems. Of course, reality didn't quite match expectations. Gameplay was generally very crude, even by the lowered standards of the time. In 1978, Atari's Football for the 2600 employed three-man teams consisting of players who looked like washing machines and a field that filled a single screen. You could call plays on both sides of the ball, but only basic ones that shifted receivers and backs from one side of the field to the other. Intellivision's NFL Football arrived a little more than a year later with more sophistication, boasting five-man squads with players who had moving arms and legs and the ability to use elaborate formations. There were serious drawbacks, however, most notably molasses-slow animation and the complete absence of artificial intelligence that made two players a necessity. When the Commodore 64 became fashionable as a gaming machine in 1984, football game development kicked into high gear. These early computer football efforts were generally more complex than their console cousins, even simplistic fare like Gamestar's On-Field Football. Some could still be categorized as rather advanced simulations. 4th and Inches from Accolade was published in 1987, yet it remains playable today as an arcade experience with a little bit of depth. Design evolutions, along with advancements in technology and programming skill (a lot more could be jammed into an Atari 2600 cartridge in 1984 than in 1980), were increasingly seen through the end of the decade on both consoles and computer systems. Tecmo released Tecmo Bowl for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1988, kicking off a sensation that lingers to this day. The smart, fun gameplay spawned a sequel, Tecmo Super Bowl, that is now 10 years old but is still being played in online leagues. A pinnacle was reached in 1989 with Cinemaware's TV Sports Football. It was jammed with more features than any of its predecessors. Full season play, coaching mode, and playbooks that varied from team to team made it the template for everyone else to copy. Good or bad, football games were popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Even though they were simplistic in comparison with the real thing, football titles asked more of the gamer than those depicting the other big three North American sports. Being required to outwit your opponent as well as outplay him provided football gaming with an added strategic element that couldn't be matched by baseball, basketball, or hockey. Playcalling may have been rudimentary, but it was still there, and it gave players an extra dimension that was more interesting than the simplistic arcade challenge of hitting a ball, sinking a basket, or scoring a goal. It may be strange to think of a small playbook and stick-figure players as being representative of any great depth, but they seemed almost unbelievably refined in comparison with their rivals. Over the following pages, we look back at those early days, tracing the evolution of football as console video game and computer simulation. This piece concentrates on the major football titles of the past, although reference can be found to lesser-known works. For example, all of the football games produced for the Atari 2600 can be found under the main heading of Atari's original Football. Regardless of status, most of the games themselves are now no more than nostalgia pieces. Some can still be entertaining diversions--something that was proven during the extensive research that went into this article--and all serve to show how far we have come since 1978. Those too young to have experienced these games firsthand would do well to read on before they complain too much about comparatively minor problems with today's games.