The Football Video Games of My Youth

In my last post I covered some of the classic baseball games I loved to play when I was a kid.  Here's a follow up on some of my favorite football games.

1. Realsports Football 

The Atari was not a great system for sports games, but this game was my introduction to playing a football video game.  My older brother Seth and I played this quite a bit.  It was primitive, but it was the best game going at the time.

2. John Elway's Quarterback

This was far from the most sophisticated game, but it stands out to me for two reasons.  First, growing up in western Colorado, John Elway was the man. Colorado is Broncos crazy, so it was cool that the Broncos QB had a game.  Second, if you used "reverse play" or "normal play" and throw a bomb to a receiver, the receiver would become crazy fast and you could literally run around the field and use up the entire quarter, scoring with no time left on the clock.

Not a great game, but it was fun.

3. Tecmo Super Bowl

This is the best game ever made.  It takes the original Tecmo Bowl and improves on it greatly.  It is simple, yet sophisticated.  It is everything video games should be.
Some of the things that stand out about Tecmo Super Bowl are...

1. This was the first game I remember keeping stats for each game and for an entire season.
2. This was the first game that allowed you to change your playbook.
3. Player health was taken into account in how they played.
4. Lawrence Taylor was absolutely unstoppable and could block every extra point and FG attempt.
5. The 49ers were so good that it was considered cheating to use them.
6. If Bo Jackson was healthy, there was no stopping him. 
7. There was a flaw that allowed the nose tackle to dive and sack the QB pretty much every time.  No self respecting player would lower himself to use this move in a game against another player because it was acknowledge to be cheating. 

I could go on.  As stated above, this is the best game ever made. 

4. Bill Walsh College Football
(and the EA Sports college football games that followed)

I remember walking into KB Toys and seeing this on display.  I had to have it.  I saved my money from mowing lawns and plunked down what was an enormous amount of money for me at the time.  I was not disappointed.

This was the first football game to have real college teams.  It tried to mimic what each team did well.  In the original game, each team had the same playbook, but over time they tailored the playbook to be more team specific.  While many guys my age were in love with the Madden games, I always loved the college versions. 

A few things that stood out...

1. This was the first game to allow the option play.
2. The numbers matched real players.
3. There were historic teams included. 
4. This game laid the groundwork for the NCAA College Football games by EA Sports that I wasted a lot of hours playing during my college days.

5. Mattel Football

This was the first handheld game I ever played.  It was simple, just dashes that moved up, down, left or right, but it was fun.

So there you have it.  That's my list. I'd love to hear what your favorites were too.