PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous
PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega
GENRE: Sports
RELEASE DATE: 04/29/87 – (JP), 07/87 – (US), 1987 – (EU)
Football games sucked until Tecmo Bowl. The perfect blend between arcade action and simulation, Tecmo Bowl told all other football games to go home and be family men. Name one even decent football game that emerged before Madden other than Tecmo Bowl. You can’t, because there are none. This statement is coming from someone who dislikes football, granted, but deep down, even long time gamers/football enthusiasts know it to be true.
With that being said, we come to Great Football, Sega’s cautious, confusing entry into the world of virtual pigskin that arrived two years prior to Tecmo Bowl‘s 1989 NES debut. The problem with Great Football is that it’s really only half a game. Only if you’re playing with a friend will you be able to enjoy a full-length, four-quarter football game. If you’re playing by yourself, the game automatically starts you in the fourth quarter of a game with the computer being up by a certain amount of points and your team having zero points. What happened to the first three quarters, you ask? Perhaps Sega felt that a shorter football game was better than a longer one when you’re playing by yourself. As someone who doesn’t care for America’s most treasured sport, I could not agree more with this reasoning. As a gamer, this lack of content is a rip. Two-player mode proves that Sega could provide a full football experience. Why not one-player, as well?
The football contained within Great Football is about as thrilling as a deflated pigskin. While you do have two different leagues – the NFC and the AFC – to choose from, all the team names are fictional and none of the teams move slower or faster or are any better or worse than any of the other teams; no football team left behind. Your football players control ok, but they run as if they have sackfuls of change in their pocket, while the opposing team runs like they drank six Red Bulls each before taking the field. In between downs, you’re shown eight plays that cycle through automatically. Plays 1-4 are pass plays, while plays 5-8 are run plays. You pick the one you want to use when it’s highlighted, but there’s no cursor or other indication to show that the game registered your choice. When you get on the field, you basically hope for the best, with the play or without it. That being said, stick to the run plays. Passing is nigh impossible, thanks to the wonky aiming system.
A theory: Sega wasn’t very pleased with the computer AI in the one-player portion, but they knew they needed a one-player mode so they shortened the length of the football game. How else to explain both the lackluster gameplay and the dearth of content? Now, to be fair, I know Sega was more or less developing every Master System game at this point. Developers were probably working triple shifts just to make sure that crap like Great Football was at least playable. If the latter was the case, the game is a success as it is, in fact, playable – for whatever that’s worth. But it doesn’t come close to delivering on its moniker’s promises of greatness, and worse yet, it’s not Tecmo Bowl. There’s no reason at all to tackle Great Football.
D
PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous
PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega
GENRE: Sports
RELEASE DATE: 08/87 – (US)
Sports Pad Football is Great Football, but played with Sega’s underutilized Sports Pad instead of the regular Master System controller. Were Great Football a better game, this peripheral attachment may have meant something. But since the Sports Pad is a mere trackball with buttons attached and is unable to magically add content to the one-player mode or tone down the god-like AI, I fail to see the purpose of this re-packaging. Except, perhaps, to bilk more money out of consumers who thought Sports Pad Football might be different/better than Great Football. Shame on you, Sega. We were all less informed in 1987, and you knew it.
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6 replies on “Great Football / Sports Pad Football (MS, 1987)”
Sports video games are curious beasts. They are vital to a consoles library during its active lifespan but age about as gracefully as my selection of cheese…..from Christmas 2012.
They very seldom make good retro games.
Fictional teams! How is that going to coax any NFL fan to part with their cash. I do have to say I like the European cover on this one. It has a cheekyness to it. Might surprise you to know with me being a Limey but I actually played a bit of American Football when I was twelve-thirteen. My school was dabbling with it as it was increasing in popularity over here at the time. I still enjoy watching it. My first American Footbal game was Joe Montana on the Mega Drive. That was pretty decent.
I’ve heard solid things about Joe Montana Football. And I’ve also heard that Great Britain is getting more into American football, which I find intriguing. Did you play at your school on a team or just with friends?
It started off as a thing amongst mates and the school said if more interest was shown then they would consider looking in to it officially. Unfortunately while it was really popular at first thanks to the novelty aspect there was only a few of us in to it full time and the whole thing fell through. Shame, I could have been the first Welsh quarterback for the 49ers 😀
My first American Football games were on the ZX Spectrum and they were Head Coach which if I remember rightly you were the coach and called the plays and like Football Manager (Addictive Games) you sat back and enjoyed the action, the other was American Football (Argus) so if you think that Great Soccer is primitive then see what 1984 in the UK offered below 🙂
https://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0000179
Great Soccer isn’t very good to be fair, the graphics for their time were stunning to look at compared to the later day boring monochrome ZX Spectrum titles we were used to, Knight Lore , however great it is was one of the worst things to happen to that computer as from then on everyone imitated its graphic style usually to a lesser extent, so seeing the Master System screenshots in full glory was like having an arcade at home, although the games didn’t play as well as they looked but with graphics that great you would persevere to see what the rest of the game looked like.
You can have some fun with this game, it does feel a little clunky and is rough around the edges but if anyone clicks on the link above and sees the graphical quality of games I was used to playing then this sort of game certainly was the future as if you take it into context this actually was ‘Great’ as the only thing I had seen in the UK to match it graphically as an American Football game was Ten Yard Fight in the arcades.
My apologies, I meant Great Football and not Great Soccer – with football it gets confusing calling two completely different sports the same name 🙂