10-Yard Fight

I've played a bit of this game before when trying to ace every original release game for the NES. I know it's based on an old arcade game, but after watching some videos on the original, the NES version actually seems to have more gameplay than the arcade original.

Suffice to say, I don't play football. I don't watch football, I don't talk about football, I don't enjoy football. I'm fairly sure that I was not the target demographic for this game. But even so, I can't possibly understand how someone would enjoy the game. It's not that this game is too complicated or too long like regular football can be, but that it's far too easy.

I understand that some sacrifices would have to made to translate a complex game like football to the NES, but this game has removed almost all the strategy from the sport. The manual mentions that football involves "as many as 183 starting positions and as many as 133,407 plays", and nothing could be further from the truth about 10-Yard Fight. You control one player at a time and simply have to either tackle the opposing team's player holding the ball (trivial, especially considering how often one of your AI-controlled teammates will do this for you), or pass the ball either laterally or forward and run it as far down the field as you can. If you move diagonally, it's almost impossible for the opposing team to tackle you.

My primary goal in this game was to beat the Super Bowl difficulty, but I played two games in total: First, one against a high school team (the easiest difficulty), and the second against the super bowl team (the hardest difficulty). I'm sure there were some differences in the AI, but the difficulty level felt essentially the same. I also set myself some other challenges, just to see if I could manage to pull them off:

• Win the Super Bowl
• Win a shutout
• Make an interception
• Score a field goal
• Score a touchdown off of a punt

Not only did I manage all of these in the high school game I played, but I did all of them in the super bowl game as well. I'm not claiming to be an expert or a natural at 10-Yard Fight, the game really is just that easy. I'm hoping the 2-player mode is more entertaining, because I feel bad for kids who got a brand new NES for Christmas and only had this game to play on it.