#34: Super Play Action Football (1992, SNES)

Interesting to think that whereas today it is considered appropriate to have separate football games for the professional and college games, at the SNES launch one was deemed sufficient. I'd dwell more on this if I had ever really touched the pro or college modes in Super Play Action Football, but I didn't. Why? Because in the High School Mode, I could name my own team and pick the colors of their uniforms, that's why.

When it comes to sports games, I'm pretty much completely a create-a-team junkie. Despite the fact that I follow professional sports extensively, I never feel compelled to control real players when playing sports games. There is just something about the fact that they are real players that turns me off - there is no room for me to invent characteristics, like playing style or role on the team, around someone that actually exists and for whom those traits are already in place. This has pretty much always been the case with me. On NBA Showdown, one of the first sports games I played extensively, I played most of a season using a Charlotte Hornets team after first swapping many of their starters with starters on other teams, then by promoting some of their bench players to the starting lineup (specifically Kenny Gattison). The result was that I was left with a squad with so little resemblance to anything real that I could then effectively call it my own. Thus Kenny Gattison averaged 38 ppg and Scott Skiles led the league in assists.

Now, while Super Play Action football may have sparked my love affair with creating my own team, unfortunately the game itself is somewhat... lacking. For starters, you have a very zoomed in perspective - fine unless you want to say, pass the football. This isn't a problem on easy mode (high school mode), but good luck spotting the open receiver in collegiate or pro modes. Yes, you have a nice little mini-map showing your targeted receiver and indicating if there are any other little dots near him - but to expect the player to be following this map while also looking for the rush is a bit much. Also, it is so zoomed in you can't even look at your receivers coming off the line to see if they've been picked up by a defender (unlike in say, Tecmo Bowl). The result is that, unless you want to see yourself get picked off a lot you'll be doing a lot of short passes, or a lot of keeping yourself exposed in the pocket. The harder difficulties also resulted in a pretty dramatic increase in the complexity of the playbooks - again, a good idea for a game that allows you to exploit these complex routes and schemes, not as good an idea in something that throws barriers in front of you on the most rudimentary gameplay levels.



Now, this isn't to say it wasn't fun to run up the score in easy mode - it was. But compared to say, the Tecmo Bowl series (of which I was unacquainted with at the time), these sorts of qualifiers aren't necessary.

Super Play Action Football
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo R&D 1
Released: August 1992
Obtained: Sometime in 1994

5.0/10