 Snats drunk. In honor of the Super Bowl coming on Sunday, I wanted to briefly go over every single Super Nintendo American football game, both professional and college. Back in the day when these games first came out, the most important thing to me as a football fan was having real teams, real players, and seasoned stats. The actual gameplay might as well have been an afterthought. But now, are any of these games worth playing today? There's 26 games total, so let's get started in alphabetical order. Not a ton of detail, just like the Shmups video I did last year. First we have ABC Monday Night Football, and right off the bat we have a game that does not have an NFL license, so it has made-up teams, which are pretty amusing. Selecting plays is treated like Tecmo Bowl, which is okay, although you only get 8 plays to choose from. Holy crap, is this game slow. It's like the players are running through oatmeal in the field is like 10 miles long. Passing is functional enough, but running the ball is useless. I'd avoid this one, although it's pretty hilarious when you get tackled. Let's check out a college game next with Bill Walsh College Football. I have to say I admire the attempt to make the football gameplay unique to the college game. The playbook is decidedly different from NFL games. You can run option plays or a spread offense, for example. The controls are okay, running the ball is usually effective, passing can be hit or miss, and defense can actually be fun sometimes. It doesn't have real teams, instead you get Columbus for Ohio State and Tallahassee for Florida State, that sort of thing. The thing about these EA football games though, the ones developed by Visual Concepts anyway, is that the line of scrimmage turns into the big ball of humanity every play, and passes get tipped constantly, and there's just a huge mosh pit for the ball in the air. I'll get into that more when I talk about the Madden series, but it really is annoying. But even so, this is probably the best college football game on the Super Nintendo, which isn't saying much. While this particular series continued on the Genesis, which was obviously more well known for sports games and for good reason, the Super Nintendo didn't get another game in this series until college football USA 97, and maybe it's for a good reason because it's not very good. The controls are really slippery, so passing feels completely futile. You have to be dead on target to complete a pass, and the hit detection on defense to tackle somebody is kinda wonky. There is a creative player mode, so it's got that going for it, and it does have 111 real college teams, but otherwise this game just isn't as good as the Genesis games. The gameplay on the Super Nintendo just isn't as tight as it is, as the first game in the series, so I'd rather play Bill Walsh college football. Next is Capcom's MVP football. This sure seemed like Capcom could do no wrong in the Super Nintendo era, what with Street Fighter 2, Mega Man X, and the like, but this game is not near the quality of those. The controls are really goofy, the R button is the action button for everything, it snaps the ball, it selects your guy on defense, and it throws it too after using another button to select a receiver. Once you get past this goofiness, the game is not bad. The actual football stuff is pretty limited, it has real teams but not real players, there's nothing as fancy as like a no huddle offense, but the gameplay itself has held up okay over time. We hit our first player license game with Emmett Smith Football. This game has the same overhead gameplay and playbook styles as the other games you've seen so far, which by the way are all pretty much cripped from the Madden series. Although the flow of this game overall is very slow and clunky, what makes Emmett Smith Football stand out is that you can make up up to 64 of your own plays, and since the game has a battery save, you can save your own playbook, so that's pretty cool. Another thing that stands out are the voices, which are well done. This game isn't terrible, but not good either, just average. Then there's ESPN Sunday Night NFL. This game is awful. It feels like one of those games that cared way more about presentation than the actual gameplay. The appeal at the time was seeing and hearing Chris Berman and the ESPN logo and all that, when in fact the actual gameplay here is atrocious. The graphics are terrible and I could not feel less in control when playing here. Every pass is a balloon and it's a total crapshoot if the guy will catch it or not. Avoid this game. Well fury cracks me up, because the game doesn't have an NFL license, but they sure tried with the teams they made up. The Minnesota Vulcans, the Green Bay Hippos, well close enough. This game is awful though, another game where as a player you just don't feel in control at all. It feels like the game is playing you more than anything else. You pick a play, snap the ball and stuff just sort of happens. It's a little better than ESPN Monday Night NFL, but not by much. Now we're onto the Madden series, which spanned from 1991 to 1997 on the Super Nintendo. The series had a bunch of different developers over the years, Park Place Productions for the first game, EA Canada for the 93 edition, Visual Concepts for the two games after that, with the remainder of the series being done by Tupuron Entertainment. I point this out because each developer brought their own strengths and weaknesses to the table. The first two games suffer from a bad frame rate, which really makes the games run shoppy as hell, although Madden 93 has the ambulance. 94 and 95 suffer from the same problems as Bill Walsh College Football. The line of scrimmage just turns into a huge mosh pit immediately and every other pass is tipped right when you throw it. It is really annoying and it makes the game almost broken. Madden 96, 97 and 98 are the most playable games in this day and age. The gameplay is a bit smoother and the plays are actually somewhat coherent. You know, like they play out as they're drawn up. Madden 97 and 98 introduces the front office stuff, like trades, into the series, but it's seriously comical how those two in particular are nearly the exact same game with just different menus and updated rosters. But hey, if you've got a hankering for a Super Nintendo Madden game, 97 or 98 are the two to get. It literally doesn't matter which one because they're practically identical. Let's dive back into college real quick with NCAA football. I played this game for like 30 minutes and I don't think I completed a single pass the entire time. I don't know if I'm missing something or what, but this game is just not good. The map in the upper right corner is totally unnecessary. The playbook display takes forever to scroll through and the teams they picked to be in this game are totally random. Just a haphazard selection of whoever, I guess. I'd avoid this game. Then there's NFL football. This game is awful. A classic case of the game playing you rather than you playing the game. Never for a second did I feel like I was in control of anything. A good part of that is because of the horrendous graphics and framerate. But really, you just pick a play, stuff happens, and you had nothing to do with it happening. It is terrible. Now onto the NFL Quarterback Club series. There's two games here coming in 1994 and 1995. The appeal of these games are the quarterback-centric mini games that test your accuracy, distance, and running ability, among other things. It takes a long time to get the hang of these drills, but I appreciate that these games set out to do something different. There's also a series of preset scenarios set up for you to complete, like less than two minutes left, need a touchdown to win. Those are pretty cool. Plus there's goofy options like picking a quarterback in addition to picking a team. So you could have Brett Favre on the Vikings, for example. Man, wouldn't that be weird? Oh, wait. The actual gameplay here is very good. Clearly a madden clone, but executed better in my opinion. Granted, there's little to no defense in this game. In fact, there's a quick D button so you don't have to bother picking a defense. Well, it is called quarterback club, so that's to be expected, I guess. But every game is like 40-something to 30-something. But yeah, either NFL Quarterback Club game is very good, but the second game in the series just has a little bit more polish. We go from good to bad with pro quarterback. I mean, with the title as generic as that, what do you expect? The graphics are terrible, the framerate is limited, the playbook is extremely limited. There's no real teams or players and no reason to play this game whatsoever. Avoid this game. Sterling Sharp end-to-end. It sounds bad. That is one terrible title. And nobody remembers who Sterling Sharp was, but this game actually isn't too bad. It's a total madden clone, although the playbooks are way more limited. The action on the field is coherent, the game flows by quickly, and they really did a nice job with isolating sprites with blocking, instead of the line of scrimmage being one big mess. It's easy to pick out running lanes and follow your blocks. The only real flaw is that it's way too easy to throw an interception. I threw three in the first quarter alone. The passes are always picked off instead of just defended or batted down, so that's annoying. Otherwise, I really think this is a pretty good game, surprisingly enough. For a much-needed change of pace, there's super high impact, the only arcade-style football game for the Super Nintendo. This is as close as you'll get to a football equivalent of NBA Jam. You've got a screaming announcer, players getting destroyed, with the screen shaking on every tackle and helmets flying off. You've got play calls like Suicide and Your Toast. The gameplay isn't the best. It's pretty stiff, but this game is all about presentation and personality, first and foremost. Maybe it's just because I got burnt out on all the other games that are starting to blend together in my head, but I enjoyed super high impact and would definitely recommend it. Next is Super Play Action Football. Hey, this was developed by Nintendo, so it has to be good, right? Well, um, no. It's clear Nintendo had high hopes for this game. It was featured on the Super Nintendo box. What's weird about this game is that it's got the same sound font as Pilot Wings, and that really throws me off. Anyway, you can play as pro teams, college teams, or high school teams? Okay. As you can see, the gameplay here is totally different with a diagonally slanted overhead view, and the gameplay overall is really slow, and every play takes an eternity, and I hate not being able to see down field that makes passing practically impossible. The idea is to use the map on the left, but it's so awkward. Super Play Action Football is a rare case where Nintendo just got it completely wrong. Avoid this game. Finally, we get to the excellent Tecmo Bowl series, real teams, real players, stats, and a ton of game modes, and classic simple gameplay with the wide side view where you can see most of the field. The gameplay is the same as the NES games where you have eight basic plays, but with a lot of variations. The goal on defense is to pick the same play as your opponent, and if you do that, the play is stopped in its tracks. I love this style of gameplay because the football almost becomes secondary, and you become wrapped up in the strategic element. Anyway, Tecmo Super Bowl is literally just a souped up version of the same game for NES. The second game improves the graphics and expands the playbook while keeping the gameplay intact. The third game is pretty much the same as the second game, but with a tiny bit more polish. You really can't go wrong with any of these games, but in my mind, the third game is the best in the series and the best football game on the Super Nintendo, but I wouldn't blame anyone if they preferred the first game. Lastly, coming to you from the same developer that gave you pro-quarterback, it's Troy Aikman NFL Football. This is almost the same thing as pro-quarterback, just as limited, but less generic since they at least have the real teams. The camera zoomed out a bit, and the graphics are barely a tiny bit better, so this game is playable at least. It's still total crap, but it is playable. Phew, okay, that's it. That's every American football game on Super Nintendo. Here's how I'd rank the five best using only one game per series. Number five, Badden 97 or 98. Seriously, they're like the same game. Number four, Super High Impact. Number three, Sterling Sharp, end to end. Number two, NFL Quarterback Club 96. And number one, Tecmo Super Bowl III. Thanks for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.