 SEGA GAAAAA DRUNK! The more I dive into the Sega Genesis catalog, the more games I'm finding that are retroactively making me insanely jealous that I didn't get to play these games as a kid. There's the obvious stuff like Sonic, but also X-Men 1 and 2, Shining Force 2 and 3, and now there's Mutant League Football and Mutant League Hockey. Let's start with Mutant League Football. This one came out first in 1993, and since it's made by EA, the gameplay is pretty much aped from the Madden series, Madden 93 to be exact, and it plays almost the exact same way. Only the playbook is a little bit more streamlined. The main difference, of course, is that the players are all hideous mutants, aliens, skeletons, among other things, with team names like the Screaming Evils, the Psycho Slashers, and the Killer Convicts. And in a really nice and unexpected touch, even the players have names like Vomits and Slayer. Some guys are even based on real players like Jerry Rice and Lawrence Taylor. The thing is, though, the gameplay here isn't just the same old boring football. You play on ice or the moon or toxic waste, for example, and there's land mines and bottomless pits scattered across the field. All the usual game modes are here. There's multiplayer, there's a playoffs mode that sets up a 16 team playoff where you can save via password, and in each game you can set up what's called a death index, which is kind of a makeshift difficulty setting that sets up the likelihood of injury or death to players. So yeah, players can use their health or even die if they're tackled too often or too hard, to the point that if your opponent has too many players killed, they have to forfeit. That sounds pretty dark, right? Or Mutant League Football is anything but. This game is meant to be a parody of all things football. Even making fun of the dumb cliches that the players and coaches say by saying stuff like, I wanna see a much greater referee out there, I just don't want harder hits, I want major felonies. My favorite part of Mutant League Football is the referee. Either team has the opportunity to bribe the ref into making some shady calls, and conversely, either team has the opportunity to literally kill the referee at any point, although he'll get replaced by an even tougher ref. Murdering the referee? Five-yard penalty? Still first down. You see, this is a great example of a game where you don't have to know a single thing about football to enjoy it, because it can be just as simple as killing enough guys on the other team and killing the ref. And if you are familiar with football, you'll enjoy how this game makes fun of it. It puts football, something that's been ingrained into American culture for decades, into a new context that's ridiculous and absurd. And that's what makes it one of the most fun sports games of the 16-bit era, even if you don't like football. A year later came Mutant League Hockey, and yeah, this is almost the exact same game except with hockey, to the point that some of the same team names and even player names from Mutant League Football are here. And again, since it's made by EA, the gameplay is abe from the early NHL series, but yeah, there's pits and landmines on the ice. You play as robots, skeletons, and trolls, and you can freely hit and kill guys. You can bribe the ref to call fake penalties on the other team. It's the same kind of thing. There are a couple new things here, though, like the crowd tossing power-ups and other stuff onto the ice. You can replace your goalie with a demon head, and if you kill a guy, his corpse just sits there on the ice becoming a new hazard. Fights are handled in a kind of one-on-one fistfight mini-game where each player has a life bar, sort of like Blades of Steel in a way. Mutant League Hockey is fun, but it doesn't feel as fun as Mutant League Football, and I think that's because of the frame rate. Despite this game being based on EA's NHL series, the game doesn't really have the same feel to it. It plays a little slower and a little choppy. Don't get me wrong, it's still fun as hell. I just wish it played as quickly and smoothly as the game it's parodying. Anyway, yeah, you can't go wrong with either Mutant League Football or Mutant League Hockey. They're both outstanding multiplayer games that anyone can get into even if they don't like football or hockey. It's too bad they never got around to Mutant League Basketball, as it was rumored at the time. Mutant League Football is usually around 20 bucks on eBay, while Mutant League Hockey goes for more than twice that. If you're going to get one of these games, I'd suggest Football. I just think the subject matter lends itself better to Football gameplay, and the hockey gameplay can be a little choppy. But yeah, if there's a franchise out there that desperately needs a revival, it's Mutant League.