Gridiron!


Title           Gridiron!
Company		Bethesda Softworks
Game Type       Sport
Players         1 or 2
Compatibility   All (but speed sensitive)
Submission      mckenzie@hsc.usf.edu

Review
The background:
Being both a football (Go Vikings!) and Amiga fanatic, I have always
been surprised at the lack of quality fottball computer games for
the platform.  I'd played John Madden Football and others, and while
each had a certain amount of charm inherent in each product, no one
would seriously claim the game was a real depiction of a football game.
On the Amiga the problem was especially acute because to most
Amiga users "football" became known as "soccer" due to the plethora of
European titles coded.

Don't get me wrong, other platforms have had the same problem.  Even the
vaunted "Front Page 9X" series, the PC-based John Madden version,
Terry Bradshaw's attempt, "Un-Necessary Roughness" all fail the same
test...the game feels like a combo spreadsheet-database-arcade game,
but not football.  In fact, until I played "Gridiron!" the closet to a
real football feel was the old Commodore 64 game from Avalon Hill,
"Super Sunday".  Couldn't someone make the equivalent for the Amiga ?

Well someone did.  Bethesda Softworks ran an ad for beta testers which I
answered.  Here's a review of the product.


The review:
Gridiron! takes a different approach from almost ALL other football
games.  The others concentrate on the graphics, (a recent John Madden TV
commercial focused exclusively on the different ways the players danced
after scoring TD's) while Gridiron! focused on realism in PHYSICS!
That's right, physics.  The players were merely dots...watching the game
is kind of like watching an "X's and O's" coaching diagram come to
life.  But in this game the "dots" have mass and speed components...a
Fullback with a lot of strength (i.e mass and momemtum) can break a lot
more tackles than a Halfback.  When this happens the players (dots)
actually bounce off each other the way real players do.  (Just watch the
next time Jerome Bettis gets up a head of steam and a cornerback tries
to stop him.)  Wideouts with great speed can blow by the cornerbacks,
Defensive Ends with more speed get more sacks.

So, I looked at the dots the first time I got the game and was
completely disappointed...until I played it.  Each player, while running
a route predetermined by the playbook, had immediate reactions.  It
seemed like each player had their own AI (artificial intelligence) that,
(hold on to your hats...) KNEW football, and where they should be.
Incredible.  The players reacted to the even same play repeated slightly
differently each time, dependent upon timing....just like a real player
would.  It seemed Gridiron's programmers had played the game themselves.

Ok, so the graphics are rudimentary, and the gameplay excellent.  What
else ?  Well, its very important to know that the game speeds up on
accelerated Amiga's (i.e. anything above a 7.6 mHz 68000).  On my A3000
(25mHz) I have to play at a slower speed than normal.  'Degrader'
supposedly fixes this but I have not tried it.  The playbook editor is
pretty good, and you can save 20 playbooks to a disk. You can even
switch playbooks in the middle of a game, on each play if you'd like.
The player editor can change player ratings in both SPEED and STRENGTH
(rated at 0-20 with 20 being All-Pro) and the editor can save 20 teams
per disk.

There is no league play per se, each game occurs in its own world. This
world is populated by mice...you play Gridiron! with a mouse because of
the extremely fine control the programmers have given you over your
players.  You play by selecting a player on defense (left clicking) and
you get the QB on offense at the start of each play, then switch to
receiver or running back depending upon the play calls for.  Mouse
control is excellent and far superior to joystick or keyboard control
which are also offered.  What's really neat is that the game supports
TWO mice so that your opponent has an equal control ability.

There are two known versions of the game: 1.0 loads completely into RAM
(1 meg required) and 1.2 (I think) includes three screens of animation
which require disk access...the cheesy animation screens depict players
spiking the ball after TD's and of a drunk passed out at the end of the
game in the bleachers. The animations do nothing to enhance the game,
however the revised version seems much more stable than the first, and
has a better intro.

Gridiron! will never be confused with the 3D-Nintendo-type football
games that are the rage now.  However, if you either like the retro
feel of old games like Defender, or Star Wars or even Defender of the
Crown, or if you just want to PLAY football on a computer you'll love
this.

My wish list on this would have been to include a "season" option to
play up to the Super Bowl, to have named players like "Chris Doleman"
instead of "DLE", and to have more choices to edit besides strength and
speed.  But maybe all of these would have eliminated the inherent charm
of this game...it is football.  I'll take it the way it is.




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