"10-Yard Fight" - NES/Famicom

Oh boy! Football! The only real type of video-game that exists. All other forms of video-games are inferior. That's why football video-games are so expensive in every incarnation. Everyone wants to play football video-games, and nobody doesn't want to play football video-games. And you know what football game they really want to play? 10 Yard Fight.

That's right, because 10 Yard Fight was a masterpiece arcade game developed by Irem, whom we've seen as the developer on the arcade originals of Kung Fu, and R-Type. And If I'm going to play any football game it's going to by the people who developed R-Type. And wonderfully enough, Irem is the developer on this Famicom port, so any horrible flaws in it are solely their own faults! What could be better than that?

I mostly joke, but 10-Yard Fight has earned a special recognition for being one of the first "modern" football games. I'm not really sure how to say what modern means in this context, having not exactly played tons of not-modern football games, but at any rate I will say from my experiences in the past, 10-Yard Fight is modern enough to play.

So let's play it.

Despite the title, you'll actually have to fight for more than just 10 yards overall.

----- Playthrough -----

10 Yard Fight is a football game, and with that comes all that you expect-- a football... a football field... football players-- really just the whole kit and kaboodle, here. Your ultimate goal is, via some means, to manage to scrape your way downfield by passing or running the ball for as long as you can without the enemy team either taking it away from you or knocking you down.

Ideally, after you have cleared another 10 Yard increment.

You can't call plays in this game as you've come to expect from modern football games. At the beginning of every down, your players will automatically be put in the same formation (on offense), and your one and only wide receiver will be walking from right-to-left across the field. Whenever he's where you want them, you can hit A to start the play, and he'll immediately begin running away from you in a straight line.

After the ball snap, you'll be controlling one of your... three quarterbacks, and the other two will simply follow along with whatever direction you move. If you press B, you can pass the ball back and forth between the three, and if you press A, you can pass down-field to the wide receiver.

Or you can just immediately press A every time and juke everyone.

On defense, you'll be played into a random defensive formation that doesn't seem to really involve a lot of logic, the players are just sort of placed around and you don't really know how that's going to be. You'll be given the choice to press A or B to select one of two controllable defenders that round, and once you're in control, you can run with the d-pad and press B to tackle, and that's pretty much it. You can also position your guy in the way of a pass and intercept (I think, anyway).

I've beaten 10 Yard Fight before and knew it wasn't going to be much of a problem, so I set it straight to Super Bowl difficulty and started playing. For the most part, things went smoothly, and I won the first match 14-0. When the second match started, I wasn't totally sure if I was playing the ending match or what, so I played that one too and won 35-0 (jeez). At that point I had decided that was pretty much all the 10 Yard Fight-ing necessary on my part.

Here's a screenshot of a field goal. I hope you're having fun.

----- Review -----

How long did I play?

I dunno, 40 minutes?

How much did I beat?
I won two matches on the hardest difficulty.

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

Well, you may not make it without a little bit of knowledge of football, though I think even the completely in the dark would realize they just basically need to run up-field. The NES controller only having two buttons makes this game pretty playable even without any extra instruction, so you don't need to worry too much on that front.

Gameplay: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel? Too difficult?

It's not difficult really at all, as evidenced by my ability to win X-0 on the hardest difficulty the first time I pick the game up in a long time. The CPU is very predictable and I think the game is probably balanced towards 2P play. Unfortunately, having no friends, there is only singleplayer for little ol' me.

It's pretty fun to get goals honestly, even if it's not really that hard, though. It's also rewarding to juke the enemy players, which requires a little bit of skill, though a lot of the times just luck.

Going "wa-cha, wa-cha!" optional, but recommended.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

Well, you can run or pass, and that's pretty much it, and when you win a match it literally just starts over. So not very deep or long.

Presentation: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

The players on the screen look alright and you can certainly tell what everything is. 

The game lacks anything that could be meaningfully identified as music, other than a little drummer march that constantly plays whenever you're running the ball. There are also various weeeee woooo sounds when throwing or kicking the ball, and etc. All in all, fine, but not very interesting.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

My dad had it when I was a kid. That's pretty much it.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

No. Even in the realm of football games this one is a little extra useless other than as a conversation piece of a mark of history. It's not intolerable, or bad, it's just very mediocre and your time could be better spent almost anywhere else.

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