10-Yard Fight
| Developer: Irem | Publisher: Nintendo |
| Release Date: 1985 | Also On: Arcade, MSX |
Arrrgggh, why? You know, I looked at the Master System's older sports titles and wondered what they were thinking, and then, playing a game like this, I remember what they were up against originally and I have to say what they did was a heck of a lot better in many respects. This is just awful, quite possibly the worst football game ever made for any system or in any form, which is even more pathetic because the potential was there. I'd rather play an old Mattel electronic football game with the red dots on the screen than this, the latter is actually a lot of fun, even considering the technological restrictions. 10-Yard Fight is just a total travesty, it's so bad in one important area I hardly feel like writing a review. You may want to just stop reading now unless you really care to learn why and how much this game sucks, and if you care it was originally an arcade title that sucked even more.
Aw man, here we begin. 10-Yard Fight looks awful. The title screen does its job, nothing fancy, as it typically was back then, so I'll ignore that. Nothing fancy for the difficulty setting either, but okay, whatever. The game proper is another story. The game moves vertically over an endless, green expanse with hardly any suggestion of a real field. The large football helmet at the 50 really doesn't look too bad, but in general everything just appears too basic. The players definitely look like players but have almost no detail at all. Every character is the same and the jerseys never change, not like it matters since there aren't any teams to pick from. The endzones look basic, but again are enough I suppose, but where they really failed in this category is the animation. Awful. The players move with this incredibly slow, shuffling-like jerk to them that hardly fits the action of football or what I'd expect to be football. It's so painfully slow I can hardly believe it. Player movements don't seem to match up with what's going on, but in general they have been programmed well, it's just so basic overall that I can't say much more other than it's not very good. Oh yeah, there's no ending either.
As for the sound, good luck finding any. 10-Yard Fight has no opening track and one of the most taxing themes you're ever going to hear. During actual play, they added this pathetic, one sound track that's simply this odd military-like march over and over again. I believe this may have even been reused from a commando-type game called Front Line for the Famicom that should have never, ever been released, but I forget. Anyway, yeah, it doesn't fit the action nor does it even vaguely suggest any kind of fight, let alone football. There are some bleeps when a down is called and a sizzling blast of static to represent a crowd, but that's about it, there aren't even really any sound effects at all, incredibly poor. Considering how good some of the NES games were at this time in terms of sound, it makes me wonder what in the hell they were thinking when they put this together.
Could it suck anymore? Of course, my friends, of course! Have hope! Following up the sub-par graphics and worthless sound, 10-Yard Fight comes at you with the most inane programming for a football game possibly in the history of video games. I must give some credit here because this game is actually an attempt at portraying actual football and how it's played, unlike the dreadful title Great Football for the SMS. However, it's not without problems, though I must admit it plays better in some respects. Overall, though, it fails for two important features that I'll get to.
First off, you only get to play a single game, always a peeve of mine, but in addition you select from one of five difficulty settings. The game plays for blood on the easiest mode, so since there isn't really an ending you're probably good to start there and forget about the others unless you're really, really sick. Second, the play is actually pretty intuitive and easy to get into. You always take the first kick off and plays are easy to pull off, though mostly because you techincally only have one or two depending on how you look at it. Basically, you can pass to whoever is open or just run with the ball. The nice aspect here is that whoever has their hand in the air can receive a pass, just aim for them and you have it. However, I noticed the computer will almost always intercept if you pass it over any of them and it got pretty annoying. Whenever other players are trying to tackle you you're able to shake them off by toggling the directional pad, which is kind of interesting. Can't say I've seen it before or anywhere else in the 8-Bit or even 16-Bit era. Defense is pretty easy, just go for your man, tackle and that's about it. Kicking goals is just as easy and very intuitive, no problems there. They did even improve on the arcade, which only had you on the offensive, but still there are two major factors here that make this game completely worthless.
So that doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, I must admit, and did already but let me do it again, 10-Yard Fight is actually set up in a fashion that makes it very easy to play. There are almost no problems getting used to the controls, though the interception thing is a bit annoying until you figure out how to avoid it. So what's wrong? Well, the most important thing here is that the game plays way, way too slow. Your characters move at a speed where they almost shuffle like a broken movie reel, making two feet in what feels like an hour. This may not seem like too much of a problem but it hardly captures the feel of what real football is like, so it seriously effects the gameplay and makes it unbearable at times. In addition, your players are arranged in this odd square shape around whoever has the ball, blocking the defense. It looks really strange and stupid, and in fact you can usually get past every defender by ever so slowly moving to the right or the left at an angle until no one is on your tail and you manage to get a 65-yard touchdown in a single play because of this odd square thing. So that's the problem here, and trust me it's bad; too slow, and the other problem, way too easy. You'll devastate this game once you figure out the programming flaws.
For creativity, 10-Yard Fight really didn't do anything too unique with football to make it noticeable. Most people today don't even know about it and anyone who remembers it always seems to remember it playing poorly because of the aforementioned problems. Using the vertical screen that stretches back to the Atari 2600 days was probably not the best idea, but there are some features here that were different than what came before. However, it's nothing to even be bothered with so who cares? Irem may have been a fairly new company, but they could have done a little better, considering some of their later titles.
I don't think I'll ever come back to this game and I'm not even sure why I own it. There's a two player feature, but considering how many other football games were released for the NES and how many were better there's serious doubt I'd have any reason for picking this up again after completing this taxing review. As for game length, I've already hinted at it a bit, too short. Why in the hell would I only want to play a single football game by myself? I could care less about the difficulty, for the love of god why didn't anyone back then seem to get that having a tournament feature, regardless of how big, was a really, really good idea?
I'd have to say that writing this review on 10-Yard Fight was one of my most agonizing experiences. I felt no interest, no muse, no creativity, nothing as I wrote these words of mine. There can only be one reason and one reason alone, it's a game so unnoteworthy I'm not sure why I even bothered reviewing it because I doubt anyone would want to play it after I've bashed most of it into oblivion. Had I not had this weird urge to complete the NES section in alphabetical order, I probably would have tried to pretend this was never released and hoped no one cared. It deserves to be placed into the pits of video game history footnotes with the likes of Mouse Trap for the 2600. Never heard of it? Good.
| Graphics: | 2.5 |
| Sound: | 0 |
| Gameplay: | 4.5 |
| Creativity: | 1 |
| Replay Value/Game Length: | 0 |
| Final: | 1.6 |
| Written by Stan | Review Guide |
Game Freaks 365 is not responsible and does not endorse the comments posted above from registered users. We reserve the right to screen, refuse to post, or remove user-generated content at any time and for any or no reason in our absolute and sole discretion without prior notice. Items that may be considered inappropriate to post are those containing profanity, hatred, vulgar, unlawful or threatening comments.
Read 578 times.
