Lost Classics: NFL Blitz (Arcade, PS1, N64)

Like football? Hate how overcomplicated it can be? Then Midway has the game for you: NFL Blitz. Blitz did for football what their previous ‘extreme sports’ series, NBA Jam did for basketball: strip out all of the grunt work and concentrate on the big hits, big passes, and over-the-top action fans love about the game. No stats to fudge through, no back-office politics to worry about, no contract negotiations to wade through, you just pick your team, hit the field, and play through 4 quarters of smash-mouth football, just the way God intended.

Like NBA Jam, Blitz takes several liberties with the rules. First of all, the teams were made of only 7 players, as opposed to 11 on 11 in actual football. Also, backs and receivers have some very flexible positions. Wide recieivers frequently ran the ball and sometimes even threw passes, while defensive backs could either pass rush or cover the backfield. Players frequently pulled off moves that were next to impossible in real life, such as quarterbacks throwing passes covering the whole field, defensive backs leaping over linemen, and wide receivers preforming John Woo-style dives to catch the ball. The most extreme change of all however, were the late hits. Not only were they allowed, they were practically encouraged. Players didn’t just bump each other around either. They took each other down using grappling moves, piledrivers, and suplexes, making this more akin to the WWE than anything you see on TV Sunday afternoon. Of course, after fulfilling certain requirements, your player would burst into flames, rendering him invisible. Finally, just like in NBA Jam, there were hidden codes to discover. Two of which allowed you to take to the field as Mortal Kombat’s Raiden and Shinook.

Sadly, later installments of the series would slowly strip away Blitz’s over-the-top gridiron action, due to the NFL’s assistance on the developers following certain guidelines when dealing with their product. 2003’s NFL Blitz Pro was a particularly low point for the series, as the simulation-like game elements it featured took the series far away from Blitz’s fast-paced action. Thankfully, EA’s monopoly of the NFL license turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Midway. No longer being restricted by the NFL, Midway was able to revive the series with Blitz: The League. The League (and its sequel) presented a gritty, no-holds barred style of football, complete with all the profanity-laced trash talk, drug use, and seediness that an NFL license wouldn’t allow them to show. Even so, not even the League could top the excitement of the original NFL Blitz. It was this series debut that displayed football in its purest form: two teams of athletes line up on a field, then proceed to knock the crap out of each other in an attempt to move a ball up and down a 100 yard field. To this game, few sports games, realistic or not have had yet to give players that same feeling.