Sega Genesis
Released in 1993 by Electronic Arts
Grade: C-
Based on the engine from John Madden Football ’93, this one-off venture into horror movie football can provide some short-lived entertainment, but as a football game, it gets old pretty quickly.
Unlike seemingly every other person who’s reviewed this game, I noticed some key gameplay differences between this and its Madden counterpart. The camera hangs right above the action and is more zoomed in, I assume so that the detailed character designs are shown in higher resolution. While the players do look pretty cool, the zoomed-in view cuts out receivers and DBs entirely. Madden’s old “passing windows” turned most plays into a crapshoot anyway, and the limited view here makes it even worse.
Also, the players don’t move with the same looseness and momentum you get in the Madden games. They trudge forward with more weight, which is easier to control but leaves less room for unpredictable realism.
On the bright side, the pace from play to play is much faster. Calling plays is the same as in Madden, although there are fewer of them, and the interface is loaded with wacky horror decorations and sounds.
People seem to think it’s really clever how one team can actually murder their opponent to end the game prematurely, and there’s also silly stuff like little fights that break out before a play, but I don’t know, is it really that cool? After you’ve seen it once, it’s really just a nuisance.
So, yeah, I don’t really recommend the early Madden games anyway — the series didn’t get good until Madden NFL 95 — so I don’t recommend this either.
I assume EA was trying to appeal to fans of horror-themed stuff, because I’m not sure why a football fan would want to play as the Deathskin Razors and Killer Konvicts instead of the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers. In that sense, I actually think they did a nice job. The artwork and sounds are well done and give the game a unique vibe.