10-Yard Fight (NES) Quick Review
I am personally excited finally getting to play this game, as well as review it. When I first heard about this one I got intrigued, the thought of a football game on the original Nintendo? Seemed crazy to me and I figured it couldn't possibly be good. I was lucky enough to get this in one of my recent VGM boxes, so I finally decided to throw it in and see if my original assumption was right.
The Good
- As Realistic As NES Football Can Be. Obviously an NES football game isn't going to be perfect, especially when you're living in the modern world of gaming and are going back two decades to play this one (it came to NES in 1985!). But all that considered, this thing is damn good. You've got nine players on your side (including the one you control), you get to play offense and defense, for a football game that only has two buttons and a D-Pad, this one does a great job of bringing the sport to a home console.
- Hidden "Career" Mode. So when you first dive into a game, you have to select the difficulty level of your opponent. There's five levels ranging from High School (Easy) to Super Bowl (Hardest). What the game doesn't tell you is after completing a "full" game (the clock is set for 30 minutes in each half but it's massively sped up), if you come out the winner, you'll automatically shuffle up a difficulty level and be tossed into another game. A really cool feature, especially on a console when most games boot you back to the main menu whether you win/finish or lose/die.
The Bad
- Locked In Defense. When you play on defense, before the play begins, you are given an option to pick between two players to control for the play. Once play starts, you are only allowed to be that player. What's annoying about this is the two options you get are usually on opposite sides of the play (left or right side of the field). So if you pick the player on the right side, and your opponent's play starts moving left, you're forced to try to get your guy to book it laterally across the field to help with stopping the play. The thing that makes this even more annoying is once you're locked in, it doesn't matter what button you use because A and B both are your tackle. What would've been nice is a feature where B is the tackle button for the B player and A is tackle for the A player, and you can control both, or even make one button tackle and the other button switch players.
- Horrible Punt Play Call. On offense, you can choose to punt/kick the ball whenever you want. Chances are you're going to do it even when you don't want to. The way you call a kick is by holding down on the D-pad when you take the snap. The problem? If you're trying to get a small jump on getting your quarterback moving when the play starts, you're going to trigger a punt. Trust me, it'll happen. Happened to me a handful of times, even after I looked into why my guy kept going to kick when I didn't want him to.
- Play Stops After Interception. Now, I can see why this one might happen. The game is set-up so offense is always traveling up on the screen. So an interception would cause the game to have to flip or spin around, which might not have been an easy thing to program at the time. So this isn't a massive fault within the game, it just kind of sucks that you get the jump on the play, intercept the ball, and it just stops right there.
Is it Worth it?
Can you handle the fact that this game doesn't play like modern day football games? If you can, then you will love 10-Yard Fight. It looks and plays really well, and this thing is hard to turn off once you get going. You won't be satisfied until you've beaten at least one team. However, if you get too hung up on the fact that the graphics are heavily dated, or that the controls are extremely simplified, this one might be more frustrating than it is fun for you. If you're one of the ones that wants to pick this one up, a loose cart can be fetched for under $5 and if you want to tap into your inner collector, a CIB copy will be closer to $20. Either way, it's most certainly going to get you your money's worth.
The Good
- As Realistic As NES Football Can Be. Obviously an NES football game isn't going to be perfect, especially when you're living in the modern world of gaming and are going back two decades to play this one (it came to NES in 1985!). But all that considered, this thing is damn good. You've got nine players on your side (including the one you control), you get to play offense and defense, for a football game that only has two buttons and a D-Pad, this one does a great job of bringing the sport to a home console.
- Hidden "Career" Mode. So when you first dive into a game, you have to select the difficulty level of your opponent. There's five levels ranging from High School (Easy) to Super Bowl (Hardest). What the game doesn't tell you is after completing a "full" game (the clock is set for 30 minutes in each half but it's massively sped up), if you come out the winner, you'll automatically shuffle up a difficulty level and be tossed into another game. A really cool feature, especially on a console when most games boot you back to the main menu whether you win/finish or lose/die.
The Bad
- Locked In Defense. When you play on defense, before the play begins, you are given an option to pick between two players to control for the play. Once play starts, you are only allowed to be that player. What's annoying about this is the two options you get are usually on opposite sides of the play (left or right side of the field). So if you pick the player on the right side, and your opponent's play starts moving left, you're forced to try to get your guy to book it laterally across the field to help with stopping the play. The thing that makes this even more annoying is once you're locked in, it doesn't matter what button you use because A and B both are your tackle. What would've been nice is a feature where B is the tackle button for the B player and A is tackle for the A player, and you can control both, or even make one button tackle and the other button switch players.
- Horrible Punt Play Call. On offense, you can choose to punt/kick the ball whenever you want. Chances are you're going to do it even when you don't want to. The way you call a kick is by holding down on the D-pad when you take the snap. The problem? If you're trying to get a small jump on getting your quarterback moving when the play starts, you're going to trigger a punt. Trust me, it'll happen. Happened to me a handful of times, even after I looked into why my guy kept going to kick when I didn't want him to.
- Play Stops After Interception. Now, I can see why this one might happen. The game is set-up so offense is always traveling up on the screen. So an interception would cause the game to have to flip or spin around, which might not have been an easy thing to program at the time. So this isn't a massive fault within the game, it just kind of sucks that you get the jump on the play, intercept the ball, and it just stops right there.
Is it Worth it?
Can you handle the fact that this game doesn't play like modern day football games? If you can, then you will love 10-Yard Fight. It looks and plays really well, and this thing is hard to turn off once you get going. You won't be satisfied until you've beaten at least one team. However, if you get too hung up on the fact that the graphics are heavily dated, or that the controls are extremely simplified, this one might be more frustrating than it is fun for you. If you're one of the ones that wants to pick this one up, a loose cart can be fetched for under $5 and if you want to tap into your inner collector, a CIB copy will be closer to $20. Either way, it's most certainly going to get you your money's worth.
