Year:  1990

Developer:  TOSE

Number of Players:  1-4

While the 2022 Winter Olympics were going on, we also had Super Bowl LVI that happened.  While I am a football fan, I usually don't get a chance to watch the Super Bowl due to my job.  However, the Super Bowl is a huge sporting event that gets watched by millions of people.  To finish out the month, I wanted to review a football game.  After going through my pile of football games, I decided to give NES Play Action Football a play through.  My brother and I played this game when it came out and I remember us having fun with it.  The real question is whether this game holds up in the thirty or so years from when I got it originally.

NES Play Action Football has only eight teams in the game.  Each team only uses the city name but the players on each team were accurate when the game was released.  The game has modes to play a single game against the computer or another player, two players versus the computer, two players vs, two players and a single player playoff where you pick a team and go against the other seven teams.  There is not a lot of options here but then again you really don't need a lot of options if you just want to play a game of football.  I did not try out the two player modes for this review.

Game play is broken into offense and defense.  When playing offense you pick a play and then execute either a run or pass play based on which play you picked.  Run plays are pretty easy while I was horrible at passing plays.  One thing to keep in mind is at players have an energy meter which you see after each play ends.  Substituting players out is a good idea unless you want to have a player taken out of the game due to running out of energy.  You choose defensive plays the same as you do on offense and the only difference is when the play starts you can take control of the player closest to the the ball.  The goal of each game, just like real football, is to have the highest score at the end of the game. 

The game uses a top down isometric view of the field which is different from other football games on the NES.  Graphically the game is passable with the players and the field.  The game has little cut scenes for events like scoring a touchdown, sacking a quarterback and making an interception which I thought was neat.  The audio in the game is alright but nothing that really stood out to me.  I would put this game in the middle of the pack as far as graphics and audio when compared to other football games on the NES.

After playing this game again, I think it's an alright game.  There are better football games on the NES than this one but there are also worse ones.  I felt the game play was a little slow, but that doesn't mean it is bad.  While I found passing harder in this game compared to other football games on the NES, that also could have been due to me playing other football games more often than this one.  While my brother and I had fun with this one when we were kids, I think I'm going to stick to other football games on the NES.