Game 432: 10-Yard Fight (NES)

In 1984, 10-Yard Fight was re-released as "Vs 10-Yard Fight" (no connection to Nintendo's VS System), a cocktail cabinet which added a proper two-player mode lacking from the arcade original, and with this addition the game rules actually resemble football instead of a weird offense-only game where you win the round by scoring a touchdown and lose by running out of time. This version's existence completely slipped my mind until I began writing this post - and I have no intention of going back to revisit it. The intended setup, with two players on either side of the cabinet facing each other, isn't something I can easily replicate anyway.

Irem's 1985 Famicom port retains the two player mode, and adds a few of its own distinctions. That said, it's still very simplistic, and if anything, even slower than the original.

I played and recorded a match with my usual sports games partner "B." In the end he didn't like the game enough for a rematch, so this video is our first and only session. For the first half neither one of us really knows what we're doing, and truth be told I didn't really know what I was doing in the second half either. He absolutely crushed me, 21-0.

 

 

We start with the kickoff, and it plays like before, only now one of the defenders is human-controlled... and if he catches you, there's no shaking him off.

The field is also zoomed-out compared to the original, containing the entire width of the field and eliminating the need for eight-way scrolling. But the players are smaller, suffer from sprite flicker, and everything feels slower.

As before, the plays are chosen for you from a limited set, but the player on defense may choose which of two men to control, and the player on offense will not know which until the ball is in play.

'A' or 'B' picks the player.

Offense strategy works like the arcade game - you position your receiver by waiting as he runs across the field until the snap. But he moves so agonizingly slowly that more often than not I just said screw it and put the ball into play, which rarely went well for me.

"B" was often more patient than I was.

Other than that, there's not much room for strategy. The player-controlled defender can certainly ruin things for you in ways that the dumb AI couldn't, but then again sometimes defense goes horribly wrong as you eat dirt trying to tackle and the rest of your team uselessly shuffles around like a Keystone Kops pickup game.

What are you guys doing?

Overall, though, gaining yardage seems much more difficult - appropriate since in the original arcade game, you'd soon reach a point where failing to gain yardage even once meant an instant game over.

"B" noted one important difference here that I never really cottoned onto. In the original game, you could shake off players by wiggling the joystick after they tag you, but here, it seems more advantageous to wiggle it slightly before they grab you. This doesn't work on human-controlled players, and it doesn't help against a dive, but when done with proper timing against an AI-controlled defender, you'll "dodge" the attack and seemingly teleport ahead of the pack. My failure to grasp this is probably the main reason I didn't score even once.

"B" shows how it's done.

I'd have given this game one more chance to see if I could manage any better, but "B" had enough and I don't blame him. So moving on,

GAB rating: Below average. Resounding 'meh' from both of us. It's limited, slow, and boring, and I'm sure it holds little appeal to players who actually like football. For what it's worth, I slightly preferred the arcade game, "B" slightly preferred the NES game, but neither of us had much fun with either version.