We now present to you, a butchered NFL game made by LJN.
This 1989 American football sports game, developed by Atlus and published by LJN for the Nintendo Entertainment System, is an officially licensed National Football League game, and some teams from the NFL that existed at the time such as the New Orleans Saints are listed by their official NFL trademarked name. However, due to a lack of an NFLPA license no players are named by their actual real life name.
The game features a side view of the on-field action. This game was the first since NFL Football - released in 1979 for the Intellivision - to get an official National Football League license. Intending to loosely represent the 1988-89 season of the National Football League, the game uses the teams and play formations of that particular era while avoiding usage of the players' names, due to a lack of an NFLPA license, which was given to Tecmo's Tecmo Bowl.
The player could play one of four options, either Interconference, AFC and NFC game or the Super Bowl (specifically Super Bowl XXIII). Along with the option to choose a package to play during the game, players can directly control the entire team at once. The game employs a side-scrolling system for the actual gameplay and allows players to assign handicaps to a human opponent that is not equally skilled as they are.
There's no menu for selecting plays, instead having you select by pressing A and a button on the d-pad, then pressing B and a button on the d-pad. The plays are listed on a poster and not explained in the game. Not knowing which plays you can select is unacceptable for an American football game which heavily relies on the use of specified plays from a playbook. Even if you did have the poster that would still require you to look at something other than the game or memorize it.
The gameplay is slow. It takes at least 20+ seconds to do a single play, and the football players seem to be slowed down somehow. It is also difficult to target a recipient for the quarterback to pass the ball to. The play layout that appears before starting a play in addition is unnecessary, and there are even load times of around five seconds before starting a play or a game.
This game lost to the Super Bowl overall.