Super Play Action Football FI

SNES A Day 75: Super Play Action Football

super_play_action_football_us_box_art

Approximate Release Month: August 1992
Genre: Football simulation
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

How many football games let you play as high school teams? Super Play Action Football does!

Of course, Super Play Action Football doesn’t have real high schools or anything. You make your own team and play a randomly created computer team, and you still play in an NFL-style stadium with NFL-style plays, so there’s actually not much of a reason to play this mode. But it’s a unique feature that is missing from every game since.

There are also college and NFL teams to play as, and these are more fleshed out than the high school mode. But only slightly. There are both single game and season modes, and the professional side has real NFL teams to choose from. The college teams are a weird grab bag of state names and directions as teams, but there are a few really bad renames. Two Lanes? Runoverya? Fluke?

But everything I’ve written about so far is moot because Super Play Action Football is the worst football game I’ve ever played. I don’t understand why they went with the perspective that they did, the playbook is a mess, the map covers a huge chunk of the screen, and the controls are muddy and unresponsive. There’s no sense of speed when a player is running, so the entire game feels like it’s in slow motion. And, perhaps worse of all, I can’t figure out how to throw an effective pass. I know it’s possible, but I’ve only been successful once. And I don’t know what I did to make it work!

Super Play Action Football has been a wholly unenjoyable experience. I couldn’t even make it through an entire interminable game.

Tomorrow: I don’t know how much F1 ROC: Race of Champions I will be able to play before I alt-F4 F1.

2 thoughts on “SNES A Day 75: Super Play Action Football”

  1. I used to enjoy this game quite a bit 20+ years ago…before I was finally exposed to better things like Super Tecmo and MADDEN.

    I thought the college aspect was fun too; as you mentioned, yes, some odd ball names to get around licensing, yet still sound um, kind of like the school the represented. I can’t say there were too many other games to choose from for a CFB experience, so take that into account too.

    The NFL part…worst part of it all, yes. In hindsight, I don’t know why I put up with that goofy camera angle, the playbooks and the lack of NFLPA when better games were there. Maybe I didn’t have enough allowance $ ?

    1. Yeah, even though the Madden games and Tecmo’s stuff is better, you at least gotta give this one credit for being weird. Trying new things is rare in SNES sports games.

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