Going Old School V1 - Danimal's Blog

Danimal's Blog

Going Old School V1

Posted on February 25, 2010 at 02:13 AM.

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Part of being a really old gamer is recalling the games that as a youth I spent countless hours on. Back then it wasn't about franchise modes and gang tackles it was about fun. We kept stats the way we did for our strat-o-matic games with a pencil and paper, we ran league the same way. With that out of the way welcome to Going Old School V1 the first in a series of look backs to my youth in gaming.

GRIDIRON! (1986 Amiga - My Age:20)

Considering the lack of popularity of the Amiga computer or should I say lack of marketing, many people associate Amiga Sports with Earl Weaver baseball. Many may of not even heard of one of the finest Football games made and might be surprised that this gem came from Bethesda Softworks.

Well before anyone was doing physics based games, GridIron! broke the mold. You're not going to see player models, are awesome animations because this game was animated purely with x's and o's. But the weight and strength of the players led to real physics based reactions. If you RB was moving fast and his momentum would cause the LB to bounce off that's what happened.

GridIron! was a thinking man's game, even though you guided the little x's and o's on the field. As a football player and later a coach, Gridiron was one of the first games where I felt my football knowledge mattered. Something that is lost today in the world of stick skills.

You can find GridIron! today on the internet available in emulator form. While some of you will download this and laugh, hopefully you realize how ahead of it's time this game was almost 25 years ago.

Here is a bullet list of features out of the manual from 1986, tell me if you think these would hold up today.

- Each of the 22 players moves independently.

- Each play is executed in real-time with the program residing entirely in RAM. At the advanced and Pro levels, the action will tax even the most proficient of players.

- You can set individual Player characteristics [Speed, Strength] for each of the Players on both teams; offense and defense. You control the action as it is taking place.

- On offense you control the ball carrier; on defense you control any Player you choose. With a DataDisc of NFL teams, you can even run game simulations of various teams against on another!

- Player movements emulate the realities of the playing field. Players muse accelerate to achieve full speed. A Player cannot change direction instantly since he has momentum. When Players collide, they react according to their angle(s) of collision.

BTW take a guess who published this game.

See you next time when I gush over Omni-play basketball.

Comments

# 1 stlstudios189 @ Feb 25

Old School games are a blast to go back and relive.

# 2 Da_Czar @ Apr 21

Great blog danimal. Bethesda made some great games IMHO. I missed this one as I couldn't afford the amiga. I had the commadore 64 and did my gaming on that. Always wanted an amiga though. Great read look forward to the next one.