website/content/software/football.md

title, tags, years, params

title	tags	years	params
Football	american football sport	1972	image specs screenshots machines company oc_id source /media/museum/software/football.jpg label value year of release 1972 label value companies Magnavox label value type game label value media cartridge label value systems Magnavox Odyssey label value number of players 2 players (versus) title subtitle text image /media/museum/software/football.jpg title subtitle text image cartridge #3 /media/museum/software/magnavox_odyssey_cart3.jpg title subtitle text image cartridge #4 /media/museum/software/magnavox_odyssey_cart4.jpg title subtitle text image playing cards /media/museum/software/magnavox_odyssey_football_cards.jpg title subtitle text image Scoreboard /media/museum/software/magnavox_odyssey_scoreboard.jpg title subtitle text image Game board field /media/museum/software/magnavox_odyssey_football_board.jpg /museum/magnavox-odyssey /companies/magnavox 342 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230324065155/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/software_detail.asp?id=342 2023-03-24

Football for the Magnavox Odyssey is of course the first American Football videogame ever.

Extract from Chronogamer review:

"Football is more of a "football abstraction". It's as if the game is asking you to pretend that you are playing a football simulation. It includes an overlay, a game board, about 40 cards, a football marker, and a yardage marker and utilizes no less than three of the pack-in Odyssey carts. You use the included gameboard to keep track of where the ball is. There's a table printed on the board to help you figure out the yardage results of plays based on cards drawn and dice rolled. This game is 95% boardgame and 5% videogame. I actually thought that would be part of its charm.

At the start of a "play", the player in possession of the ball chooses a play (pass, run or punt) and the other player tries to guess which one they picked. If the defensive player guesses correctly, the offense suffers a penalty on any yardage gained after a successful play. The yardage gained is calculated depending on a drawn card and the point which the Ball Spot exits the screen (top left, middle left, bottom left or out of bounds at a certain point). Some cards will have special events like "breakaway" or "the bomb" to indicate very successful plays with appropriate yardage gains. In "gameplay" these "plays" are more or less exactly what we were doing in Tennis and Table Tennis - using "ENGLISH" try to wiggle the Ball Spot past your opponent's Player Spot. "Run" is a little different. It involves moving your whole Player Spot past the defense. If your running square hits the defense square, one of you disappears! This represents a tackle, but feels almost exactly like a square on the TV disappearing."