ABC Monday Night Football

The Game

ABC Monday Night Football is the official tie in American Football game with the long running show of the same name. ABC Monday Night Football started in 1970 and is still running to this day (albeit on ESPN now and not ABC).

Data East getting the license for the TV show, and likeness and voice of the long running "voice of the show" Frank Gifford makes sense in an era of licenses being thrown round like sweets for video games, what's surprising is that's where the license ends, and none of the teams in the game are represented by their true NFL counterparts. Even the 92 and 93 John Madden games didn't have the full NFL license and wouldn't until the following year with the 94 release. I'd love to know the behind the scenes on it, was the license already tied up with John Madden for the 94 release when Data East started developing this? Or was it too expensive? If it was expense then why splash out for the MNF licensing, why not just go for NFL, surely the selling point would've been bigger? Who knows, and besides me, who really cares?

Gameplay

God awful…But I imagine I'll need to put a little bit more than that so here goes…Firstly when I played this game it did rekindle my interest in NFL games and remind me that I actually did quite enjoy them, normally, but this one just wasn't it. I'll get the short list of things I liked out the way first. A player and team editor, these are always appreciated in any game, licensed or not, it just gives you the freedom to build your own game and play it the way you want to with friends or family being involved, or real teams and players of the time. There are also multiple weather possibilities for the games which is a nice touch, although they didn't seem to make any difference to the game at all.

The other little touch I like is when you're tackled just as you reach your next down there's an animation where the linesmen come out with a tape measure and use it to determine whether you made it or not, and whether it's 1st down again or not. Just a couple of small visual touches that I thought were nice.

There's also the ability to save replays and go back and watch them again from the main menu if you manage to pull off a particularly good play, but that's really about it for positives in this game, and I really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel just to find those.

Moving on to the bad and I really don't know where to start. Firstly, the angle of the camera is diabolically bad, it's a really low camera facing down the field and the scaling of the sprites is all over the place, people will be as tall as goals, or as small as the ball almost.

The frame rate is awful as well, really slow and choppy, just a few frames per second which makes it such a chore to get through a single match, which I did do a few times, but that was about all I managed with the game because it just made me more and more angry the more I played. The real kicker was how unfair the game is, you have a selection of "special" plays you can use that drop you into a cut scene for either a run, or a pass. You can use one of each per game, which might be a nice touch except the pass never seems to complete for you, but always does for the computer. When the computer does complete a pass the cut scene changes to a button mashing mini game where you have to chase the computer player down and tackle them, problem is the computer instantly fills the bar up and it never drops, meanwhile I'm smashing seven shades of shit out of my controller and getting maybe one or two bars, so it turns into an instant touch down option for the computer essentially.

The run special play is literally just the button mashing mini game, so two completely impossible special options that the computer is guaranteed to win at. Even if you manage to complete the pass you still have to beat the computer at the mini game, which I don't know if I mentioned, is impossible! So it's 2 free touchdowns for the computer and nothing for you. Great.

My goal was to complete a season, and I didn't even get close, even the season mode itself was really bare bones. There are some stats you can look at for your season but you have to quit the season and go out to the main menu to see them, there's nothing within the season mode whatsoever which is just the worst design for this sort of thing.

There isn't enough content here, and what is here just isn't good enough. I think Data East grabbed a license and churned this out quickly to compete with the other 700 American Football games of the time.

Graphics

God awful…Again I should probably provide a bit of context, but I imagine the screenshots will do most of the talking here. To be fair the opening animation is nice, it's a 16 bit rendition of the intro to the show, there's a digitised version of Frank Gifford that looks alright, and the in game cut scenes are done fairly well. But the actual gameplay graphics are really bad. Teams look identical, so if you have a similar colour kit it's almost impossible to tell them apart. The crowd is just a single block of coloured pixels, no animation, just a solid block. They try a bit of mode 7 but it looks choppy and just flat out bad, besides the intro and a couple of cut scenes there really isn't much redeeming quality at all.

Sound and Music

God awful…Are you sensing a theme here? The intro music is fine, and that's about it. Crowd sound effects are horrible, the odd voice shouting touchdown is alright but horribly repetitive, and the music is almost non existent. The soundtrack has 23 tracks, and runs for a staggering 8 minutes and 22 seconds. I think that tells you all you need to know about the sound and music here!

The People

Right, so who have we got behind this dumpster fire, surely no one that went on to anything….The Sound Creator Atomic Hanada??! A literal music genius responsible for sound in some very well known titles like Joe & Mac, Windjammers 1 & 2, Daytona USA, Shenmue 1 & 2. This is slightly unbelievable, and he was either having the biggest of off days, or he left the work to the other two that worked on the sound, except they have fairly good credits as well so all I can think is it was an in joke.

The Game Designer was Ken Fukaki, and while he does have some good production credits, he had only worked design on 3 games including this one, and this was his last, so that tracks.

Very similar situation with the graphics too, nothing of note and that explains a lot.

Box art

Oh boy, here we go! Firstly the front, ABC Monday Night Football logo looks nice, and I do love the Data East logo, but the actual picture is terrible. Just a fuzzy pixelated picture of an American football, I don't know who they thought they were going to sell this to, I guess the license does the heavy lifting for that, but it's just rubbish.

Now onto the back and we have bullet points! In fact I can even start disputing it from the big bold writing at the top:

"The only thing we left out is the cooler of Gatorade" - No, you left out the gameplay as well, quite important that.

Okay, the bullet points:

• Hard-hitting graphics and play-by-play sound bring every grunt and groan to life. - Nothing about the graphics is hard hitting, and the play-by-play sound I guess is the one liners of commentary that get old before the end of the first game.
• Chalkboards of pro-designed offensive and defensive plays. - Okay I'll give it that one, they are in the game.
• "Super Play" mode zooms to a close-up of the action - Again, technically accurate but they missed out the part where it's completely broken and unfair, I guess that's not a selling point.
• 28 prime-time teams with their own personality and field prowess - Nothing about the teams suggested they had any kind of personality, like, at all.
• Relive the action with instant replay - Yup, they can have that one too.
• Monitor player stats and save them with the "Super Save Stats" feature - This is also a thing, but in its own menu in the main menu completely separate from any game mode you might be playing.
• So real it hurts! - It sure does Data East, it sure does.

Overall I give this box a rating of - Inaccurate. Just complete rubbish.

The Press

GamePro:

In this day and age of five player Madden football with passing windows, real players, and high-impact action, ABC Monday Night Football plays like yesterday's cart.

10.5/20

Video Games & Computer Entertainment:

Simplistic game play and awful control ruins what could have been an interesting game. The few novel features and ABC license are not nearly enough to save it from mediocrity.

5/10

Game Players:

Here's a gridiron sim that doesn't take advantage of its recognizable license: limited digitized voice, poor cinema screens, and no NFL or player's license…ICK!

43/100