Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

JohnH19 wrote:

NWebster wrote:Paper and cards. I loved Stats Pro Football by Avalon Hill.

I'm also a board game guy. Off the top of my head, I have APBA, Strat-O-Matic, Statis Pro, TSG1, T.H.E., Paydirt/SI Pro Football, Fran Tarkenton's Game/Vince Lombardi's Game/Be A Pro Quarterback (different editions of the same game but the Tark game had beautiful much higher quality components), Canadian Pro Football, 21-Zip, and Booth's Pro Conference in my collection...not to mention multiple seasons of most.

My friends and I replayed the full 1972, 73 and 74 seasons on Vince Lombardi's Game back in the day. A simple, but mostly realistic, game that played smoothly. It was somewhat similar to Paydirt except you had 23 offensive plays and 8 defensive calls to choose from, rather than only 9 and 6.

The 23 offensive plays were broken down to inside and outside runs, draw plays, screen passes, and short, medium and long passes, each to individual running back and receiver positions. Each player on every team was rated in the advanced version but I preferred the intermediate version where I would rate each team's effectiveness on each individual play. The play rating was usually 6 (weak), 7 (average), or 8 (strong). The intermediate version of the game gave each team's defense one overall rating, again usually 6, 7, or 8, but I split the rating into effectiveness against the run and pass so a team strong against the run but weak against the pass would have an 8/6 rating. The offensive play rating would compare to the applicable defense rating on each play to see if an up or down adjustment of the dice roll is required and the defensive call impacts the level of success the offensive play can have.

Games only took about an hour which is pretty quick for a board football game. Thankfully, I still have the records of all of the game scores from the three seasons. After 40+ years I can still remember playing a few of the more memorable games with fantastic finishes when I see the scores.

I may have had electric football one time. It was a terrible game. I noted that I may have had it. It was either that I played it one time at someone else's house and realized it sucked and I never asked for it or I was given it as a gift and played it once and then put it in my basement or closet to accompany other colossal waste of time toys and games.

ChrisBabcock wrote:

I may have had electric football one time. It was a terrible game. I noted that I may have had it. It was either that I played it one time at someone else's house and realized it sucked and I never asked for it or I was given it as a gift and played it once and then put it in my basement or closet to accompany other colossal waste of time toys and games.

I hated it too. You couldn't control the players. The electricity just sort of randomly moved them around. A friend of mine had it and he always wanted to play.

lastcat3 wrote:Wasn't Tecmo Super Bowl the very first game where you could play a full seasons schedule and stats were kept? As far as I know all games before that just allowed tournament play but no seasonal play was available.

lastcat3 wrote:Wasn't Tecmo Super Bowl the very first game where you could play a full seasons schedule and stats were kept? As far as I know all games before that just allowed tournament play but no seasonal play was available.

Mark Durr wrote:

lastcat3 wrote:Wasn't Tecmo Super Bowl the very first game where you could play a full seasons schedule and stats were kept? As far as I know all games before that just allowed tournament play but no seasonal play was available.

That's right -- the game cartridge had a small watch battery inside that saved season stats even when the cartridge wasn't loaded into the console.