A series of American Football games by Nintendo and developed by TOSE.
The first game, NES Playaction Football was released for the NES in 1990. The game features eight teams loosely based on NFL teams, but are not referred to by name, as they didn't have the full NFL license, the game however did acquire the rights from the Team NFL players union, so familiar NFL players appear in the game. The game has an isometric view and is presented at a psuedo-3D angle and features voice clips. This version was also released for the Game Boy.
A sequel, Super Playaction Football was released for the Super Nintendo in 1992, where the gameplay was mostly improved, but has the full NFL license, with all 28 teams (at the time), but not the license from the Players Union, so the players are mostly nameless, and known only by their jersey numbers. Super goes the extra mile by featuring College/NCAA as well as High School teams.
Playaction Football contains examples of:
- The Cameo:
- Nester appears as a sportscaster in the NES game, during the halftime and post-game.
- In Super during the coin toss, Mario appears on the coin representing "heads", with a Raccoon Tail on the other side, representing "tails".
- Character Customization: Super has one of the earliest instances of a "Create-A-Team" mode in Video Games. If you choose High School teams, you can change the colors of your teams uniforms. Of course, with this being 1992, the customization quite limited and rudimentary, with only a select few colors to choose from for your helmet, jerseys, and pants. It's still impressive for its time, however.
- Writing Around Trademarks:
- NES had the rights to the NFL Players Association, meaning they could use player likenesses, but not to the actual NFL teams and their logos, so they are only vaguely represented as "Los Angeles", "San Francisco", and "Chicago".
- Super had the opposite issue. They could use the NFL teams and their logos, but not the players themselves. So all of the NFL players are represented by their numbers. The same goes for the College teams, whom are referred to by name and nothing else.
