Football Sans the Hard Knocks

Now that football season is over, here are a couple of programs that might help some die-hard fans through the next eight months or so. Neither is what we would call a computer gaming breakthrough, but both are serviceable efforts to re-create the strategy and tactics of football without the hard knocks.

Still, they are not for novices--either beginning computer gamers or gridiron hopefuls.

Both “Front Page Sports Football” from Dynamix and Electronic Arts’ “John Madden Football II” are coaching programs in which you field a team and direct its offense and defense from a library of plays. You may also devise your own plays.

Neither is easy to get into or particularly accessible--there is a presumption of considerable football knowledge--so you should not look upon them as how-to programs. One could, presumably, use either game to develop and run plays for a real football team.

“Front Page Football” is quite a sight, literally. Its graphics, which feature, for example, nine different camera views of each play, are finely detailed and downright pretty. And, considering how much memory the graphics and sound require, the game runs at a good clip even on our sometimes rickety 16 mhz, 386SX machine. At $70, it’s a bit on the pricey side, though.

(Note: This game gobbles up RAM like a linebacker eats halfbacks, so you will almost certainly need to bypass some resident programs in order to load it up.)

No one could accuse “John Madden II” of having a pretty face. The graphics and sound are Pleistocene in comparison to “Front Page Football,” but the play is comparable. The game is a lot easier on the bank account, but it has one of the more obnoxious off-disk copy protection systems we’ve seen in a while.

Front Page

Sports

Football

Rating: ***

IBM and compatibles; 386SX, 16 mhz, VGA, hard disk; mouse and joystick recommended. List: $69.95.

John Madden II

Rating: ***

IBM and compatibles; 286 or better, EGA; 386, VGA, mouse recommended. List: $49.95.

Computer games are rated on a five-star system, from one star for poor to five for excellent.