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[butsam]

Front Page Sports: Football Pro '96 (Dynamix) and the whole series is an absolutely incredible football game. Incredibly well-done, has a lot of features only now beginning to re-emerge in the glitzy console games.

In addition to excellent graphics for its time and a very easy-to-use interface, there are a lot of very slick features that IMHO outmatch the implementation in even modern-day console football games. I'll outline a few of the features above and beyond the standard "multi-season" mode and basic gameplay that one would expect.

There is a full-blown play editor that is capable of doing just about anything. You also can choose just to call the play from one of several playbooks, and let the computer do the work before your eyes. Furthermore, if you don't want to micromanage to that level for every play and occasionally just want the coach to choose the play, there is a very snazzy scenario editor where you can customize your coaching style to your heart's content, choosing what *types* of plays and with what percentage chance will be called in certain game situations, not just down-and-yardage but also time on the clock and relative score.

By far the coolest feature, though, IMHO, is how they implement training camp. So much better than the present-day console implementations! For each position, you choose how much of their training day is occupied in various drills. Each drill will increase one of their core statistics, but you can't possibly allocate a lot of time to all of the skills, so you have to pick and choose what areas to focus on. Are your running backs going to emphasize stamina, ball-handling, speed, or agility? So many tradeoffs to make! Furthermore, each player not only has their current stats (which you can view openly) in each area, but they also have invisible "max stats" that remain unknown. Their statistics from training will approach the "max stats" rapidly at first, then only a bit at a time up to each individual's unique max stat for each area. So each player actually has limitations, so you pay attention to how they level up and you can know if they are at or near max. These maxima can vary somewhat with age, initially rising for the youngest players, then falling as they get later in their football years. This may or may not mean their actual stats are affected, depending on how low their maximum stats drop, but the effect isn't overdone, it is reasonable.

This also means that, if your team remains pretty close to the same from one year to the next, you get decreasing benefit from always focusing on speed for your running backs in training camp or elsewhere, so there is an incentive to diversify, but if you want you can specialize.

Anyway, all of the desired features from present-day console games are there, but there are other things that consoles still have not yet caught on to. The only thing I don't recall is whether or not there is multiplayer, not sure on that one. Highly recommended!!! Very highly desired!!!

[Paco]

Front Page Sports - Football Pro '96 Season

not protected anymore, but sold Status?

I will ignore the series here since the Rule is:

ONE Game = ONE Thread!