NFL Blitz
| NFL Blitz | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Midway Games |
| Publisher(s) | Midway Games |
| Platform(s) | Arcade PlayStation Nintendo 64 PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 Dreamcast |
| Release | 1997 (Arcade and N64 Versions) September 10, 1998 (PS1 and Game Boy Color versions) January 2012 (EA version) gamecube |
| Genre(s) | Sports |
| Arcade system | Midway Seattle Hardware |
| CPU | MIPS R5000 |
| Sound | DCS Sound System (ADSP 2115 @ 16MHz) |
| Display | CRT Raster, horizontal orientation |
NFL Blitz is a series of American football themed video games by Midway featuring National Football League teams. It began as a 1997 arcade game that was ported to home consoles and spawned several sequels. Rather than being designed as a realistic interpretation of the sport of football, like Madden NFL or NFL 2K, the Blitz series was created as an over-the-top, exaggerated version of the sport, inspired by Midway's own NBA Jam basketball games.
In 2005, following the loss of the NFL license, the Blitz series was relaunched as Blitz: The League, featuring fictional players and teams in a fictional league with slightly more realistic (though still exaggerated) on-field play and a focus on the seedy behind-the-scenes lives of the players.
The series rebooted January 4, 2012 on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. The game took the series back to the original style of NFL BLITZ, but removed the late hits due to input by the NFL.
The game was created by Midway Games and headed by lead artist, Sal DiVita and lead programmer, Mark Turmell.
The NFL paid little attention to the game's development until just before the launch. Upon watching a preview scrimmage by Turmell and DiVita, league representatives said they could not have the NFL associated with the game as it was then programmed. They said there was too much violence in the game and offered to refund Midway's license fee. Midway was eager to keep the NFL's endorsement of the game, so they compromised on some of the graphic violence and "late hits" in the game.
In the original Blitz games (beginning in 1997), all NFL teams appeared (however, the Houston Texans and Cleveland Browns did not have a team), but there were several differences in the rules to make Blitz different from standard football games. After the commercial failure of Blitz Pro, Midway did not release a Blitz in 2004 for the first time since the series began. Blitz Pro was thought to be the last NFL Blitz game; then, Blitz: The League came out. When NFL Blitz was released on the Nintendo 64 in 1998, it was referred to as "the best football game ever made" by GameSpot.com.
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