At a Glance: IREM Corp. brings us the smash hit “10-yard Fight”. This game makes my nose water and my eyes bleed with laughter. It is the worst sports game I have ever played, and one of the worst Nintendo games I have ever played. It is a football game without any varying teams, defense or plays. It is a brilliant work of stupidity, a ridiculously inaccurate depiction of American football. I would recommend that you download it just to make fun of it. It certainly gave me hours of fun and frustration.

Platform: NES (Download Emulator here - 192k)

Download: Download ROM here - 16k


Just keep pilin' 'em on!Game Plot: Considering that this is a football game, there is no plot except to score a touchdown, which you do while hopping up and down like a crackhead with withdrawal symptoms. However, scoring becomes something of a taxing effort, considering that you only get one play. That’s right, the same play, over and over again. One guy goes out for a pass, and everyone else stands around like morons hoping someone will run into them. The other team is too smart for this, though, and runs right past all of your defenders while they tie their shoes. In your only play, the wide receiver runs out in a straight line with his arms up and waving to make sure you can see him. If you decide to pass it, you better be sure there aren’t any members of the other team in the way, because they will intercept it no matter how high it is off the ground. Jumping twenty feet in the air, they will catch the ball, and perform a tango in celebration while the ref waves his arms. However, since you can’t play defense in this game, you simply get penalized twenty yards. 

I always end up running with my quarterback. This, again, presents problems. First of all, your incompetent linesman can’t hold their men, and they always break away, chasing after your runner like a skid row pimp after a cheap whore. Secondly, everyone on the opposite team is hopped up on steroids (hence the super jumping) and can run much faster than any of your players. When they catch up to you (and they always do), they will come down on you like a car radiator and proceed to gang rape you for two minutes while the ref hustles out of the can to call the play dead. This wouldn’t be a problem except that you only get sixty minutes to play in a half, and minutes pass every two seconds. Also, as the game progresses, the halves get shorter and shorter. By the end of the game, you must get a first down on every play to keep going (this adds time to the clock). The game isn’t based around a football score per se, but it is based around a video game score (i.e., 1500 points for an extra point, 500 for a completed pass, etc.). This makes sense, really, since your opponent never has a chance to score. If a football game ever had a plot, this game is as far from that as it could be.

Get down!Weapons: You get two: the football, and the pocketknife you will use to give yourself a colonoscopy after playing this game.

Enemies: The enemies in this game are the nefarious Other Guys. They do a little jig when they intercept a ball, and can run twice as fast as any man. They are a worthy foe indeed.

Number of Levels: There are four “levels.” When you beat high school you move onto college, and from college you go to pro, and then you play the “SUPER” level. They are supposedly increasingly difficult, but the only difference is the timer and their costume designer.

Number of Bosses: The only real boss in this game (if you could call it that) is the Super Bowl team you play at the end. However, they are just like every other team except insanely fast.

Defining Moment: The first time I face the SUPER team, I made a long pass to my receiver. They caught it when it was only half way to him, and the ball must have been twenty-five feet in the air. I realized then, and only then, that this game truly does eat testicle pubes.

Graphics-10
Gameplay-7
Story-8
Sound-8
Fun-4
Overall-37

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Brotz (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)

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About This Column

The Rom Pit is dedicated to reviewing the most bizarre and screwed up classic console games from the 1980's, the ones that made you wonder what kind of illegal substances the programmers were smoking when they worked on them. Strangely enough, the same illegal substances are often necessary to enjoy or make sense of most of these titles. No horrible Nintendo game is safe from the justice of the ROM Pit.

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