Collection essentials #231: NFL Quarterback Club ‘96 (SNES)

Another childhood sports title here for nostalgia reasons, and I believe this might have been another one I got from Toy Liquidators in Kittery, Maine. This is also another sports game that probably isn’t especially worth playing nowadays with so many other options out there, but it is nonetheless pretty solid and enjoyable.

This is, obviously, an American Football sim that’s certainly comparable to the popular Madden franchise. I didn’t own any Madden games as a kid, but this game certainly sufficed. The modes that you’d expect from a football game in this era are here such as the ability to play a full season. You can even pick from many future years to vary up the season schedule, though I don’t think the rosters change at all. But what’s especially cool in this game is the “simulation” mode, where the game places you in the middle of what is usually a historic matchup from NFL history in the middle of the game. Some text is given explaining the context of the game and what you need to do to win. There are a few dozen of them, and they get progressively tougher, eventually requiring large comebacks. The more of them you finish, the more fun cheat codes the game reveals for further silly enjoyment. The game also boasts a nice presentation, with quality music and sound effects, stylish menus, and up-close graphics of the referee after plays with voice clips announce results like “Incomplete!” or “Pass interference!”

When playing against the computer in sports video games, a lot of the time the optimal strategy is to find a particular play that the AI just doesn’t know how to deal with properly. In this game’s case, I found it with the “Bomb” pass. The “Bomb” in football is a very deep pass that normally has a low chance of success. But in this game, I know just the way to control the receiver and push the defender back a little bit before catching the ball in a way that will almost always result in a catch and not trigger pass interference. I also find that the quarterback sneak will get you a couple yards when needed pretty much every time. For a human defender, I’ll bet there are ways to thwart these strategies, but I pretty much never played this game with other people.

There are other versions of this game for other consoles, but the SNES version has always been my favorite, with what I feel are the best graphics and sound.