Collection essentials #262: Super High Impact (SNES)

Here we have an “arcade-style” American football game from Midway, a company that specialized in that sort of thing, and would become more famous for a more successful arcade football series later in the decade. As a reminder, “arcade style” refers to less emphasis on realism than an average sports game, and more on fast intuitive gameplay that anyone can pick up and play, often with an appealing or even over-the-top presentation. With regard to that last thing, Super High Impact has a lot of cheesy, high-amusing voice clips between plays, such as the players trash talking each other saying things like “You mama’s boy!”

There’s not a whole lot of meat on the bones with this particular game, as it’s light on modes. Its biggest strength is, not surprisingly, multiplayer, as it’s a good solid choice when you have a friend over and you both want some quick amusing sportsy fun. A good game for sure, though that doesn’t quite push it up to essential status.

What puts this game over the top is a particular childhood memory of mine. I never owned this game until adulthood. But one time when I was a kid, I played it. I don’t remember the circumstances, if I was home or at someone’s house, if my family rented or borrowed it, or what it was, but I remember playing it by myself. At that time I didn’t really know the rules of American football. I think I may have ignorantly run for the wrong end zone, because this game taught me what a “safety” is. For those that don’t know, in American football the goal is to get a “touchdown” by reaching the opposing team’s end zone on their side of the field, at the very end of it. But if you get tackled in your OWN end zone, the other team gets 2 points and it’s called a “safety”. It really stuck out in my mind as a kid the memory of the coach’s voice clip yelling out “SAFETY!” when it happened, and that’s how I first learned that term. 

After that experience, I didn’t memorize the name of the game I had been playing, and I’m not sure I had even known it in the first place. But YEARS later, when I eventually saw the game again, there was no disputing that it was the one I remembered from that one childhood experience. It was rather amusing rediscovering that mysterious football game I had tried out so many years ago and learned something from. And I was happy to find that it’s actually a pretty good game, too. Just one childhood play session was enough to become a “nostalgiassential”.