also known as ''All American Football'', is an American football video game developed and released by Tehkan (later known as Tecmo) for arcades in 1985. It is a one or two player game based on

gridiron football Gridiron football ( ),"Gridiron football"
''Encyclopædia Britannica'' ...

(

American football American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...

), and was released in a cocktail cabinet form factor. The game uses

trackball A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down ball mouse (computing), mouse with an exposed protruding ball. Users roll the ball t ...

controls, used to determine the speed and direction at which the player runs. Designed by

Shin-ichiro Tomie is a Japanese game director, writer and part of Spike Chunsoft's affiliation. Since 1995, he contributes to the company with the ''Mystery Dungeon'' franchise as the main writer for the ''Shiren the Wanderer'', and ''Pokémon Mystery Dungeon'' se ...

and programmed by Michihito Ishizuka, with background graphics by his wife Rie Ishizuka (Rie Yatomi), the same team went on to develop the association football game (soccer game) '' Tehkan World Cup'' later the same year. It was also a precursor to the American football game '' Tecmo Bowl'' (1988).

Gameplay

''Tehkan Gridiron Fight'' is a two-dimensional top-down scrolling

game in which the player(s) control the virtual player on their team who is closest to the ball, with the

determining the speed and direction at which the player runs. A single push-button labeled "Kick" causes the virtual player in possession to release the ball with the same force and direction in which he is currently running. (This button is duplicated on either side of the trackball for left or right-handed players.) The Player 1 (red trackball) side contained two additional push-buttons for choosing between Single or Two-Player games. Before each play, players are invited to select from a variety of formations, e.g. "Sweep" or "Draw". The formation selected is displayed on a seven-segment LED on the player's control panel. Although the graphics are two-dimensional, the height of the ball can be determined by its growing larger while its shadow appears on the ground. Also on the side of the screen is the score and a clock which counts down to zero, the point where the current game ends.

Hardware

Two slightly different cabinet shapes were released - one with straighter edges and vertices in profile and one with more rounded edges akin to its stablemate, '' Tehkan World Cup''. ''Gridiron Fight'' used two Z80C 8-bit CPUs at 4.608 MHz for processing. For sound, it employed one Z80C at 4.6 MHz, two AY-3-8910s at 1.536 MHz and one M5205 at 384 kHz for FM and samples. Although this produced three-channel music plus sound effects, all sound was fed through a mono amplifier in the cabinet housing. As machines aged the amplifier was known to fail, resulting in silent gameplay. The screen was a horizontally mounted 20" color raster CRT monitor fed at 256 x 224 pixels by 768 colors by 60 Hertz. The game unit consists of two 3" optical

s. These are made of semi-transparent plastic, and illuminated from below such that they shine blue or red, depending on the color of the ball.

Development

''Gridiron Fight'' was developed by Tehkan. The game was designed by Shinichiro Tomie, and programmed by Michihito Ishizuka, who was also responsible for sound design, having previously programmed the sound driver for '' Bomb Jack'' (1984). His wife Rie Ishizuka (also known as Rie Yatomi) was responsible for the background graphics, along with other female staff members. Michihito and Rie Ishizuka had previously worked together on ''

Senjyo is an arcade game, arcade shooter game developed and released in 1983 by Tehkan (now known as Tecmo). The title, the Japanese word for "battlefield", is written in the kunrei-shiki romanization style. In the Hepburn Romanization, Hepburn style, ...

'' (1983) and ''Bomb Jack''.

Reception

In Japan, ''Game Machine'' listed ''Gridiron Fight'' on their April 15, 1987 issue as being the second most-successful table arcade unit of the month. Jay Carter of ''

Cash Box ''Cashbox'', also known as ''Cash Box'', is an American music industry trade magazine, originally published weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as ''Cashbox Magazine'', an online ...

'' magazine compared the game favorably to the classic '' Atari Football'' (1978), stating that ''Gridiron Fight'' updates its essential elements. He said it has "everything from full color screen action to glowing track-balls and a full selection of both offensive and defensive plays that should stir up some strong head-to-head competition when the school semester ends and the kids are looking for some rainy day challenges and excitement".

Legacy

''Tehkan World Cup''

'' Tehkan World Cup'' (1985) was an association football video game (soccer game) released later the same year, featuring almost identical hardware. It employed the same twin trackballs with an action button duplicated on either side and a similar cocktail cabinet design with horizontal screen. The primary hardware difference was the absence of the seven segment LED adjacent to the action buttons. The software of the two games exhibited a similar top-down two-dimensional window-on-the-field graphical design. Both games were developed by several of the same team members. Both were designed by Shinichiro Tomie, who was a big

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

(soccer) fan. After designing ''Gridiron Fight'', he immediately wanted to adapt the gameplay format of ''Gridiron Fight'' for a soccer game. Michihito Ishizuka reprised his role as the programmer, while his wife Rie Ishizuka worked on the character design and background graphics. The team felt the trackball controls of ''Gridiron Fight'' was complex, so they decided to simplify the controls, making it so that the player can run with the trackball and press one button to kick. This led to ''Tehkan World Cup'' becoming a major arcade hit.

''Tecmo Bowl''

Notes

References

External links

* {{Tecmo Bowl 1985 video games American football video games Arcade video games Arcade-only video games Tecmo games Trackball video games Video games developed in Japan Multiplayer and single-player video games