Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

By Mark W. Kaelin October 6, 2006, 12:44 AM PDT

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In 1985 I was just getting out of college and just starting my love of computer games. NFL Challenge was one of my first IBM Clone games. It is one of the best examples of a text-mode game ever. Unfortunately, the development of text-mode games has become a lost art.

In 1985 this splash screen was probably very impressive.

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While all the NFL franchises are represented, the cities where they play have changed for several. For example, St. Louis has the Rams and Phoenix has the Cardinals.

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Choose your teams then flip the coin. You could choose to play another human, the computer, or you can have the computer play both teams. Not much fun that way, but you could do it.

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I’ll say Heads this time.

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Heads it is. The Bengals elect to receive.

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You can keep the default starting roster or you can make changes — you are the coach. The rosters are simple text files with categories of data. The game is old so it is a roster from 1984.

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The grid iron never looked better.

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There are plenty of plays for both offense and defense. Offense can run the shotgun, the option, or the 2 yards and a cloud of dust fullback dive. Defensive plays include man-to-man, blitzes, zone coverages, and nickel packages. But you have to learn the playbook.

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Sorry about the next few screenshots. For some reason, I could not capture the plays as they ran. The capture sofware only picked up the ASCII and ANSI characters. Like I said, text-mode gaming is a lost art.

The play is about to start — the teams are in position.

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The results of the play. It’s close to a first down.

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Wait — there’s a flag on the play. Game events have to be read – no Al Michaels or John Madden to tell you what’s going on.

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And on to the next play.

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Finally a score! Even if it is just a field goal.

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You can still find old games like NFL Challenge on the Internet. This is the text-mode.com site.

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By Mark W. Kaelin

Mark W. Kaelin has been writing and editing stories about the information technology industry, gadgets, finance, accounting, and tech-life for more than 25 years. Most recently, he has been a regular contributor to BreakingModern.com, aNewDomain.net,

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