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After Hours

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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

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Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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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.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

nfl_challenge_a02.GIF

nfl_challenge_a02.GIF

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.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

nfl_challenge_03.JPG

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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.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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I’ll say Heads this time.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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Heads it is. The Bengals elect to receive.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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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.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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nfl_challenge_a07.GIF

The grid iron never looked better.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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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.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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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.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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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.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

nfl_challenge_12.JPG

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And on to the next play.

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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

Mark W. Kaelin

Dinosaur sightings: NFL Challenge

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text-mode_14.jpg

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

Mark W. Kaelin

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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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