See The Best Football Game Return In A New Arcade System
It's on its way back!
Arcade1UP, a computer hardware company that produces arcade video games using modern components, just announced another retro-revival arcade cabinet for the NFL fans — the NFL Blitz Legends is on its way. The arcade system will feature a collection of the original NFL arcade games, bringing the football classics back in a retro-styled arcade cabinet based on the original 1997 game. You can see the announcement trailer below:
According to Destructoid, the upcoming NFL Blitz Legends arcade cabinet will feature three NFL classics, including the original 1997’s NFL Blitz, the 1998’s NFL Blitz ’99, and the NFL Blitz 2000: Gold Edition from 1999. All three versions are entirely remastered, with minor changes introduced to reflect the current NFL Player Health and Safety Initiatives, which means that some specific sets of tackles and after-the-whistle hits were removed from the game. This may pose a minor contention point for some retro gamers, but it doesn’t really take all that much from the original gaming experience.
The NFL Blitz cabinet housing itself will feature the usual Arcade1Up details, including the full side art and a matching riser. Arcade1Up actually partnered up with the National Football League to be able to feature all the football greats, including Dan Marino from Miami Dolphins, Jerry Rice from the San Francisco 49ers, Brett Favre from Green Bay Packers, Jerome Bettis from Pittsburgh Steelers, Chris Carter from Minnesota Vikings, and Denver Broncos’ Terrel Davis and Deion Sanders.
As for the hardware front panel has four gaming sports, allowing a group of friends to grab the joysticks and mash the buttons on some NFL Blitz. The joysticks themselves are of a 49-way variety, which was used by the original arcade cabinet — it recognizes positions as short, medium, and long-distance from its center position, allowing movement at variable speed and acceleration. But that’s not all. Arcade1Up cabinets use modern hardware and emulation, allowing some hardware-facilitated changes.
For example, the new NFL Blitz Legends cabinet also comes equipped with local co-op capabilities, online Wi-Fi multiplayer support, and online leaderboards. While not included in the original arcade cabinet, these changes will help keep the classics up with modern times and make the games more fun and worthwhile, even with the excessive violence edited out of the games. These changes aren’t just noticeable, they’re actually quite an improvement, and NFL Blitz Legends, though reworked, is still a really fun and addictive game.
Some fans might disagree with the changes made to the game’s original coding in regards to violent sequences being removed, branding this as a remake and not a remaster. Previous NFL games even gratified the violent collisions and other forms of violence or foul play that went unpenalized. However, the NFL, pushed by scientific studies and nearly a billion dollars in settlements, decided to stop glorifying and actively selling violence to the media and implement the same in its video games, such as NFL Blitz.
Arcade cabinets are gaining popularity, and Arcade1Up continues to release new cabinets on an annual basis. The last one we reported about was the iconic X-Men arcade from 1992, which featured character designs straight from the Pryde of the X-Men animated pilot. Pre-orders of the NFL Blitz Legends cabinet are live at the Arcade1Up website.
