It’s the National Football League, but on the street, dawg!
My journey through the original Xbox catalog continues, this time with an EA side project that they’d never, ever make these days. Mostly because I can only assume they’re too busy rolling around in all their piles of Madden and FIFA loot crate money, but I digress.
NFL Street is, more or less, EA trying to do NFL Blitz with the actual NFL licence of the time. That means you get real players and teams, albeit real players and teams circa 2004. Which also means all trademarks and insignia are owned by the NFL and/or licensed by EA and are used here as part of fair use, yadda, yadda, etc. Just in case the lawyers are reading.
Anyway…
As a longtime Miami Dolphins fan (you may laugh and jeer now….)
Yeah, this is taking a while…
I might go get a coffee….
Just message me when you’re done….
All done? Good. Then I’ll continue.
As a long term Dolphins fan, it’s a fascinating glimpse into a team of the past, not the least because Ricky Williams is on the cover in Dolphins gear. We’ve also got Junior Seau, which is all kinds of depressing. While NFL Street wants so badly to be NFL Blitz, it’s not quite that hard hitting, but instead rather forced “street” style with arcade overtones.
And it’s fun, to a limit. Yes, it’s quite light on the strategy, beyond the fact that you can select your team built from existing players, which means you can do some interesting balancing acts. Play as a team of defensive giants with little in the way of running or catching talent, or go all-out on offense but let the other team score because your defensive line includes multiple QBs? Either is feasible, and that’s kind of odd.
Still, I’ve got to say that the Madden games in recent years have become rather serious affairs, which is undeniably great if all you ever want to do is only play Madden. Plenty of folks do, and good for them. NFL Street is far more pick up and play style football, and that has its place.
How long did I play it for? About 30 minutes, long enough to muck around with different pass and run patterns. It turns out that Ricky Williams likes trash talking a lot.. Who knew?
Fat Duck Tech Retro Xbox Game Rankings
NFL Street is fun, but it’s not Outrun 2 fun, or for that matter going to beat out Prince of Persia. But I’ll play it any day over Spy vs Spy.
Next time: Time to get EXTREME