Anyone Else Excited About Dirty Pigskin?

[FrostbayneAucti]

Looks like mutant league football to me. Any ideas on a release date?

[jro]

Seems like Sammy is playing this one awfully close to the vest. But then, until the really big titles start coming out, like MS 6, NBC, and Sam Spirits VI, I would guess that the non-AAA titles will just trickle out without much fanfare.

I'd also really like to learn what the release date is, I'm about ready for a new ATW cart.

[Zero Satori]

BUMP FOR AN EPICALLY OLD THREAD! :buttrock:

I'd never even heard of this game until a few days ago, where I popped-into a local joint and they had this game lined-up. I was both impressed and angered by the game itself, and wanted to know what others thought of it. But it seems like information on the game is scarce; very few websites have any information beyond it being on a list of games released on Atomiswave. So in lieu of any other source, I thought it might be fun to run-down the basic look at the game.

- For those interested, the game is most-similar to the popular NFL Blitz series, where small-manned teams go head-to-head on the gridiron.
- The teams are all themed toward a strange and often imaginative character set; there's a team (Wolf Pack?) wearing blue highlander paint and has an ogre and such, a team of gangsters, one of convicts, one of zombies and the undead (some with giant holes in their chests or peg-legs), one of professional wrestlers, and one of "regular" gridiron players. (I may have missed one.)
- The fields are all different depending on the home team, and are as original as the teams. For instance, the pro wrestlers' field is surrounded by a steel cage; the undead group has a graveyard in the background. Little differences like the undead field having a rugby-style "U" uprights instead of the normal ones are nice.

- Controls on the dedicated cabinet had football-shaped sticks, which look and sound cool, but ultimately are clumsy and imprecise.
- The version I played was one-on-one; there was no option to cooperate. I have heard that there was also a four-player version.
- The object of the game is, simply, to complete a season and compete for the championship. Play five games, win or lose, and you go to the championship game. Between games, the intermission screen shows the order of team match-ups and the player's overall scores.
- The game doesn't keep records via initials or names, so once the player stops pumping quarters into the machine, it's all over.

- There are four buttons on the panel--"Start," "Switch Player (blue)," "Jump/Tackle (red)," "Power," and a yellow button (I can't remember). =(
- Both offence and defence only have about three plays per team. I'm not joking. The "power" button will "flip" the play on the vertical axis. The nice part is that each team has completely different playbooks, and each play has a themed name (like "Professional Hit" for the gangster team, for instance).
- The offence snaps the ball using the red button, and immediately the two receivers are marked by either "blue" or "red," each of which corresponds to a button on the panel.

- Instead of NFL Blitz' style of arcade-styling by switching who to pass-to using the joystick, the game uses icon passing; always two receivers per play.
- The offence only has four downs to score a touchdown. There are no first downs beyond that.
- For what it's worth, I never saw someone shrug-off a tackle. It's all or nothing.
- A unique difference is that the player gets 7 points for a receiving touchdown and only 6 points for a rushing touchdown (which can really only be done by running with the quarterback). There are no chances for "extra points."
- On that note, the game has been streamlined so there's no kicking. The offence simply gets the ball on their own 20-yard line after a score.
- On the machine I was playing, each game would last four minutes of clock-run time. This may be changeable via operator settings, but the in-game graphics lead me to believe that there's only one period of play per game (i.e. no "quarters" or "halves").

Overall, my impression of the game was very, very mixed. I was initially attracted by the creative designs of the characters and how, after every single play, a detailed facial portrait would show a statistic for either the receiver or tackler. No two faces were used twice, and that's really cool. However, the gameplay was annoying; the computer would intercept passes like a madman, and with only four plays to march the whole field, there's little room for anything BUT big-plays which practically kills the running game. The hit-boxes for tackles are VERY small, and there's no sense of the computer "guiding" a tackler toward a nearby player, which is very frustrating for an arcade game. One small quip is that, unlike the similar NFL Blitz, there's no after-play taunting or tackling, which makes for good fun.

Recommendation?--Try before you buy, and even then... :tickled:

[jonny419]

Recommendation?--Try before you buy, and even then... :tickled:

you played this just recently? i always thought it was prototype only as i've never seen or heard of one for sale even.

[Zero Satori]

you played this just recently? i always thought it was prototype only as i've never seen or heard of one for sale even.
Yeah, no joke--at a Chuck E. Cheese's here in Northern California. :buttrock: I'm not sure if the "prototype" idea is 100% true, but given the general lack of information regarding the game on the Internet, I can't push it aside, either. The game itself worked perfectly in all aspects and I never even noticed so much as a strange flicker during a few hours of play. If it were a prototype, then it probably was a fully-completed version, and the dedicated cabinet itself almost pushes the idea over the edge. It could be that the game was simply produced in a small quantity; that could be the answer.

[loegan43]

I'm going to go with small quantity as I've seen it at a local CEC as well. I saw it at the CEC in Moreno Valley here in Southern California. It was in an Atomiswave 2 player upright and had the football joysticks as well. Wanted to try it out, but I was there chaperoning some kids for a 3 year olds birthday party. :(