Legends '97 Football
Platform: Saturn
Publisher: Accolade

The Basics
Imagine seeing legendary players Troy Aikman and Otto Graham face off in an incredible modern-day Superbowl game, right on your television screen. Accolade's Legends Football '97 title would have offered the opportunity to see, firsthand, how history defeats itself.

More than just a present-day football title, Legends Football '97 promised to combine more than 1,300 actual 1996-97 NFL players (and 30 teams), with about 1,000 players in more than 50 teams from three legendary years of the sport: 1932, 1950, and 1968. Each era, complete with 3D models of contemporary and historic stadiums, conformed to specific rules of the time - thereby adding the look and feel of the era to make the experience a complete audiovisual excursion. The music, uniforms, and field appearance would have placed you inside a 1968 Candlestick Park or perhaps in the middle of a replay of the 1932 Chicago Bears tie-breaking NFL championship victory, repeating the winning touchdown pass to Red Grange - or choosing to play the game differently this time through.

You wouldn't have been limited to gameplay exclusively within the four time periods, however. The most interesting feature of Legends was to be the ability to call up football players from 1932, for example, and have them play on the 1997 Dallas Cowboys or Buffalo Bills squads. It would have been possible to construct a team by pulling members from any era and have them play in each and every one of the periods. Of course, if Dan Marino played in 1950, he could expect a 33-man roster, and teammates just beginning to get used to a running game. Place Tom Landry in a 1932 game and you could watch him adapt to a 20-man roster, a simultaneous offensive and defensive role, and a heavier, white ball.

The number of players you chose from, combined with the varying rules and regulations of the different eras may have presented an endless roster of unlimited possibilities. Why were these possibilities innumerable? Because you could cultivate and train your team members. The Team Management function would have allowed you to make the big decisions (such as trading, drafting, and managing players), as the heroes of the gridiron learned through experience and actually aged as in real life (see Joe Namath). All this responsibility would have called for the game to have either a Jerry Jones-sized pocketbook to afford the best assistant money can buy or a play construction set. Since the game was to cost less than one hundred thousand dollars, the latter would have been provided. You could use the playbook to track stats, plays, and all team-management information for individual games or full-season play.

Multiple camera angles and solid 3D graphics enhanced the gameplay as the athletes spun to receive passes, dived to intercept the ball, and hurdled to avoid piles of offensive linemen. Game producer Kevin Hogan credited lots of research and the insight of team developers, who are also football fans, for the title's realistic feel and strong sense of AI, calling Legends a "smart-playing modern-day football game."

WHAT HAPPENED?
Accolade couldn't get the console license for Legends Football '97, so the game was only released for the PC.