Feature: All Six American Football Games On Switch (Yes, You Read That Right)

I’m really surprised, football is huge here and with all the games on the Eshop you would expect more

You’d think someone would want to port some sports games over to the switch just because a halfway decent one would corner the market

My favourite American Football game is Madden 92 on the Megadrive. Added enough on to the original to make it meaninful and 93 onwards started to do too much. (And the theme tune!!!) Randall Cunningham was injured A LOT lol. I would be happy if this miraculously turned up somehow. But alas, EA don't see their IP as just video games.

Retro Bowl is coming so that can be the 5th entry.

Nothing will ever be as good as Madden 08!

I actually love Mutant Football League, I thought I wouldn't but I had a blast playing that game and actually played through an entire season. It's sorta like NFL Blitz, but with the cartoonish violence cranked up a notch. Makes for a very fun game.

I'm honestly not that surprised. This came up a few months ago when we were talking about some cricket game - American football has significantly fewer fans than soccer and cricket do. Like, half a billion fewer. Of course it's a huge deal in the States, but it's not even in the top ten sports worldwide.

Personally I find almost all sports hella boring, so I'm playing Steredenn for Thanksgiving.

I am just waiting for Blood Bowl.

Bears fan here too, Bear down!!

Shame how there’s no Madden or NHL on Switch. Not even NHL 94 Rewind, come on EA, make it happen.

@Screen 6th

Mutant Football League does allow you to turn off the extreme hits and field hazards, once you do that it plays just as well as a Madden game.

@theGamerPad

Unless they want to count both versions of Tecmo Bowl as one.

@JasmineDragon One of the reasons for that is madden has the exclusive nfl rights for "simulation" football games. So madden has a monopoly on the american football game market. (which makes it even more baffling that it is not on switch)

@JasmineDragon okay so being American and hearing you say Cricket is more popular then (American) Football blows my mind. Could that possibly be true?

As for Soccer I can and do understand that is immensely popular worldwide, but here in the states it’s well behind Football, Baseball and Basketball. I’m my mind here in the states it’s also behind hockey, my favorite, but I could be wrong on that one. Cricket isn’t even a thing over here except for maybe some kind of country club lifestyle thing like Polo.

Feels like there's a huge opportunity for a developer to create a solid, simulation-style football game for the Switch.

@Pat_trick I would buy a copy but Scott the woz has all of them

Why doesn't 2K release their football game without the NFL license? Maybe put XFL in there, instead.

@adh56 Cricket is huge in a lot of Asian countries like India and Pakistan so that brings its numbers up.

What's so surprising? It's not that bad. Unless you aren't a sports fan, editor, but that's not a bad thing.

Now if we could just get a Blood Bowl game on Switch...

@JasmineDragon Keep in mind that Canada plays a very similar football game (with just a few notable rule changes like a longer field and only 3 downs per series) and their own professional league, although that's still just 2 countries.

Meanwhile, Cricket may top American/Canadian football, but it isn't that popular worldwide, since it has basically zero presence in countries where baseball is popular instead (United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Dominican Republic, Cuba, much of the rest of the Caribbean, Venezuela, South Korea, Japan, etc.).

Sports games don't interest me so I will not be purchasing any of these.

Little Bug looks interesting, but my mind is firmly set on Pokemon for the time being.

I’m not really a sports game fan…or even sports in general. But I do like a game of Mutant League Football every once in a while. I think it’s fun…though I could see how you wouldn’t if you were a huge football fan.

Imagine me, an hockey fan. https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/switch-eshop/super_blood_hockey (Mario v Sonic Olympics doesn't count), but at least it's a good one.

Retro Bowl on mobile is where it's at.

10 Yard Fight is on Switch, no?

EA is ridiculous for not making a Switch version. 90 plus million install base with no previous version and very limited options? It would sell very well.

@Krambo42

No, that's an Irem game that Nintendo ported to NES, which is also why there is no Kung Fu sadly.

@tamantayoshi DA BEARS!

NHL and a good American football game are the two big sports gaps now…. Ideally I’d love a college and a NFL game - college hoops too tbh.

Obviously the boxing game is a licensed Rocky thing… it’s not ideal but it passes… same as the WWE battlegrounds and Retromania…. But both decent enough for me….

NASCAR I haven’t played yet but ordered physical from America. Wouldn’t mind a SRX port or either Tony Stewart game….

If we are doing wish lists….

SSX 3 port please, Wave Race of any kind and any of the DIRT games 2/3 would be my pick as 5 unlikely… or a DIRT game built for just switch. Like the old days when consoles got their own 3rd party titles….

@HIGHscores85 https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/arcade-archives-10-yard-fight-switch/

@Krambo42

Nice

Legend Bowl is coming to the switch.

I was just talking to my wife last night about how insane it is that there is not SOME form of MADDEN on the Switch. EA does not understand the Switch user-base at all. Being a father of 3 who owns and PS5 and Quest, I can tell you right now that the Switch is where 90% of my gaming happens due to the portability factor.

This is funny, the arcade archives game by Temco is nice.
Who needs Maden Legacy edition ´23 anyhow?

@adh56 Cricket is big in India which has like a billion people right? Add in the UK and that’s cooking with gas

The only football game I bought on Switch is 10 Yard Fight. The one game you forgot.

Tecmo Bowl arcade is awesome. Go with that one

Maybe it's a good thing that Madden is not on the Switch...

@Deerock69 They did back in 2008, All Pro Football 2K8 but without the NFL licensing the game just bombed in sales and 2K just stopped making Football games instead just concentrating on NBA and WWE games.

As for XFL I am sure once the league is active again Dwyane Johnson will probably look for a company to make a licensed game.

I am a huge football fan, and a huge video game fan. I lean more towards arcade football video games. Actually, I am more of a fan of arcade style sports games than the simulation games.

I play video games to step out of reality for a bit. That said The Tecmo Super Bowl series is by far my favorite. I’d welcome a new entry for the Switch.

@adh56 You do realize America .. isnt the world right? Do you know how popular cricket is in India? .. with a population of 1.4 billion people

Plus Australia ? The UK ? New Zealsnd ? South Africa? The list goes on

I'd be happy with an NHL Frostbite Legacy edition for Switch and I'm sure the many Madden NFL fans would be very happy with that as well. Now that Frostbite is Switch-compatible, a big hurdle to these products was cleared. Why EA isn't cashing in here is beyond me.

People wondering why there aren't more football games on the Switch, it's because EA has an exclusive license with with the NFL, so they're the only publisher who can use real teams and players. Other publishers have to make up their own teams, which is less appealing to football fans.

That's a sad list of football games.....

Blood Bowl 3 is still listed as having a switch release next year...

@adh56 @BulbasaurusRex Almost all American people think that. Football is massive in the States, so it must be a big deal on a global scale, right? But no, the number of football fans is a fraction of the number of cricket and soccer fans. It's not even close. Google "most popular sports world" for some surprises.

(The difference is actually a lot more than the "half a billion" I threw out there in my first comment!)

I've had many hours of fun with Football Heroes Turbo. I highly recommend it if you like tecmo bowl. It gets too grindy after the fourth league, but is fun to play up to that point over and over...

I have never really been interested

@Shiryu which one did you mean? your link doesn't;t work.. blood sport ghockry? junior leaguhockey? really would love some nil 94 style hockey, with switch level graphics, portable.. can be with a fantasy license

@romanista ops, wrong paste up there. Fixed, it's Super Blood Hockey. It's always Super Blood Hockey.

I missed Football Frenzy coming out. Nice one. Thanks.

As a Packers fan, I guess I can't be on this site anymore.

Football is one of two things I really don't like about Thanksgiving.

Although it isn't a great game, MFL is still the best Murican Football on Switch to date.

I wish Speedball 2 (from the Amiga days) would get a release! In fact most of bitmaps Amiga catalogue would be amazing haha

Here in Europe we have this very popular sport where people kick round objects they call 'a ball' with their lower limbs, mostly the end of them that they call 'a foot'.

We call the sport hand prolate spheroid.

The eshop has some good examples of my understanding of the sports, one is called Behold the Kickmen. Mario Strikers was also just announced, an interpretation of the sports, but with added fun and less recycled code from 4 years ago, as with the most popular pick of... 'soccer' games, as the Americans say.

It would be great to see the original Mutant League Football. Or NFL Blitz.

@BulbasaurusRex yeah cricket is more popular than baseball too.

American foot ball is crap. I hate it. That said I own mutant league and it's fun as hell.

I love Tecmo Bowl on NES, but have never played the arcade version. Is it worth picking up?

Their are NO excuses for lazy ea not to put Madden on Nintendo Switch; in fact, they've put Madden Games out on the Nintendo Wii for crying out loud and that wasn't HD at all. It's okay, I'm Buying MLB The Show 22 Digital Deluxe Edition for my Nintendo Switch on Day 1.

@Gitface Absolutely 💯! It's Fantastic!

Played Retro Bowl today - it's fun!
...and...
Football Heroes Turbo is a better game in many aspects.

Glad to have them both.
Awaiting Madden...

@GrailUK I love that game, especially the ambulance! I wish there was a new version of it like the NHL 94 update they released for modern consoles.

@BionicDodo Great minds...erm...something something

Retro Bowl and Football Heroes Turbo are both a lot of fun. I hope the devs of Retro Bowl bring their beautiful 60fps pixel engine to tennis, baseball, soccer, and any other sport that's fun in videogame form.

It's absolutely insane that EA won't port Madden over to Switch. The last Madden on a Nintendo Console was Madden 13 as a launch title for the Wii U! lol.

I'd killer for a portable version- at least right now I can stream the Game Pass and even the Stadia versions to my phone to compensate.

We need madden on the switch.

I bought Retro bowl after your review, and i like it !

It remind me Nintendo pocket football club, but in us football. Very addictive.

I feel like there’s a huuuuuuge opportunity for someone like the Super Mega Baseball guys to pivot and make a super good football game like they do with their baseball games. Hockey too for that matter! I would trust those guys with any sport!

……and Tecmo is great in a pinch. But we all wish it was Super Tecmo Football from NES, with 8 plays instead of 4. Just port it and take the nfl names out!

It is a shame that Madden isn’t on Switch but Madden these days is FAR from the game it was 15 years or so ago.

On the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox the games were incredibly deep with superb franchise modes. Nowadays it’s all about Madden Ultimate Team and ‘pay to win’. The decline can be seen in the difference in Metacritic averages. Most of the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox games have Metacritic scores between the mid 80s and mid 90s. Nowadays the last couple of Maddens have been in the low 60s.

Hence why even as a big fan of the NFL I’d rather play any of the Maddens 2005-2008 or NFL 2K5 than Madden 22.

Shout out also to all of the people who pointed out how popular cricket is worldwide. Due to the number of fans in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh it can claim to be the second most popular sport in the world. Looking forward to Cricket 22 coming out on the Switch at the end of March (hopefully it’ll have ironed out most of the bugs that plagued the PlayStation, Xbox and PC versions when they launched last November).

Just a reminder, Madden sucks now. It hasn't been good since the late 2000s. As soon as they made the step up to the next gen and integrated the forstbite engine the game has been trash. Everything is now an animation and not actual physics. You think you will make a catch just to be shot up because a defender put you into an animation where you drop the ball. Why anyone wants that on switch is beside me and this is the main reason they keep pumping out this awful game. They gutted the game and people still play it.

Bought retro bowl today. Really nice. Geaux saints!

@Patendo i recently bought a retro cade for that particular itch. (And there is a mini amiga coming out soon).

@Sublogic
Yeah I'd be happy with a retro-style Madden game for Switch, with updated teams and rosters, etc. Similar to Madden '97 or something, but as you say, updated physics too. I haven't played a Madden game since early on Wii.

@GrailUK madden worked until mid 2000’s . It has sucked since.
Switch needs to add super Tecmo bowl for nes and snes.

@BCMT super Tecmo for both nes and snes and super Tecmo 2 and 3 for snes need to all be on switch.

@120frames-please agreed

@MarzipanD No, it's not! Cricket has never been in the Olympics save for the very first modern games, nor has there ever been a World Cricket Classic. While cricket is more popular in Europe, India, and Australia; it's overall following is behind baseball, which is popular in most of the Western Hemisphere, Japan, and South Korea.

Yes, American (or Canadian) football doesn't have much of a presence outside of North America, but baseball is a true international sport and overall one of the most popular team sports in the world (although soccer is of course the most popular in that regard).

@BulbasaurusRex By most of the Western Hemisphere, do you mean just the Americas? Because Europe is also the West, and baseball comes below handball and volleyball in Europe. Baseball is basically just North America and Japan. And we all know why it exists in Japan.

I also enjoyed your comment about baseball being most popular in the Caribbean. When cricket is synonymous with the West Indies.

That said, I quite like baseball. It’s alright. I like gridiron and (ice) hockey more, out of the big US favourites, but I like it a lot more than basketball. Which is also a much more international sport that baseball.

@BulbasaurusRex by all accounts 2 and a half billion cricket supporters to half a billion baseball supporters. I'll take your word cricket hasn't been to the Olympics but it does have a World Cup open to all cricket federations.(in fact they actually have 2 one for test cricket and one for one day internationals)Cricket is popular in India, Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, West Indes, Zimbabwe and South Africa. So essentially Asia, Africa and parts of Europe.

Cricket is currently listed as the 4th most popular sport in the world by participation.

@romanista my Raspberry Pi keeps me going for retro fix 🤣

@JasmineDragon "I'm honestly not that surprised. This came up a few months ago when we were talking about some cricket game - American football has significantly fewer fans than soccer and cricket do. Like, half a billion fewer. Of course it's a huge deal in the States, but it's not even in the top ten sports worldwide."

Yeah but Americans and Canadians have a lot of money. About 32% of global video game $$$ so it's baffling to ignore us.

@BulbasaurusRex Dude, you need to stop. Baseball has about 500 million fans. Cricket has FIVE TIMES that number. These are facts. Arguing against them is pointless.

@MontyCircus I think it's largely due to the fact that Madden is the only game franchise that can use actual NFL players, and NFL is the only league anyone cares about. With soccer there is a tradition of worshipping Everyman type players, following teams in foreign countries and actually playing in amateur leagues. People all over the world follow teams like Man U and Real Madrid intently. The World Cup is a major pop culture event from Beijing to Mexico City.

Even other largely American sports have traditions of amateur leagues and stunt teams, so a lot of people are open to playing fantasy leagues.

With American football, it's pretty much NFL or nothing, and when one franchise owns the NFL there's not a lot of money for other companies to go for.

This is all conjecture, but I'm genuinely trying to think of an explanation. Because you're right, the NA market is massive and it would be strange for gaming companies to ignore a potentially profitable subgenre.

@Patendo oh have lots of ways, my android tv with retroarch does most consoles for me (have a big usb stick into it), and a gpd xd but retrocade has some nice features too...

@jasminedragon although I agree with your general points (although I think 2,5 billion cricket fans is just adding India's and Pakistans whole population , while table tennis gets half of the Chinese in this table https://www.thetealmango.com/sports/most-popular-sport-in-the-world/ ) you miss the whole college football fenomenen in the US.. most Americans also have an allegiance to their college (or the college in their state)

@anextphilosophy there is only one really - Madden. APEX Legends was so bad I don't think anyone really cares to see what they could do with Madden.

@romanista To be honest I have some doubts about the accuracy of those numbers, but when you come down to it the scale of the difference is so massive those numbers could be off by a billion and there woukd still be a huge majority for cricket. Same goes for soccer.

And yes, there is a college football scene. But apparently it isn't the kind of thing that translates into video games or video game sales.

Still, I'm just speculating.

100M units sold... and still no Madden.

Think about that.

3rd party publishers like EA are Full. Of. 💩.

american football still fails to make the slightest sense to me at all.

Regarding India's number of cricket fans. In Europe, Africa, Central America, South America and much of Asia soccer is the most popular sport by a long, long, long way. For instance in the UK, cricket, rugby league and rugby union would be major sports but they are absolutely dwarfed by soccer.

In India, there is one major sport and it is cricket and it is massive. Everything else is a minority sport. It really can't be underestimated how big it is.

In the US it is different with the team sport space shared by American football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey. Not saying they are equally popular because that's nonsense but it's shared space.

So, the massive numbers in India shouldn't surprise people. (And as others have said, the cricket world cup predates baseball world cup and has greater participation).

Cricket though only has about 12 nations that are globally competitive against each other with over 90 other nations members of its governing body. Baseball is a similarly global minority sport with a handful of teams in the Americas plus Japan and South Korea being competitive.

@JasmineDragon has the measure of it though. Most American sports are franchised without promotion and relegation - therefore rights are key here. If there are only a handful of teams people care about then games have to have the player and team rights otherwise everything is fantasy.

I suspect a decent game which used college football teams and names / images would be hugely successful and the Madden games can exist in their current space.

Be nice if there was a single rugby game on switch as well, sadly EA own the rights to it

By the way for any American wondering what rugby is. It's a bit like American football but it's played by men!

@barryandwill Don't forget us dutch for baseball (world champion 2011, semi finals in de WBC 2013,2017)...

Cricket seems to be less interested in involving smaller / non-test countries though... the dutch team regularly qualified for the World Cup, but now it's almost Impossible for a non odi-nation... Which makes me now support the west-indies, since I discovered the dutch island of st. Martin actually is a member of it cricket federation..

@romanista The Netherlands qualified for the last T20 World Cup late last year, sadly they underperformed and lost 3 games out of 3.

They are also playing in the World Cup Super League (50 overs) alongside the 12 test teams, as the 13th side. The 50 over Cricket World Cup is going back up to 14 teams in 2027 so hopefully they'll be back in then, as well as making the T20 World Cups later this year and in 2024/2026 (the T20 World Cup is expanding from 16 to 20 teams for 2024 and onwards).

@Edd-O Ah good to hear it's going back up... (and i'll never forget the T20 win over england in 2014)