Lately, I've been seeing lots of nostalgic products being reintroduced. It seems like the trend started first with candy and now more recently has been hitting the electronic gaming market with Atari and Nintendo re-releasing their classic gaming consoles. Polaroid even re-introduced their One Step camera where the pictures pop out of the front and develop in front of your eyes. If you've been around the block a few times, you appreciate the familiarity of the older products, even if they don't have all the bells and whistles of the newest.
I recently had the chance to play an electronic game from my youth, Electric Football, now from Tudor Games. It isn't an exact replica, but it still brings back a bit of nostalgia. If you're not familiar with the game, you place two teams of eleven players on a field and run plays like in a regular football game. Unlike regular football... a play happens by causing the field to vibrate. Then, based upon how you've positioned the "cleats" on the individual players, players will react to the vibrations accordingly. Make it to the end zone, and you score. Kick a field goal and you... score. Scoring is just like in regular football. The play calling is what's umm.... different. Memory of the exact setup for each play I don't remember that much of. With the latest round of the game, reintroduced about five years ago, your players have these plastic "cleats". Some are two solid lines across front and back and others are two split cleats. Based upon how they're positioned, the players will power forward, rotate, or some combination of the two, or go backwards if you reverse them.
My memory of the game is that of the sound of the vibrating board. It was loud. It wasn't something I could play for long without driving the dog and the rest of the family nuts. If I wanted to play longer, it was down into the basement. It was and still is a fun game to play, especially if your family likes/d football. I tried introducing the game to my son, he who plays lots of video games, especially FortNite lately. To put it bluntly, he just wasn't interested. It didn't have the nostalgia factor for him, and the pace was just too slow. For me, it brought back lots of memories of playing in my youth with my dad. The one thing I don't remember, though, is the amount of setup between plays. Unless you keep calling the same play, you have to shift around the cleats so the players respond to the vibrations differently.
Not only is the latest version of the game less noisy, but Tudor Games has updated this seventy year old classic with downloadable apps for iPhone and Android(unavailable at time of article). The app won't adjust the cleats for you, but you get a scoreboard and timeclock to name a couple of the features of the app. You can play the game solo or with a friend. The unpredictable-ness of the vibrations doesn't make knowledge of the play calling an absolute deficiency. The more you play, the better you are at understanding how adjustments to the cleats cause changes to the player reactions. Overall, I liked playing the game again and will probably play more once football season rolls around. Will check around with my friends who might have enjoyed it in their youths and reintroduce them to the game. Great idea to keep in mind for Christmas, even if its a bit early to think about that.
The game sells for anywhere from $60 to $400 depending upon the size of the field, if you get a team-specific version, or, at the high end, if you get a custom oak cabinet. I'd recommend one of the team sets for $100, and if you subscribe tot heir newsletter, you'll get $5 to spend on your first/next order of $25 or more.
Disclosure: I received the above mentioned product for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received. All opinions stated are my own and may differ from yours. See my disclosure policy for more information.
Looks fun!
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