Strangest American Football Games Ever

With the popularity of American football in the United States, the sport was always going to make the leap from sports to video games. While most of the football games are based solely on gameplay within the NFL or NCAA Football, some games started adding extra features that took the games across the threshold into weird.

Some games feature mutants, while others combine wrestling with football to give the games a unique feel. The added elements allowed these games to reach a wider audience that may not usually play American football games based solely on the NFL or NCAA.

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The greatest wide receiver of all time had his own video game, but it wasn’t a typical American football video game. Jerry Rice & Nitus’ Dog Football features Jerry Rice’s dog, Nitus, and focuses on canine football. The game on the Nintendo Wii featured dogs playing football against each other.

The quarterback is the only human and passes the ball to dogs on fields that include parks, shopping centers, and a massive backyard. A doggy bone emblem lets the player control where the dog runs. It’s as wild as it sounds.

American football can be a violent game. In its early days, many of the players were killed due to the hits they took on the field, and President Teddy Roosevelt threatened to ban the game. But the game Brutal Sports Football goes another route and encourages more violence.

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In this game for the Atari Jaguar, super-powered football players use swords and bombs to break through the defense. The game lived up to its name, with the brutality more resembling Roman gladiators than a modern sport. The only rule of the game is to survive.

American Football made its way to outer space in the Super Nintendo video game Space Football: One on One. This 1992 game doesn’t really give the typical football vibes that a game like Madden would. Instead, this feels like the game F-Zero married a futuristic soccer game.

Space Football: One on One features retro grav hovercrafts and magnetic flux fields. Players are also able to use mode seven scrolling to face opponents one-on-one.

6 Cyberball

In the future, robots will be playing football; at least, that’s the concept of the arcade game called Cyberball. Based on how small the humans in the crowd looked, it’s apparently giant robots playing football. The players may be machines, but they still need a human to coach them to victory.

While popular in arcades in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cyberball was also released on Atari and Sega Genesis and was actually set in 2022. Does that mean robots are secretly playing football? Or did video game makers just miss on another futuristic prediction?

5 Blood Bowl

Starting as a board game before jumping to a video game, Blood Bowl mixes American football with a fantasy setting. It really appears to be a Warhammer football game with orcs, goblins, and elves stepping in as the players.

Players can win the game by either scoring more touchdowns or killing all the players on the other team. The latter option would leave behind a bloody bowl, literally. When it made the jump to video games, Blood Bowl was released on MS-DOS computers but, over time, was also released on Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, and Xbox 360.

Part of the popular Disney Sports series, Disney Sports: American Football or Disney Sports: Football in the United States, featured Disney characters playing American football. The game allowed players to pick a team and a game mode and then face a number of opponents with the help of magical items.

On top of the typical popular Disney characters, the series also features some obscure earlier Disney creations, including Mortimer Mouse, Scrooge McDuck, José Carioca, the Big Bad Wolf, and alligators from Fantasia. It’s a fun game for the Disney fan who also likes football.

3 Blitz: The League

Blitz: The League takes the dark and problematic parts of the NFL and turns it into one of the weirdest sports video games. It took a page from This Is Spinal Tap and turned the violence up to 11. Intentionally injuring opponents is not only condoned but encouraged, and the game features graphic depictions of broken bones and other injuries.

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Dirty hits are also encouraged and include a charge meter that allows the player to use them. When a player is injured, players have the option to “juice” it, which is basically pumping the player full of steroids and increasing the risk of re-injury.

2 NFL Blitz

Similar to Blitz: The League, NFL Blitz throws out the football rule book and lets players use wrestling moves against their opponents and hit after the whistle without drawing a flag. It was the perfect mash-up between the NFL and WWE.

This game got the NFL licensing agreement because it didn’t encourage intentional injuries or steroids. It’s a more sanitized version of Blitz: The League, but that NFL licensing agreement carried it to greater popularity.

What happens when mutants love sports? That’s what players learn in Mutant League Football when superhumans, robots, and aliens take the football field in a post-apocalyptic world. Released on Sega Genesis, the game is filled with land mines, fire pits, and altered gravity. Mutant Football even lets players kill the referee.

Players can also be killed, but they will fumble the ball if they die. Unfortunately, too many player deaths will result in a forfeit. There’s also the opportunity to bribe referees and odd penalties like “crying.”

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