Mutant Football League

Nit-picky things aside, you end up with a game that plays easier than Madden, is downright hilarious, and won't break the bank to purchase. It really could use a full set of teams (then maybe some fake ones) and players that can speak English, but it doesn't take long for the game to remind you why you are playing in the first place – to kick the snot out of your opponent by any means necessary.

For what was initially a failed Kickstarter by the series’ original creator to make it to a final release like this is impressive in its own right, and it is one of the few arcade-centric football experiences currently on the market. Mutant Football League is fast, dirty fun, and definitely one of my favorite sports games in recent years.

Arcade sports titles were a dime a dozen back in the ‘90s. Classics like NFL Blitz, Base Wars, and the Mutant League games took a lighthearted approach to athletic competition, using comic book violence and humorous hijinks to keep players coming back. Over time, more realistic sims based on professional leagues became the fan favorites and the zanier titles all but disappeared into the annals of history. With Mutant Football League, original creator Michael Mendheim makes a defiant goal-line stand against the idea that arcade sports games are dead.

Mutant Football League is mindless fun, which is all an arcade football game should be, but outside of the grotesque humor there is nothing else to really latch onto other than the bare-bones gameplay and lack of gameplay features.

It's a crying shame - not to mention an almost unbelievable situation - that Mutant Football League: Dynasty Edition is currently the only American football game on Switch (not including Tecmo Bowl, of course); Nintendo fans certainly deserve much, much better. Due to the annoying 'dirty tricks' system and unpredictable field changes, the experience leads to many cheap situations which, while mixing things up, don't make the game fun to play. It has the over-the-top aggression of its spiritual forerunner - 1993's Mutant League Football - and a sizable amount of content, but it's simply not an ...