SNES Game Review: Bill Walsh College Football

  There was a time in the 90's when EA Sports didn't look much into the college football atmosphere with video games.  You could say that ultimately changed when they went to the PlayStation console, but they did make a couple of college on the SNES console.  The first one of those was Bill Walsh College Football.  It was put in part to Bill Walsh's insight but really a lot deal with the makings of EA and Visual Concepts (this was before EA went with a much better graphics team at Tiburon.)  They also made College Football 97, but I haven't played that so I can't rate it.  However I have played and beat this game so let's review Bill Walsh College Football.

Pros:

1. Graphically sound: There won't be many glitches in the graphics.  It is smooth in this regard and will be smooth with any EA/Visual Concepts game.  
2. A true playoff format?: Okay so here's why this worked.  EA at the time didn't have the NCAA license.  So essentially they could mess around with the format how they wanted.  There'll be a minus to this later on in terms of the licensing.  HOWEVER, this game gave a true playoff format.  It's 12 teams, three rounds (round one, quarters and semis) before the national championship.  It is separated by East/West.  You win, you advance, lose and go home like any other playoff.  Maybe the BCS one day will be smart.
3. The passing game: Okay, disclaimer; this will be a minus as well later on but for a different reason.  But all-in-all, the passing game is actually straight forward.  You throw to a target using whatever button on the pad.  No fancy hot routes, pre-snap nonsense of scanning what the defensive lineman on the right side is doing with his toes or anything. 

Cons:

1. The passing game everywhere else: Okay like I said it would be a minus.  So as much as it is easy to just throw, the rest of it is.. rough to say the least.  In the window, it doesn't show much, if any, if a defender is near the WR.  If the ball is tipped or batted, there is a quagmire of people batting the ball for essential funsies.  The way to throw an interception is way too easy (even if a player isn't close to the ball.)  The WR's stop or keep running past the target half the time without seemingly any awareness of where the ball is.
2. The running game: This is a complete joke.  Good luck getting any run game assembled that doesn't include your QB.  If you do, you should be anointed some special title because it is completely next to impossible to run with a RB in this game.  The entire defense is on you in 5 seconds or less all the time. 
3. The licensing: Okay like I said this would be a minus.  As much as I love the playoff format, but holy cow the rest makes it funny sort of.  So the teams, 24 in total, are not really named by the college/university.  Some are, more or less out of oddity.  Some are adequately named, like Kansas, Colorado and Washington.  Some are listed after the city they are in.  For instance, Florida State is Tallahassee, N.C. State is Raleigh, and Boston College is Boston.  So some of those diehards will be ruffled up, but personally I found it a bit funny.  I don't deduce points at all for it.  The problem more was with the NCAA not licensing the product (which EA could have paid players then.) than EA getting the wacky names.  
4. The fluidity of the game: This was a major flaw to me.  Other than the quagmires of the players whenever a ball was tipped, or on a run play, the game to me wasn't very fluid.  Unlike say Tecmo, there isn't like 7-10 seconds running off of a play.  This is fine, but the cut scenes take up 5-10 seconds after every play just to see an animated coach or fan or cheerleader for whatever reason.  Every game, even on 5 minute mode, typically takes upwards to 45 minutes to complete.  This isn't necessarily bad and is about average for EA games of the future, but it is something to warrant given the flaws of the game.  

Neutral:

1. Did it start the journey of the college football dynasty?: This is a hard question to answer, unlike Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.  That game was highly credited with starting RPG's in America and with the birth of great soundtracks in RPG's.  However with Bill Walsh, it is very hard to tell if this really helped start the birth of college football in America for video games.  The reasons why are this: There wasn't another game made for NCAA football until 96/97 on the SNES, so roughly four years.  Second, College Football 97 was for all purposes on rating systems from everyone a terrible game.  Third, the NCAA games didn't kickstart in popularity until Gamebreaker on the PlayStation anyway.  Then it became who can one-up each other between Sony and EA (spoiler: EA won out in the end anyway until they left the scene in 2014.)  So it is very difficult to say if this game kicked off college football games being popular.  

All in all, you see some of the good and bad of this game.  Like I said a couple posts ago, there were 721 games made for SNES.  At best I would rate this around 400th.  I would rank it maybe 11th on the football game scale at best for the SNES.  It's below average, it has a lot of flaws.  However I do feel if this were made with Tiburon, it would have been far better than Visual Concepts gave.  If I gave a grade on this, I would say 5/10.  The flaws are very detrimental minus the licensing portion.