Arena Football Unleashed not the first AFL Video Game
Dave Carlson
Tuesday March 27, 2001
 Opening Screen for the unreleased 1995 Jaguar Game Image courtesy of David Carlson |
This blurb from the ATARI EXPLORER ONLINE 1994 Summer Consumer Electronics Show Report explained the game`s state of development at that time: “While still shots of Arena Football make for great pictures, the self-running demo was not that impressive. It was just running too slow. The intro screens were very nicely animated, all being completely rendered. The game screen itself reminded me of a cross between Cyberball and Madden 3DO. I`m sure they can improve the speed for the final version, in which case Arena looks to be one of the top football games out there. The demo showed digitized characters with rendered uniforms for a surreal football feeling. While the animation was nice on the intro screens, it just wasn`t there on the actual game screen. While I didn`t spend a lot of time observing Arena, it was apparent that this game still has a way to go in development.”
 Main menu for the unreleased 1995 Jaguar Game Image courtesy of David Carlson |
Brian Rice was one of the people who worked on the Jaguar title. “I did work on Arena Football with Atari and Viveros and Associates. We had the game visually very close; 3d graphics, animated players and some basic AI (Artificial Intelligence). Unfortunately because the Jaguar was such a difficult machine to program for, at this point we were several months past our deadline”. Brian explained that the end was near for the game system itself, “Right about then is when Atari pretty much threw in the towel. So many other people were having such difficulty getting games done on this machine. We spent about a year working on it.”
I spoke with David Pochron, who also worked on the video game, and was able to give me some video footage of what they had done before the project came to a halt. I have included some screen shots with this article.
 In this Arena Football Video Game, you would have chosen from plays with 8 men per side. Image courtesy of David Carlson |
If they had been able to get another 3-4 months of work on it, I think we may have at least had a “complete” unreleased game out there. Maybe some enterprising Jaguar programmers could be convinced to finish up the project. In the world of defunct game system emulators and programming, stranger things have happened.
More screen shots from the video game:
Dave Carlson is the Technical Director of Arenafan Online. Dave graduated with a degree in Computer Information Systems, and has been a member of the Arena Football Internet community since 1991. He is currently a professional web programmer, and has a history in programming sports statistics. Dave is married and lives in Indiana.
