Football Games

It’s Gotta Be Football

If you live for Superbowl Sunday and you know every last detail of the yearly NFL draft, then you’re going to want to take a look at our selection of football games. It could be exactly what you’ve been searching for. Football games come in many different flavors, each with its own focus on America’s favorite sport. If you’re a true fan, honestly, you’ll probably play pretty much anything football. Football fans love football things. It’s a fact of life.

The Rise Of Gridiron

In the US, football is a game which evolved from soccer and rugby but went on to become more popular than either of its parent sports. Various forms of the game — many of them extremely violent — were played among the Ivy League colleges before it found its final form. The modern game has eleven players a side, with the rugby-style scrum replaced by the “snap” and the round ball swapped out for something more aerodynamic. Since its early days as a mostly short-ranged game of attrition, it has matured into a game of great, spiraling throws and blistering runs. Even the ball we play with has changed as the game has, becoming an elongated sphere, perfect for zipping through the air.

Nowadays gridiron is the number one sport in America. While it may not amount to all that much in other places, here it is king. Football is an iconic sport, delivering unrivalled thrills to huge crowds of passionate fans. Even in countries that don’t really understand our game, they know it when they see it. It’s instantly recognizable, so it’s no wonder that so many fantastic football video games have been made from it.

Football In Video Games

Over the years, football fans have been able to enjoy the sport from the comfort of their armchairs, courtesy of a succession of games simulating the sport. One of the first games to try and capture the thrill of the NFL was Football for the Atari 2600. In this rudimentary button-basher, players were represented by Xs and Os, meaning you had to use your imagination in order to visualize enormous dudes pummeling each other into the ground. But by far the biggest video-game franchise to represent football is the long-running Madden series. For many football and video games fans out there, Madden is football.

Maddening Madden

EA approached John Madden to endorse their first football simulator way back in 1984 but the first Madden video game wasn’t released until 1988, which was extremely slow for video game development back then. Much of the delay was caused by Madden’s uncompromising vision for the game, which was too much for the computers of the time. During a long and nightmarish development, Madden had insisted — not unreasonably — that the game should feature eleven players per side and not seven as the programmers had originally planned. But the hardware of the time struggled to display twenty-two players and it took several years for the game to be released.

The front cover of the first Madden game showed a picture of ex-coach Madden himself, bursting through a wall, ball in hand, and grinning. This was not an accurate representation of actual gameplay. In truth, the first version of the game was very basic, despite the passion of the team and the long development time.

The game was nevertheless a moderate success. More importantly it paved the way for the next title which was released on the Sega Genesis. That title was a smash success which helped the console survive against Nintendo — for a while, at least.

Truthfully, it wasn't until the SNES version of Madden that the game really started to improve. Madden NFL 97 for the PlayStation saw the game make the switch to a 3D graphics engine, and the series has been steadily growing ever since, with new entries arriving every year to coincide with the new football season.

Madden’s popularity only increased as the millennium ended and the 2000s began. Starting with Madden, EA Sports came to dominate the sports sim sector, introducing other popular franchise titles like FIFA soccer and the NHL series of hockey games.

Football Games Are More Than Just One Man

Of course, as popular as the Madden franchise undeniably is, it’s not the only football game out there! Football is a sport ideally suited to video game adaptation with its lightning-quick plays and deep tactical elements. Few sports change so completely depending on whether you are on defense or offense. That added dimension makes football sims more engrossing than many other sports games. Many football games make you feel like you’re managing two teams rather than just one and that makes for some really fascinating choices in how you manage your team to victory.

Football games may focus on the management of the team as a whole or on the individual plays that make up a winning game. Some games manage to make both sides of the equation feel as important as each other, which could be exactly what you’re looking for.

Whatever type of football game you choose, you know you’re in for some exciting plays.

Football Games on GamePix — All the Fun of Gridiron, None of the Concussion

Today, you can play our football games on any device, all from the comfort of an armchair. As long as you have a browser that’s connected to the internet, you can play all of the games listed here, without worrying about downloads or installations or repetitive head injuries. Better yet, every single game in our excellent collection of football browser games is completely free-to-play forever. Many things are expensive for you sports fans, but our football games aren’t!

With a range of free football games this wide, there really is no reason not to get into one today. So put on your helmet and your pads and show the other team what you’re made of. Hut one… hut two…!

FAQs

What is a football game?

Any game about football is a football game. Some of them will feel more like team management simulators, others will put you in the game itself, controlling a player or players as you try to score a touchdown. A football game is just any game that’s about any part of the sport of football. Outside America, “football game” might actually mean “soccer game” but here we’re talking about football games, not soccer games.

Are football games free?

Every football game here in the football games section of the GamePix website is completely free. Like all of our online browser games, our excellent collection of football games are free-to-play and work straight out of your web browser, without you needing to download, install or update anything.