NFL Quarterback Club 2000

Developer: Acclaim Studios West Publisher: Acclaim

Released: August 26, 1999 3/10 Rated: E

Fumbled. Take every bit of improvement, however small, that Quarterback Club ‘99 made, and throw them right in the garbage. Somehow worse in presentation and oftentimes more unplayable than its inaugural N64 outing, I choose to blame the collapse of Acclaim Studios West (neé Iguana Entertainment) on the lack of exclusivity this time around, as Acclaim apparently wasn’t content being the worst football game one just one console anymore. The lack of competition from EA and the Madden franchise on the newly released Sega Dreamcast must have seemed enticing, but a house divided (and already stretched thin by other projects as well, I imagine) simply cannot stand, a fact made all the worse when Sega’s NFL 2K proceeded to blow every other franchise out of the water for all three iterations during the Dreamcast’s short run.

But back to the N64 – how is this worse than the year before? How is this so much worse than Madden once again? Standard issues utilizing the hardware is one thing, surely, but the expansion pak had been used so well in ‘99, how did the optimization fall apart so much in only a year? Even with some improvements to the player models and animations once again – tackles are actually starting to look like tackles and not pinball ricochets – the way it crushes the frame rate and pace of play is embarrassing. Even worse is how you can compare this side by side on every play: a “player detail” slider in the pause menu changes the quality of models on the fly, and time after time, reducing them down to the basest of shapes did actually let the game run. It’s just that whether it runs at an acceptable rate or not, the actual gameplay just doesn’t work.

An entire half of football will go by, with neither side able to complete a single pass. This is both partly due to the nature of passing still being an act of faith, only one where god has abandoned you once and for all, and the fact that pass protection is nonexistent. Coupled with once again, no improvement in terms of content, and even a step back to a more barebones presentation (once again, I blame the need for a Dreamcast port), and not only has NFL Quarterback Club 2000 taken a huge step back in every meaningful sense, it’s taken a step backwards right off the back of the bleachers like Maude Simpson, and I don’t think the paramedics at High Voltage Software are gonna get here in time to resuscitate what little is still intact.