Gridiron!

Gridiron! is a 1986 sports video game developed by Bethesda Softworks and published by Electronic Arts. The game was the first title of Maryland studio, founded by MIT graduate Christopher Weaver and lead programmer Ed Fletcher, who aimed to create a more realistic sports simulation title.

Gameplay
Gridiron! is a game in which statistics for players are provided on an NFL DataDisc.

Development and release
Gridiron! was developed by Bethesda Softworks, a Maryland-based studio created by founder Christopher Weaver in 1986. Weaver created the game with lead programmer Ed Fletcher, a colleague in Weaver's former consulting company Media Technology who suggested entering the video game market. A football game was chosen as an initial project due to Fletcher's knowledge and interest in the game, with Weaver lacking knowledge of the game but having experience with physics and display interaction as a MIT science graduate. Production was "extremely frugal" according to Weaver, with development taking place from his home in Bethesda. Developing the tools and physics engine from scratch, the developers aimed to address the problem of sports games of the time being limited in their potential to simulate reality.

Electronic Arts entered an agreement with Bethesda Softworks to further market and distribute Gridiron! in return for developing a licensed John Madden football title, a game that the publisher had been developing since 1984. In 1988, Bethesda Softworks filed a $7.3 million lawsuit against the publisher on the claim that they had ceased release of Gridiron! to integrate major portions of the game into the Madden title. An undisclosed sum was settled out of court. Weaver retrospectively named the decision one of the "worst" made in his company, considering Bethesda Softworks' contributions to its engine and technology to have "heavily influenced" its success. John Madden Football was later published by Electronic Arts in 1988.

Critical reception
Gridiron! received generally positive reviews from critics. Writing for Computer Gaming World, Wyatt Lee wrote that the game's custom playbooks and teams provided the potential for "tremendous constructability" and the "statistics critical" design was not often observed in football simulation games. John Harrington of Games International considered the game to be an impressive mixture of strategy and arcade play. Andy Eddy for Atari Explorer found the Atari title to be challenging and enjoyable with a "strategically accurate" design, commenting that whilst the minimal graphics assisted with seeing how formations and plays evolve, the graphics were not of a high standard. Ervin Bobo of Compute! noted the game's customisation abilities presented "options never before seen" in a football simulation, finding the simplified graphics was "no handicap" to the gameplay. Bob Ryan of Amiga World Magazine commended the title as an "excellent physical simulation" and the "best game" played on the Amiga, although acknowledging the "simple but not crude" graphics. Uwe Rönitz for Amiga Joker considered the Amiga version to be appealing and playable, although noting the game took time to get used to with the difficulty "high demands" on the user. However, Torsten Blum for Aktueller Software Markt dismissed the Amiga version of the game as a "failed sports-strategy hybrid" and "lousy simulator", citing the lack of game options, the "spartan" graphics and "monotonous" gameplay.

The game sold well and was awarded Sports game of the year, as well as voted as one of the 40 Best Games of All Time by Amiga World. Bethesda founder Christopher Weaver said in 1994 that Gridiron "put us on the map" and In 1995 Weaver said that the game was the best-selling sports game ever published for Atari ST and Amiga.

Retrospective reception
Several critics have retrospectively praised Gridiron for its technical innovation and subsequent influence upon the Madden Football series. Rick Maese of The Washington Post described the game as "unremarkable for its stone-age graphics but ahead of its time for the physics and coding that laid the technical groundwork for sports titles to follow". Tyler Wilde of PC Gamer described the simulation mechanics as an "unheard of feat" for its time. Luke Plunkett of Kotaku similarly noted the game's simulation mechanics were "unheard of" and the first time "true physics" were integrated into sports gaming, whilst assessing the game to by "ugly" even by the standards of the time.