Flashback Friday: Kurt Warner's Arena Football Unleashed.

The 27th season of Arena Football got underway last week, unfortunately it started as a bitter defeat for our beloved Iowa Barnstormers. It's been a rough few years for the 'Stormers.

How does that connect to video games? Well, I figured I would look back at happier Barnstormer days with this: Kurt Warner's Arena Football Unleashed for the Playstation.

Pretty sure Kurt just threw the defender's head down the field.

The game was released on May 18th, 2000: The year after Kurt had led the St. Louis Rams to their improbable Super Bowl victory against the Tennessee Titans. Needless to say, Warner became the most famous athlete associated with the Arena League, so they teamed up with Midway to release its first major console release. (There was actually an Arena Football game for the Commodore 64 in 1988, it was text-based and featured 6 teams).

Look familiar?

So this game is basically NFL Blitz-lite. Remember how for years, EA Sports seemed to put all their efforts into Madden, leaving their College Football series a little light on content? Same kind of thing here. NFL Blitz  felt like a more complete game than Unleashed, but it was still the only way you could get your Arena Football fix until EA's release in 2006.

The differences between Unleashed and Blitz comes in the differences inherent to the sports themselves. Arena football is 50 yards, balls off the net are live, and there is no punting. While a Blitz style game set in the Arena Football setting seems like a cool idea, in practice, not so much.

At least we still have one of the coolest helmets in sports, right?

The game felt rushed. the AI was pretty spotty and the plays didn't seem all that fleshed out. Kinda felt like you were in the backyard with your friends and you ran that infamous "Just Go" play you drew up.

All was not bad though, it was something different, a new form of football that fans were becoming more aware of thanks to the cover athlete and "Poster Child" of the AFL.

Of course, things have changed in the League since the days of Unleashed. The Arena League as it was then is no more, closing up shop in 2009. After taking existing teams and teams from the "af2" league (including our then Barnstormers), the new Arena Football League formed and is the current incarnation of the League.

While there were 17 teams in Unleashed, the league now sports 14 teams, including the recent expansion teams: The Portland Thunder and the L.A. KISS. Of the 17 teams in the game, 5 of them exist today: The Barnstormers, Tampa Bay Storm, Orlando Predators, San Jose SabreCats, and Arizona Rattlers.

P.S. How cool are Arena Football team names? Houston Thunderbears, Los Angeles Avengers, New England Sea Wolves. Just awesome!

Sleepy time....

I could get into the history of Arena Football and go on and on for way too long, and I might someday, because it is interesting. For this, however, Let's just take this game for what it was: A Blitz style game for an up-and-coming league (at the time) which felt rushed and left you having fun for a bit before going "OK, let's play Blitz".

It was an OK game that appealed to me more since I have always loved the ideas of Arena Football, and that OUR GUY was the cover athlete.

I'll probably end up looking at the 2 Arena Football games made by EA on a future blog post and still hope that, someday, 2K Sports picks up the rights and makes an Arena Football 2K(year) game. Please, oh please.

Oh, and Go 'Stormers!