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by Joe Gandolfo-jgand@pcfootball.net
(05-22-02)
Greetings!
A
tremendous day to you wherever you may be. Welcome to
pcfootball.net, I am Joe Gandolfo and this is the space for my
new column. In here I will be giving you my thoughts as well as
your responses to events happening in the world of PC Football.
Past, present, future doesn’t matter. If it happens, I’m
probably going to have a take about it.
Let me
start out by telling you a little about myself. I’m 35 years old
and married, and the closest I’ve ever gotten to fulfilling my
childhood dream of becoming the starting quarterback for the
L.A. Rams was creating myself on the Rams roster on Madden 2000.
I work as an Administrative Assistant for a circuit board
manufacturing company in Southern California (SoCal). I own my
own home, which I inherited from my late mother, and my wife and
I have three cats instead of kids – for now.
I have
played a lot of computer games in my time, mostly of the sports
variety.
 I started out with Micro League Baseball way back in
the mid-80’s, and the first football game I got was NFL
Challenge from XOR Corporation. Now that game was pretty cool
for its time. True, it was a DOS-based game and the players were
X’s and O’s which moved around to show play progression, but
still pretty cool for its time. I remember back then that the
rosters you originally got were from the 1984 season. You could
send away for updated rosters, for a modest fee of course, and
bring your game up to date. Ah yes, the good ‘ol days before the
Internet made our lives so much easier.
I remember
that I chose not to place myself on the Rams however, as they
already had Jim Everett and there was no competing with him. So
I did the next best thing and put myself on the other L.A. based
team – The Raiders. This was about the time when they traded for
Jay Schroeder, so it was something of a no brainer as to who
would be starting – Steve Buerlein. So I made up a schedule and
since there was no automatic stat keeper for this game I had to
keep track of season stats myself, by hand and then enter them
into Lotus 1-2-3.
Sounds
primitive huh?
Well it was
also a lot of fun. I remember scouting my next opponent and
figuring out what plays would work and which ones wouldn’t. That
first season I played I got the Raiders all the way to the Super
Bowl – and lost to the 49ers. No sweat, just come back next year
and do it again. With Marcus Allen and Bo Jackson in the
backfield and Tim Brown to throw to it wasn’t that tough. I came
back the next year and got the Raiders into the Super Bowl
again, this time I won!
Then XOR
was going to come out with a new version of their game. It would
take advantage of the new VGA cards that were coming out and it
promised a brand new interface and whole new look. Well I of
course sent away for it – and nothing ever happened. Apparently
XOR went out of business, so the game was never going to come. I
looked around for another game to take its place, but to no
avail.
Three years
later, I found it in a game called Pro League Football. This one
had it all, schedule maker, stats tracker with standings, the
ability to make trades and a draft. You could also create
players by entering their stats. In NFL Challenge players were
rated from 50-100 in running, passing, tackling, blocking and
kicking; and speed was judged by their 40-yard dash time. In PLF
you entered in actual stats like pass attempts, completion
percentages and so on; and for blockers and tacklers you entered
ratings for how they reacted against the pass and the run.
So I played
that one for two more years. Got to the playoffs both years and
beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl in the second. Then I
discovered FPS: Football Pro ’95. Ho boy this was even better.
You could actually create your own plays and create your own
playbook! Once again, I put myself on the Raiders roster and
started playing. Once again, year one – playoffs; year two –
beat Falcons in the Super Bowl.
Then the
unthinkable happened – the motherboard in my 386dx computer
burned out and I lost everything! There were no more
motherboards to be found, so I was out a computer until I could
afford a new one. Well considering my expenses at the time that
looked to be on the upside of never. That is until my mother
decided to take pity on me and buy me a new PII 266mhz machine
so that I would quit coming over to her place and hog time on
her machine with my games.
So great, I
was back in business, only I couldn’t use any of my old DOS
games on this new Windows 95 system. Simply put, no 5 ¼” floppy
drive. So it was back to square one and I tried all of Sierra’s
Football games on the new system. FBPro ’96, ’97, and ’98 were
all tried out. They were okay, but they were also difficult to
master if you didn’t have the time to devote to them. Then came
FBPro’99. It looked good at least; too bad it didn’t play as
well. The real appeal of this game was that you could create
your own jerseys so that you could create different teams.
It would
have been just fine if Sierra hadn’t recalled the game and
killed the series as a whole in favor of Buck Hunting and Bass
Fishing. So then I turned to Madden 2000. Again, starting all
over again, learning how to play the game from scratch. What was
really cool about this game though was that you could unlock
teams from the past and play them against each other. Let’s see
the boys at XOR pull that one off.
This last
year I finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase Madden
2002, and I’m glad I did. I got online and found the site at
MaddenMania.com, which was where I met Bret. Bret and I agree on
some things (the XFL wasn’t given a chance), and disagree on
others (I like listening to Jim Rome, he doesn’t like Romey
because he put down the XFL) so we have agreed to disagree. Bret
was the one who asked me to come on board for this site and I’m
really glad to be here.
Well,
that’s my story. I hope in the coming weeks and months to hear
yours. I’ll come up with a new column whenever I hear about
something that I have a take on, and I want to hear your takes
as well. If you want to drop me e-mail you can reach me at
jgand@pcfootball.net. Let me know what you
think of a particular column, or if you have an idea for one or
have something you would like me to comment on, speak to me.
I’ll always welcome new ideas.
Until next
time….
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