Old School Double Feature: Mutant League Football and Hockey

The age of the Sega Genesis is long gone except when you happen upon a glorious local game store with about seven lovely consoles in stock and hundreds of wondrous games available. When I was a wee gal, I loved playing my Sega, and Sega had the only two sports games I would ever play and enjoy. Today’s sports games aren’t fun (in my opinion) and they’re carbon copies of the version of the previous year. No, the best sports games I played were Mutant League Football and Mutant League Hockey.

In the Mutant League games, your sports teams consist of leering skeletons and grunting orcs donned in spiked helmets with badass written all over them. Additionally, you could choose the field. You could play in a normal arena or on a moon-like field with craters and holes to fall into. And it was simply playing football or hockey. 

The Brutal–and Best–Features

While some people may frown on the barbarity of these games, I always found it exceedingly fun when the referee got pummeled and exploded. Sometimes ghouls would drop into craters and explode. Sometimes you would false start for fun and something would explode. But every time was a blast (tee hee). 

The best player by far was quarterback Bones Jackson. He was the fastest player and could weave like a beast. But I always went for the side and ran up till I’d touchdown…and spammed that play over and over. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it–till you’re older, at least.

As for hockey, I wasn’t very good at it, but I enjoyed the roughness of shoving another player away and possibly dropping them into a hole in space. Because I was only five or six, I just tried to acquire the puck, but most of the time the other players usurped it and I kinda sat back and skated around. I learned more about hockey than I ever did from glimpses of the real thing on TV–glimpses because my attention span never lasted very long.

What About Mutant League Now?

I don’t think it would work very well now on current console standards. If they were remade to look absolutely gorgeous, the gritty, silly nature might be lost. It might turn into Mortal Kombat and seem too serious for its own good. And it might become too gory to be as fun as it was. 

Maybe the violence was less obscene in the 16-bit visuals, but it wasn’t exactly over the top for the time. Thinking about other games for the Sega, like Splatterhouse or Alien, there was more violence and brutality than in the Mutant League games. However, seeing any sort of remake would take away what made the games so great.

If you fancy for old school games on older consoles, I very much encourage you to check out the Mutant League series for Sega, even if you’re not a sports aficionado (like me).