Subject: REVIEW: Professional Football Simulation v3.1b
From: [email-masked] (Kevin Jackson)
Date: 15 Jan 1993 18:07:56 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	Professional Football Simulation v3.1b

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	Professional Football Simulation ("PFS") is the most complete and
accurate statistical football game for the Amiga and maybe any other
personal computer.  Version 3.1b is the latest of a seemingly endless number
of updates to this great football game.  As the documentation states,
Professional Football Simulation started out as "Head Coach" in 1965 on
large main-frame computer systems and has been continually updated and
refreshed ever since.

DISCLAIMER

	I work for the company that markets this great football game, but I
have been a fan of PFS much longer than my association with MicroSearch.  I
am not involved with the sales nor prosperity of this program on the market,
and my goals in writing a review of it are merely to make its presence known
in the market.  PFS never seems to be included in the "Which Football Game
Is The Best?" debates, and my review of PFS contains purely my own personal
thoughts and feelings about the game.  Hopefully, you will accept it as a
non-biased review, regardless of my connection with the company that
produces it.  

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:           MicroSearch, Inc.      
	Address:        9000 U.S. 59, Suite 330
			Houston, Texas  77074

	Telephone:      (713) 988-2818
	FAX:            (713) 995-4994

LIST PRICE

	$44.95 US dollars

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	SOFTWARE

		Works under Kickstart 1.3 & 2.04.  There is an HD install
		program on disk 2 that uses the Commodore "Installer"    
		program.  Hard drive installation on previous versions of
		PFS has been near to a nightmare but the PFS hard drive
		script utilizing the "Installer" was simply a breeze.

	HARDWARE

		Requires an Amiga with at least 1MB of RAM and two disk
		drives.  The box claims, "Minimum Requirements: Amiga 500,
		600, 1000, 2000."  As far as loading goes, the game worked
		on a one-drive system, but the disk swapping was almost
		unbearable.  PFS worked fine on the Amiga 600HD, although
		1.5MB of RAM is required because of the hard drive buffers
		taking up too much RAM.  (Note: The hard drive can be
		disabled in an Amiga 600HD by pressing both mouse buttons
		upon a reset and following the directions on the screen.)
		The box does not claim compatibility with the Amiga 3000 and
		4000, but the game appeared to work fine on both; however,
		turning off the DATA CACHE and DATA BURST on the 68030 and
		68040 almost a necessity, or else the game will run entirely
		too fast!

		PFS is best when run from a hard drive.  The loading is
		almost instantaneous from a hard drive, making the game
		much more enjoyable.

COPY PROTECTION

	You must enter a word from your manual.  Lack of disk-based copy
protection makes it easy to make a backup of your originals using DiskCopy
just in case....  The copy protection is annoying, but it's not unbearable.
I guess MicroSearch has to put something in to at least slow down piracy.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 3000 w/2MB CHIP RAM and 8MB FAST RAM
	Kickstart 37.175 and Workbench 37.67

	Amiga 600HD w/2MB CHIP RAM and 4MB FAST RAM
	Kickstart 37.350 and Workbench 37.75

REVIEW

	PFS is a very in-depth game and certainly requires a little bit of
patience before you can get it running smoothly.  What the game lacks in
graphics, it makes up in playability.  If you are looking for a football
game with realistic graphics and fully animated players running around the
screen, this game is not for you.  If you are looking for a football game
that keeps realistic statistics, plays an extremely accurate game of
football, and has realistic gameplay, then PFS is the winner.

	The game runs on 640x200 16-color screens.  The screens and menus
look very professionally made and are easy to follow.  The title screen (and
the cover of the box) is a very nice looking, 640x200, 16-color, raytraced
image of two football helmets on the ground of a football field, with the
goal posts sticking promptly up in the air in the background.

	The main menu is basically your "main office" to the game, where
menu items for "Play a game", "Edit a team", "Edit a playbook", "Edit a game
plan", "Edit a league", "Read documentation", "League office", "Transfer
stats", "Make files/disk", and "Process files" appear.  These are pretty
much self-explanatory.  I haven't found too many games that let you read the
instructions to a game right in the game itself.  It's still more convenient
to read the paper instructions, however.

	The setup menu lets you alter how your actual game will be played.
You may have the computer play itself, you can play the computer, or you can
play against a friend.  You also have a feature that I'd like to see in more
Amiga games -- a modem option to play a game against a person on the other
side of a phone line.  Each team has its own "smart mode", "stats file",
"gameplan", and "playbook" to keep track of all the specifics of a team.
Among the things you can alter are natural or artificial turf, rain,
temperature, wind (direction), snow, injuries, league stats, and even the
name of the stadium.

	The modem option supports Hayes Modems or a null modem cable at
2400, 4800, 9600, or 19200 baud.  Because of the nature of the game, high
speed modems did not appear to be a factor at all in the speed of the game.

	Graphics consist of the top view of a game field with team colored
player numbers running around on the screen.  The game strongly resembles a
coach's chalkboard playbook, but animated.  When you get down to actual
gameplaying, you step in as the coach to the team.  You decide what plays
are to take place and what all the players do on a particular play.  The
game comes with a "beginner" and "standard" playbook, for the novice or
expert football fanatic.  Even the beginner playbook can be a mind-blowing
experience.  You can call plays using a mouse, or you a program plays using a
series of "dot commands" that program how each player performs.  I found the
"dot commands" to be a little over my head, as I consider myself only a
novice when it comes to football knowledge.  Even the beginner playbook can
be a mind-blowing experience.  You can call plays using a mouse or you a
program plays using a series of "dot commands" that be a little over my
head, as I consider myself only a novice when it comes to football
knowledge.  Even the beginner playbook lets you choose right/left sweeps,
right/left dives, draw plays, long bombs, right/left floods, screens,
halfback passes, sneaks, out-of-bounds passes, right/left rolls, right/left
reverses, zone passing defenses, three different blitzes, goal, rush,
prevent, and double coverage defenses, and a multitude of ways to program
each of these to do exactly what you want it to do.  The manual to the
program details exactly how to do all this and is easy to follow.

	The back of the box lists some of the features which are present in
the game:  uses artificial intelligence routines, instant replay, league
standings, compiles and prints statistics, playbook includes 136 offensive
and 104 defensive plays, detailed playbook mode for calling thousands of
plays, create custom plays, exchange playbooks, game plans, and team file
with opponents, set team rosters and strengths, etc.

	Game stats are continually updated; and after the game is over, you
can view a detailed list of everything that happened on your monitor or have
the stats printed to a printer.  This is another feature I wish more games
would use.  You can even run PREFERENCES directly from PFS so you can change
your printer settings without having to reset or exit the program.

DOCUMENTATION

	The half-inch thick documentation comes on nicely printed hole
punched loose paper ready to be inserted in a binder of your choice.

	The documentation is very nicely written and is very easy to follow
and understand.  There is also disk-based documentation that you can read
directly from the main menu of the program.

LIKES AND DISLIKES

	I like the fact that the program plays a realistic game of football
and keeps accurate statistics of the game.

	I dislike the fact that every time you want to play a football game,
regardless of whether you have exited the program or not, the copy
protection requires you to enter a word from the manual.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	This game is very similar in game play to Tom Landry Strategy
Football ("TLSF") by Merit Software, doesn't seem to keep track of nearly as
many statistics.  Both games are simple to install on a hard drive (using
the Commodore Installer utility).  TLSF doesn't even come close to the
playbook versatility of PFS.  In TLSF, you are limited to certain selection
of plays; but in PFS, you can do just about anything you want and even design
your own plays.

BUGS

	The game doesn't officially say that it runs on 68030's or 68040's,
but it does.  The game does run a little fast on these machines however,
which maybe is why they aren't mentioned as being officially supported.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	Professional Football Simulation has been updated every few months
for the past 4-5 years.  If you send in your registration card, updates will
be provided for a minimal cost.

WARRANTY

	Unknown.

CONCLUSIONS

	If you are a football fanatic or just a football game player, I
highly recommend Professional Football Simulation.  It simply plays the most
realistic game of football you can get on a computer, and keeps the most
accurate statistics.  This game is really addictive if you like football.
After playing a game, you may just find yourself playing another game, trying
some different plays and different strategies.  It's fun just experimenting
with playbooks and seeing how they work on the football field.

	I rate this product an 8 out of 10 stars.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	If you have any questions, comments, or just want to write me, I
can be reached at [email-masked].

	Copyright 1993 Kevin Jackson.  All rights reserved.  This review is
freely distributable, as long as the wording remains intact and unchanged.

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