Friday Flashback: Electric Football
Long before Madden Football, far ahead of the Mattel and Coleco handheld games, decades in advance of Tecmo Bowl, there was a football game that was so basic, so generic, yet so captivating: Electric Football.
It was just beautiful.
Norman Sas created the game by accident in 1949. As a kid, he saw a washing machine vibrating on a sheet of tin while at his father's metal shop. That led to his invention of a horse racing game, and eventually the football version.
The box consisted of miniature plastic players, mounted on plastic bases, arranged for each play on a 2-foot-by-3-foot metal board/football field.
The play began when you pressed an electric switch. Boom. That sent vibrations through the metal board and sent players into motion.
Magic. We were mesmerized by it all.
I can close my eyes right now and hear the sound it made. That unforgettable buzz. No game since has sounded that way. It was an annoying buzz. But we loved it.
Sometimes, a lot of the time, the plastic players just moved in one big glob, a vibrating pack. With little rhyme or reason. On occasion, a pair of players hooked arms and rotated around as if they were square dancing.
Remember the base of each player? There was a dial underneath. You turned it to set the path for the player.
Passing the 'ball' required a small oval piece of felt to tuck into the QB's hand. I believe the game came with a sheet of like five spare felt balls.
You'd flick it. Sling shot it. If the flying felt hit one of your players it was a completion. It could hit your player anywhere from head to toe or even the base. Complete! Yep.
A player was “tackled” when his base simply made contact with an opposing defender.
I used to cheat at the goal line and short yardage and place my running back on the shoulders of blockers. When the OL collided with the DL, my back would tumble over the top for the TD or conversion.
Kicking a field goal and punting was an adventure. I actually watched a demo video on YouTube today to remind me how it worked. What's wrong with me?
The game lives on. There are still Electric Football Leagues and conventions around the country today.
How the game doesn't have a place in the National Toy Hall of Fame is beyond me.
Heck, I'd argue the game deserves a place in Canton in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The more I thought and wrote about this game, the more I realized how nonsensical and stupid the whole thing sounds probably sounds to a kid today.
But when I was a kid, it seemed pure genius. And the hours of use meter was off the charts.
Thank you Norman Sas, for bringing the NFL to my living room floor.