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Sega took the Joe Montana series in a new direction with part 2, but what Sports Talk Football did with commentary wasn’t reflected in the gameplay. The game may be a true evolution in presentation, but people play games, not watch them and that’s where ol’ Joe came up short on fourth down.
What better way to compliment Monday Night Football than with a review of a Genesis NFL game? I’ll tell you a better way: include a game actually worth playing. The Joe Montana series was notoriously hit and miss, and the ’93 installment appears to be one of the bigger misses. Among the problems cited are a clunky interface and poor AI. Hey, that actually doesn’t sound too far off from this year’s Madden! We kid about that last part, but the Montana part is still true.
It’s almost spring, and that means it’s almost baseball season! The Genesis has a generous helping of games in the genre, and one of them is Sports Talk Baseball, Sega’s only attempt to expand its play-by-play line of sports games beyond the initial football offering. Featuring real players and some solid gameplay, it’s a great way to jump into the sport if you’re just looking for some arcade-style fun.
In 1991, Sega shocked Genesis owners with Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football. Aside from changing the game’s vertical perspective to a horizontal one (an internal team had been working on one for the original, but it was scrapped in favor of EA’s vertical game), Sega also added play-by-play commentary. Though it might seem cheesy today, this was unheard for consoles at the time, and it marked an important step in bringing realism to sports games.