Pigskin Footbrawl, Y'all

Did you know they played football back in the Middle Ages? It was a little simpler, a lot rougher, but it's all documented in Pigskin 621 A.D., the arcade game from Brian Colin and Jeff Nauman, the duo behind Rampage and Arch Rivals.

The football version of Arch Rivals is basically what this game is. If you've played Arch Rivals, you have a general idea of what Pigskin is like. Two teams take to the field, duking it out for control of the ball. You can punch, tackle, and pick up weapons to take out opposing players, but watch out for hazards such as rocks and water.

Strangely, Pigskin has never turned up on any arcade compilations in the past 25 years or so. Literally the only home versions are the Genesis version and an unreleased Super NES version, both of which were rechristened (Atlanta Falcons head coach) Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl. The Super NES version quietly turned up online in 2025.

Pigskin Footbrawl was published, at least on the Genesis, by RazorSoft. If you don't remember them, that's okay because they're pretty obscure. They were an Oklahoma-based company that tried to make a name for themselves by making more violent, "adult" games. Their last game release was in 1992, which perhaps helped them avoid any entanglement in US Senate hearings on video game violence that happened the following year.

With that in mind, it might surprise you to see that Super NES Pigskin is dated 1994 (see video below). Yes, RazorSoft was still kicking around, though they seemed to be more involved with sporting goods by then. The Genesis version came out in 1992; I interviewed the programmer. But the Super NES version had a troubled development.

Allow me to explain: Super NES Pigskin was originally contracted to a company called Knight Technologies, which was bought out by Park Place Productions, which then proceeded to collapse on itself, which led to a lawsuit from RazorSoft for breach of contract. RazorSoft handed off the game to programmer Glenn Volk; that's the name that was given to me by someone claiming to have worked for RazorSoft, and that's the name that appears in the game, so I believe this person I talked to years ago.

This person also said they had access to the original source code and assets, and that the Super NES version wouldn't have come out until 1995. By that point, Pigskin would have seemed antiquated next to the PlayStation and Saturn. They would have had to sell 1.2 million copies to turn a profit, so it wasn't worth the effort.

Back to the game itself, is there any real difference between the Genesis and Super NES versions? I would say the Super NES has the edge in both graphics and sound, with a somewhat better frame rate and cleaner voice samples, and maybe even one additional voice sample ("Let's get ready to football!"), though it has less blood. It even has a dedicated "tackle" button not even in the arcade version and an ending sequence of sorts.