In honor of Football Manager 1888
EA Sports is proud to announce the release of NCAA FOOTBALL: '31, the only game that lets you experience precisely what the greatest American game was like in the golden age of American football.
Presented in glorious sepia-toned graphics, NCAA FOOTBALL '31 does more than just provide a unique twist on the wildly popular EA Sports' NCAA franchise. The game immerses the player in 1931, a time of great change and difficulty in America, and a time when America turned its eyes towards college football not just for diversion, but for hope.
GAMEPLAY
- Authentic single-wing, wing-T, Notre Dame Box, Maryland Smokestack I-formation, Hexane Monocot, Spanish Curlicue, and Terrified Catamount offenses simulate realistic playbooks from the era.
- Passing rating is capped at 40.
- Heinz Freeman is the only black player, and may not be used against teams from the Southeastern Conference. He is listed as "German tailback."
- Juke button is replaced by "spike with rusty tetanus-laced cleats"
- Realistic fatigue accounts for lengthy train travel, diptheria, fatal staph infections, socialism, typhoid, pellagra, and other common ailments of the time.
- Everyone has syphilis.
- Notre Dame has syphilis twice
- Dust storms add realistic challenge in select, environment-appropriate matchups.
- Referee Stray Rabid Dog provides unique perspective on rules as they were interpreted at the time.
- "Ask Coach" option delivers a customized 4 minute eulogy after your player's untimely and unexamined death
- If you are Notre Dame, this player never existed.
- nU-GEN physics engine makes for incredibly realistic unexpected fires that break out mid-game and burn the whole town to cinders.
RECRUITING
- Offer players pitches from the era itself: anti-anarchist initiatives, "buildings-with-roofs", the use of swift execution rather than gory death-by-example during practices, a veterinary hospital for football players' use, proximity to painted ladies of the carnival circuit, whores, opium, number of pool halls located within churches on campus, segregation, clean drinking beer in all fountains, autographed Billy Sunday books, autogyro rides, massages in the Turkish fashion, and threadbare rugs we found behind the local mob boss's house he said we could have.
- Players may be paid up to ten dollars a week during season.
ROSTER MANAGEMENT
- Cut players at will. (Note: previous editions of this game only permitted this when playing with Alabama.)
- The only age limit is your imagination
- Players may use treatments of the time including strychnine, cocaine, laudanum, heroin, the blood of the Hungarian, nail punch, cupping, bleeding, chloroform, and warm ferrets set over the injury for comfort. (Warning: ferrets are also rabid.)
HEISMAN CHALLENGE
- Compete for the award given to the best Army or Notre Dame player every year. Not win, but compete!
CREATE-A-SCHOOL
- Build your own dynasty by selecting a name, location, mascot, school colors, board member who is an industrial monopolist, on-campus serial murderer, and tradition based on an animal being beaten to death in public.
SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
- Authentic period mascots like the Army Black Knight, Oklahoma State's Throatslittin' Tommy The Tipsy Trainhopper, and USC's indomitable Clara Bow.
- Over 78 authentic fight songs from the time, including "Killed A Settler For My Pa,""There's Always Work At The Poison Factory,""Shoo Bird, Women Can't Vote," and the Alabama classic, "Praise God Almighty (Thankful I'm Whitey and Live In A State That Will Vote By A Majority To Reject The Legalization Of Interracial Marriage As Late As The Year 2000 Probably)"
- Accurate depictions of each stadium as it was, including LSU's infamous Death Valley and the snipers who earned it its fearsome reputation.
- PA work done by a young Keith Jackson, known then by his birth name "Augustus Van Hickenbottom," and performed with a heavy Dutch accent he would lose with time.