WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - NFL Football Trivia Challenge

Publisher: Capitol Multimedia, Inc & Philips Interactive Media Developer: CapDisc Released: 1993

Here’s another one of those discs that falls squarely into that early multimedia category along with stuff like Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia or My Paint (?). I’ve spoken about it a few times in this series already. That time in the mid-90s when so many different developers and production houses were jumping into the fold, trying to figure out exactly what could be done with this medium.

Unlike the two titles I mentioned above, though, NFL Football Trivia Challenge is actually a game. Two players pick their favourite teams and head out onto the gridiron to fight for yardage via correct answers to football trivia.

The trivia screen is an interesting one. The only person able to answer questions is the player with possession of the ball. Answering questions correctly gains yardage, while screwing up costs downs. The goal is to score the most points (reach the end zone) over the course of 60 questions.

The presentation is classic 90s multimedia. It features like a screenshot and video archive of NFL films, though there actually isn’t nearly as much footage as I expected. The hosts, Pat Summerall and Tom Bookshier try their best to be as casual as possible, having full on conversations about just how easy it is to select your favourite teams in the setup screen, rather than giving the players straightforward commands.

It’s truly glorious.

I’ve tried to play this game a few times, and have always run into an issue where I just can’t continue for some reason. Input just...stops working. It was only after a bit of research online that I found out this game isn’t a one OR two player game, as is stated on the back of the box. It actually requires two players in order to play properly. Imagine finding that out the hard way back when this game was new!

NFL Football Trivia Challenge is, I believe, the only game released by Philips Interactive Media on both the Sega CD and its own CD-i console. The game was developed by a studio called CapDisc, which stands for Capitol Disc Interactive Corporation.

CapDisc was a joint venture between Philips and Capitol Video Communications. Formed in 1990, the developer was originally focused on creating business and government software for the then-fledgeling CD-i platform. Even though the CD-i players weren’t released as “game consoles” until late 1991, the platform was slowly coming to market as early as late 1989 as a business platform used for training and point-of-sale merchandising.

Capitol Video Communications was a video production company started in 1985, which focused mainly on documentary films as well as work for hire as far as I can tell.

It doesn’t look like CapDisc did a whole more more outside of the CD-i platform itself, where it appears to be responsible for ports of several American Laser Games titles like Who Shot Johnny Rock and Mad Doc McCree, as well as some board game titles.

This is one weird game. But it’s not the only multimedia-based NFL oddity on the system. We’ll look at another one in the next installment of WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL.