NES Play Action Football allows players to choose from eight teams from various cities. For licensing reasons, the original game features only the city rather than the actual name of each NFL team and only the surnames and numbers (although a comprehensive set down to various position-specific levels on each depth chart) of actual players that were currently playing for the corresponding NFL team during the 1989 NFL season: Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco, Washington, Miami, New York, Chicago, and Houston. In the Virtual Console re-release, the city names are replaced by country names, so Los Angeles is Japan, San Francisco is Italy, Miami is Mexico, Chicago is China, Denver is Korea, Washington is England, New York is Brazil, and Houston is U.S.A.
The game used an isometric view, presenting the game at an angle to make it appear 3-D, and the game allowed a very large number of moving objects (all the players) to be on screen at the same time. Another feature was the use of primitive digitized voices for such actions as "Touchdown!" or "First down!" and "Ready! Set! Hut, hut.." before the play begins. At the end of each game, Nintendo Power mascot character Nester appears as a commentator, announcing who wins and who loses.
The game was one of only several games that supported the NES Satellite and NES Four Score four controller adapters. To allow teammates to select plays without showing the competitors, it included a NES Play Action Football 4 player play card. The teammates could point to the plays they were going to pick on the card, and then enter the combination on-screen without the opposition knowing.
