Have you ever found yourself thinking that you want to play an American football game without statistics or realism bogging down the arcade fun? Well SNK thinks you have, and Football Frenzy is their answer.
Football Frenzy takes the modern game of football, and tosses out all aspects of the game which don't deal directly with running the ball, throwing the ball, or hitting the guy with the ball. There are no real world teams to contend with, and no real world stats that matter aside from the game's score and the game's time. There are also no substitutions.
Instead what Football Frenzy offers is pure 2D arcade action. After you select your team you're immediately thrown into a game. Before each offensive down you conduct your playcalling by first choosing either passing, running, or kicking plays. Then you scroll through a list of plays in that category to find the best play for the situation. To aid you in choosing plays the top of the playcalling screen displays an outline of the currently highlighted play. Defensive playcalling is much easier to conduct; there simply are no options for defensive plays. Instead when you play on defense you watch the CPU select its plays. The defense always starts downs in the same formation, with players being able to switch between defensive team members before and during the play.
Offensive pass and run plays are handled the same way. In every play there are up to four designated receivers, labeled A through D. To throw a pass, you simply press the button corresponding to your desired receiver and the quarterback throws the ball to the best of his abilities. On running plays one or more of these designated receivers start behind the quarterback; handoffs involve running the quarterback close to the designated runner than pressing the button corresponding to him. Because of the way plays are run it's fairly simple to turn a pass play into a run or vice versa. You can elect to keep the ball on a pass play and run with it as the quarterback, or on a run play you can let the running back go downfield a little before passing the ball to him.
Football Frenzy uses the Neo Geo's sprite scaling capabilities to provide either panned out or close in views depending on the action going on. The game is played from a top down perspective, but tilted to an angle so player profiles are more easily visible. Only a small portion of the field is visible at any time; to aid in orientation the game provides both a wireframe field with the current viewable portion indicated on the bottom of the screen, and a bar with sliding coloring indicating the current ball position on the field.