Wild Card Football Takes On Madden Using Colin Kaepernick And Aliens

Football fans on console and PC don't have much choice in virtually playing the sport, as the Madden NFL series has had an exclusive hold on the genre for nearly two decades. But outside of the games simulating the sport to a lifelike degree, there's some wiggle room for developers to get creative.

That's where Wild Card Football comes in. In this new trailer narrated by longtime ESPN personality Chris Berman, the NBA Jam and NFL Blitz-like arcade football game shows off its several game modes, cross-play features, custom teams comprised of real current and past players, and, well, extraterrestrials. Like I said, this is arcade football, so you ought to expect some cartoonish chaos, right?

The game is played with teams of seven, and fantasy squads can be built from a roster of "hundreds" of current athletes. While Wild Card Football is developed by Saber, the same studio responsible for NBA Playgrounds and WWE 2K Battlegrounds, this latest arcade spin on a sports game seems to have upped the ante when it comes to power-ups, as the trailer highlights an alien invasion, a forcefield shielding a player, and a tornado actively spinning around the gridiron, which may test the claim that football is an all-weather sport.

Wild Card Football launches on October 10 on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Switch, PC, Xbox One, and PS4. Players who preorder will unlock a four-pack of legendary athletes to add to their team: Jerry Rice, Dan Marino, Walter Payton, and Barry Sanders.