SHP Forums

Can anyone confirm if NFL Football Pro 99 is actually playable?

I can navigate the menus but when I go to actually play the game by clicking the "coin toss" button, it either turns the screen completely black until I end task (if in fullscreen), or tells me "an error has occured in the arcade" (if in windowed mode).. I understand this game was recalled due to playability issues, but the fact that Sierra later released an official patch for it, leads me to believe that it would then be playable. But even with the patch, I still can't play..

From Wikipedia:
Sierra Sports NFL Football Pro '99The seventh and final version of the Front Page Sports Football franchise was rebranded and rebuilt to compete with the likes of the Madden NFL series that had won over so many football fans.

The graphics were completely re-tooled and supported the now-standard 3D look of most other computer games. A stadium announcer was added and the game's interface had a new updated look. The game play had been much improved, especially the control of the on-field action. In the past, the control had issues with responsiveness to the point that many had opted to simply call plays and allowed the computer to control the action on the field. Despite the efforts of Sierra Entertainment to improve upon these many areas, the graphics and audio aspects of the game were inferior to the Madden NFL franchise.

To further compound the problems, NFL Football Pro '99 was rushed to release to meet the 1998 holiday rush in a completely unplayable state. Sierra briefly considered patching the game but then decided to abandon the series entirely in January 1999. A recall notice was issued for the game by Sierra Entertainment on January 21, 1999, and the game was pulled from the shelves. Lingering attachment to the series caused a few hard-core fans to attempt to fix the game on their own, but many turned their attention back to the 95 or 96 games (both of which are still played in online leagues today.)

I cannot get it to run natively in Win7 x64. It may be possible to do something with the Application Compatibility Kit, but this can be a slow tedious task. It does work for me in XP Mode. The Indeo software that the game's installer tries to install contains a DirectShow filter. If the game relies on this DirectShow filter, it would explain why it does not want to run on Win7. DirectShow is not normally available on Vista/Win7. If you want to experiment with it, here is a tool that might help. http://www.codecguide.com/windows7_pref ... weaker.htm

Well I already have the K-Lite Mega Codec pack installed, which does contain DirectShow. Or is it perhaps looking for a different version of DS that isn't included with K-Lite? And what exactly are you referring to when you say XP Mode? I tried running in compatibilty mode under XP SP2 but that didn't work.

The link I gave was not a codec, but a tool to force the use of 3rd party codecs and DirectShow, which Win7 normally forces the MS version. From the link above:

Windows 7 uses its own codecs for decoding several audio and video formats. Using third party DirectShow filters instead of the native filters is not possible without making difficult changes to the Windows Registry.

XP Mode is the MS equivalent of the old Mac "Classic Mode" that allowed pre OSX applications to run in OSX. It is a way to run applications in a VM of XP 32-bit as if they were running in the host Win7. This is only available with in7 Pro and higher. I use it to track 16-bit installers to write 32-bit replacements.