NFL Blitz comes back, without the late hits, in an arcade cabinet

polygon.com:

NFL Blitz, the faster, more aggressive, and concussive version of NFL rules football that took arcades by storm in the late ’90s, will return this year — and in throwback arcade cabinet form. But cabinet-maker Arcade1Up’s surprise revival of Blitz will also reflect the modern NFL’s sensitivities.

“The NFL was warm to the idea, because [NFL Blitz] was loved by fans,” Davin Sufer, Arcade1Up’s chief technology officer, told Polygon. But if they were going to re-release three of sports video gaming’s most memorable arcade adaptations in a new package, they had to be cleaned up for modern sensibilities.

“They said, ‘Guys, if you want to do this, you’ve got to address these issues,’” Sufer said.

“These issues” are the violent collisions, some of them gratuitous, after the play, and, of course, unpenalized, that both defined Midway’s NFL Blitz and have aged very poorly in the 25 years since. A quarter-century ago, the league and its media partners were actively selling the violence — even the comedy — of senses-shattering collisions served up on Sunday.

But over the past decade, scientific studies, several highly publicized deaths of retired players, and a $765 million settlement of claims reached in 2013, have made issues like concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) Monday morning watercooler topics, and no laughing matter for the league or its players. It’s not an exaggeration to say that crisis has been the biggest barrier preventing 1997’s NFL Blitz, NFL Blitz ’99, or NFL Blitz 2000: Gold Edition from reappearing or being remastered.

“To clean this up, you have to change the game code to some degree, even if it’s a small degree, you still have to change game code,” Sufer said. “After the whistle, there’s a