Mike Ditka, the Hall of Fame tight end who coached the 1985 Chicago Bears to their only Super Bowl title, has died at 86. His family announced his death on Friday, October 9, and the Bears confirmed it in a statement mourning a “legendary and treasured Chicago Bear.” No cause of death has been shared.
Ditka was football royalty twice over. As a player, he was the first tight end ever voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in 1988. He won an NFL title with the Bears in 1963 and Super Bowl VI with the Cowboys. As Chicago’s head coach from 1982 to 1992, he went 112-68 and built the 15-1 team that crushed the Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX. The sunglasses, the mustache and the sideline glare made him a pop-culture icon long before that season ended.
That fame also made him a video game star, for a few years in the early ’90s.
The game with his name on it
In 1991, Accolade released Mike Ditka Ultimate Football for DOS PCs. It landed in the middle of the celebrity football boom, when John Madden and Joe Montana were also lending their names to games. Ditka’s got some of the warmest reviews of the bunch.
It let you call the plays and let the computer run them, run plays the computer called, or do both yourself. Compute magazine’s review also praised a construction set for building your own leagues, teams, players and playbooks. You could switch fatigue, injuries, penalties and fumbles on or off, and play a single game, a full season or straight into the playoffs with all 28 pro teams.
The reviews were strong. Compute said it “scores a touchdown.” Computer Gaming World called it “a superior product,” and the UK magazine Zero gave it a 90, adding that it was “right up there with Joe Montana – maybe even a bit better.” Coming from a British magazine in 1991, that was high praise for an American football game.
The Genesis version had a rougher time
Accolade also brought Ditka to the Sega Genesis in 1991 as Mike Ditka Power Football. Console critics were cooler on it. Looking back years later, Sega-16 gave it a 4 out of 10, saying it couldn’t offer “arcadey fun” or “simulation goodness.” The problem was timing: it shared a console with John Madden Football, and Madden won that fight for the next three decades.
The Ditka game that never came out
The strangest part of Ditka’s gaming career is a game you never got to play. Accolade signed Ditka to a deal covering his likeness and, in its own press release’s words, “his knowledge of playing and coaching football.” The first game under that deal was meant to be Mike Ditka’s Big Play Football for the NES, due in late 1990.
It was a localized version of a Japanese Famicom game, Natsume’s Quarter Back Scramble, and it was never released. According to the Lost Media Wiki’s history of the project.
Our take: for a coach known for doing things his way, it fits that the most collectible Ditka game is the one that never reached a store shelf.
A legacy bigger than the games
Ditka’s football legacy is secure: two championships as a player, another as an assistant on Dallas’s Super Bowl XII staff, and the Super Bowl XX title as a head coach. The Bears retired his No. 89 in 2013. NFL.com’s obituary has the full story of his career.
Ditka’s 1991 games are a time capsule of the years just before Madden took over football games. For today’s football and sports games, follow our Sports Games section and the Release Calendar, or see every game out this October. His family hasn’t announced memorial plans yet.
Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report
Comments
Loading comments…