Virtual Console Monday: Are you ready for some football (and a hedgehog and a Zelda-clone)?

Football season got started in earnest yesterday, and probably left some of you still hungry for more pigskin. If so: Eat pork rinds, they're delicious. If you want more football though, the Virtual Console has you covered. Imagine: Football in video game form.

• NES Play Action Football (NES, 1-4 players, 500 Wii Points): The press release from Nintendo touts a "distinct overhead viewpoint" creating an "almost 3-D field." Also, there eight available teams with "multiple running/passing plays" and "a wide selection of defensive schemes."! Madden who?

• Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Sega Genesis, 1-2 players, 800 Wii Points): If you think about it, in many ways, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is exactly like football. You run as fast as your can always trying to collect rings. And Dr. Robotnik kind of looks like a bald Mike Ditka. Also, you're competing against an echidna that you eventually befriend. ... Just like football.

• Neutopia II (TurboGrafx16, 1 player, 600 Wii Points): Despite what we will occasionally put on mortgage applications, we are not scientists. But we think that Neutopia is scientifically the polar opposite of football. That's so much the case that we feel free from tying it to our theme, and can instead just say that this game wants to be Zelda so bad that it's considering seeing Dr. 90210 for ear extensions.