NFL Blitz is a series of American football themed video games by Midway featuring the teams of the National Football League. It began as a 1997 arcade game but was eventually ported to home consoles and spawned several sequels. Rather than being designed as a realistic interpretation of the sport of football, like Madden NFL or NFL 2K, the Blitz series was created as an over-the-top, exaggerated version of the sport, inspired by Midway's own NBA Jam basketball games. In 2005, following the loss of the NFL license, the Blitz series was relaunched as Blitz: The League, featuring fictional players and teams in a fictional league with slightly more realistic (though still exaggerated) on-field play and a focus on the seedy behind-the-scenes lives of the players. On October 18, 2011, a reveal trailer for the relaunch of NFL BLITZ was uploaded to YouTube. The game's release date is January 4, 2012, and is available on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. The game took the series back to the original style of NFL BLITZ, but removed the late hits due to input by the NFL.