NFL Blitz is a series of American football themed video games originally released by Midway featuring National Football League (NFL) teams. It began as a 1997 arcade game that was ported to home consoles and spawned a series of 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, after losing the NFL license, Midway relaunched the Blitz series as Blitz: The League, depicting 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. Following the dissolution of Midway, EA Sports picked up the rights to the Blitz name and relaunched the series on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live with a new entry in the series simply titled NFL Blitz. The game took the series back to the original style of Blitz, but removed the late hits due to input by the NFL.