Red Zone is an out-of-print

collectible card game A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG) among other names, is a type of card game that mixes strategy game, strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards, introduced with ''Magic: The Gathering'' in ...

Donruss Donruss was a US-based trading cards manufacturing company founded in 1954 and acquired by the Panini Group in 2009. The company started in the 1950s, producing confectionery, evolved into Donruss and started producing trading cards. During the ...

and

NXT Games NXT may refer to: Professional wrestling * '' WWE NXT'', a professional wrestling television program produced by WWE that began in 2010 ** NXT (WWE brand), WWE's Florida-based brand and former developmental territory * '' NXT UK'', the British spi ...

. It was first released in October 1995. The game's base set consists of 336 cards sold in 80-card starter decks and 12-card booster packs. An expansion called ''1995 Expansion Teams'' was released in December 1995 and contained 98 cards and focused on the

Carolina Panthers The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. T ...

and the Jacksonville Jaguars. In early 1996, Donruss sold its sports card and card-game properties to

Pinnacle A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was mainly ...

. NXT Games also had to renegotiate their licenses for Red Zone and Top of the Order with the

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

and

MLB Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

, but new iterations of the game never materialized. Gameplay involved a player draft (not to be confused with the drafting format of CCGs) and chose one of eight offensive or defensive plays. Each player would then draw a card and the color denoted on that card would determine the final result of the play. The game was criticized for being "tedious and repetitive, and the actual players you used only rarely made a difference." Once you had players with high ratings there was no reason to use players with lower ratings, except in your play deck.

References

Collectible card games Card games introduced in 1995 {{CCG-game-stub