The Sega Genesis seemed to be a time when Sega was doing everything right. They were producing great titles, their marketing was fresh, and they even managed to establish themselves as the leader in gaming for a time.
in 1991 Sega had also established themselves as a great force in the sports simulation category and Joe Montana Football is one of my favorite sports games of the 16-bit era.
Some would argue that Joe Montana wasn't as good as John Madden was on SNES and in many regards I would agree with that sentiment. It was, however, a different style of game that focused really heavily on passing and that is what made it a great game.
The screen was a vertical view, which was annoying at first but then one you got used to it, it kinda worked. Like all of the Sega sports games at the time, it featured a instantly recognizable celebrity on the box and this cost Sega nearly $2 million for the 5 year contract with Montana. The Japanese executives, many of whom had no idea who Joe Montana even was, were not very happy with this move but it ended up working in the end for most of the Sega sports titles.
An interesting piece of history on the game was that while it was a great game, the original version of it was actually much better. Produced by Electronic Arts the only game it was really competing with at the time was John Madden Football, which was also produced by Electronic Arts. When they saw the demo and how great it was, they actually decided to make it less awesome and "scaled it back" before releasing the game to Sega. Apparently, they were afraid of it accidentally being superior to Madden, which was their flagship game at the time.
This game was a triumphant success and spawned 4 sequels as well as an Ios mobile game.