TouchGrove’s LED Football is a nostalgic homage to early handheld electronic games. While the game was unquestionably inspired by Mattel Football, it’s been careful not to duplicate the experience to avoid copyright hassles. Now Mattel has officially licensed LED Football. The update is free for existing users, and the game still costs one buck.

In the late 1970s Mattel introduced a line of LED-equipped electronic sports games. Football was the one practically everyone alive during the era remembers, though baseball, hockey, basketball and soccer also got the Mattel electronic game treatment. Primitive by today’s GameBoy and PSP standards, the games featured simple beeps for sound effects and a limited display that only showed red LED lights, but it was enough to thrill kids (and some adults).

TouchGrove recreated that experience for the iPhone and iPod touch, though the sound effects and graphics were tweaked just enough to avoid claims of copyright infringement from Mattel. There’s no question that LED Football was an homage to that classic game, however.

“It took us six months of intense negotiations,” reports Mark Helmuth, partner at TouchGrove. “But now we have emerged with what I would consider the best LED Football ever, better sounds, more realistic graphics and the coolest load-in screen!”

LED Football has been updated with new Mattel Football graphics and sounds, and a new “original Mattel Football box art” load-in screen.