It was a regular-season game that attracted a record crowd at Candlestick Park, drew the second-highest television rating in “Monday Night Football” history and was chronicled by more media members than the previous season’s NFC Championship Game.

Before kickoff, there was massive hype. For 60 minutes, there were huge hits. And, after four quarters, the sky-high intensity hadn’t dissipated: There was an on-field scrap between a quarterback and safety just a few minutes before a nose guard put the owner in a headlock in the home team’s locker room.

The only thing that wasn’t enormous about that meeting on Dec. 3, 1990?

The final point total: 49ers 7, Giants 3.

Nearly three decades later, former 49ers inside linebacker Matt Millen, now 60, still gets fired up discussing that evening’s opponent.

“They were going to try to be the tough-guy Giants and bring that New York crap around,” Millen said. “It was like, give me a break. I grew up with this. I’ll freakin’ kill you.”

Said former 49ers tight end Brent Jones, pondering what would happen if safety Ronnie Lott’s performance from that night was transferred to a 2018 game: “I mean, Ronnie would be banned from the NFL for life.”

The sport is now different. But the differences between that 1990 slugfest and Monday night’s meeting between the same teams at Levi’s Stadium go beyond the NFL’s toned-down violence.

On Monday, the 49ers (2-7) and Giants (1-7) will play in a game that features an unfortunate distinction. The teams will have the second-lowest combined winning percentage (.176) in a “Monday Night Football” game played on Nov. 1 or later.

And that makes it roughly the prime-time polar opposite of what happened 28 years ago: The 49ers and Giants both entered with 10-1 records, and their combined winning percentage (.909) remains the record for a MNF game played after Oct. 31.

The records and history made it the game of the season in 1990: The 49ers were two-time defending champions, the teams had won three of the previous four Super Bowls, and they had met in four playoff games since the 1981 season.

Still, there was a tinge of pregame disappointment. Both teams had been 10-0 before losing the previous week, meaning the nation wouldn’t be treated to a battle of unbeatens.

NBC’s Al Michaels, then MNF’s play-by-play announcer alongside analysts Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf, spoke to a USA Today reporter in the days before kickoff about the loss of game-of-the-century status.

“He said, ‘How much of the bloom do you think is off the rose?’”Michaels said. “And I said, ‘Well, I’m not a big fisherman, but if I was out on the ocean looking for a 1,000-pound marlin and I wound up with a 900-pound marlin, I wasn’t going to throw him back.”

To Michaels’ point, The Chronicle reported only two newspapers canceled their credentials after the teams lost their first game. That left a media throng larger than that of the 49ers’ win over the Rams in the NFC Championship Game after the 1989 season.

The 49ers issued credentials to roughly 300 writers and 400 photographers and their support staff. There were reporters from every NFL city, along with the Korea Times and two Japanese publications. The game was televised live at 2 a.m. in London, a distinction then reserved only for the Super Bowl. The New York Times reported scalpers received $200 for $23 tickets.

After the buildup, Super Bowl Jr. attracted a then-record crowd of 66,092 at Candlestick and a television audience of 41 million.

But it didn’t produce much offense.

The game included 461 yards, more punts (16) than points and no scoring in the final 31 minutes. Jerry Rice had one catch. Joe Montana had his lowest passing total (152 yards) for a full game in five years, but he did provide the lone touchdown on a 23-yard pass to John Taylor in the second quarter.

Late in the game, as the 49ers’ Barry Helton readied for his ninth kick, Michaels announced it would be the game’s 16th punt.

Cracked Dierdorf: “Oh, goody.”

But the participants had an immediate appreciation for a game that included five starters who are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, a Hall of Fame coach (New York’s Bill Parcells) and Giants defensive coordinator Bill Belichick, who has won an NFL-record five Super Bowls. The contest was clean — one turnover and eight penalties — but violent, even by that day’s standards.

A member of the 49ers’ stalled-out offense, tackle Bubba Paris, called it “the best football I’ve seen in my nine years in the National Football League.” Offered Giants defensive end Leonard Marshall: “It was the Super Bowl, in my mind.”

Millen, who joined the 49ers in 1989, said he was signed to provide some nastiness to a team often deemed less physical than NFC East brutes such as the Giants. The 49ers’ balletic West Coast Offense popularized the belief they were finesse-oriented.

“When (teams) tried to make us play the physical game — that was one the reasons why they brought me in,” Millen said. “That was what I could excel at. Those type of games I loved. We could match their physicality. They couldn’t block me. I was fine with that. Line up whoever you want. I’m going to drill them.”

Millen set the tone in a game in which the 49ers had Lott, Taylor, running back Roger Craig, defensive end Charles Haley, safety Dave Waymer and nose guard Jim Burt all return after missing snaps due to injuries.

Then 32, Millen sported a dingy neck roll — “It’s a little ragged around the edges, like Matt,” Dierdorf joked — and started screaming at left tackle Eric Moore after New York’s fourth offensive snap.

Four plays later, Burt was drilled in the helmet by running back Rodney Hampton’s right knee and staggered to the sideline, clearly concussed.

As viewers saw a woozy Burt, who had a clump of grass stuck to his upper face mask, Gifford referenced Burt’s first eight NFL seasons with the Giants.

“He thinks he’s at the Meadowlands (stadium) again,” said Gifford.

Despite his injury, Burt returned in the first quarter, which wasn’t unusual at a time when the link between concussions and brain trauma wasn’t as well understood.

However, defensive end Kevin Fagan, one of Burt’s close friends, said it was unlikely any injury would have kept him on the sideline against his ex-team. Burt was furious with the Giants, who didn’t keep him after the 1988 season. Even teammates and assistant coach John Marshall experienced his intensity.

“He was running into our offensive huddle and shouting instructions to them,” Fagan said, laughing. “He got in a scuffle with our defensive line coach on the sidelines. He was just totally out of control and just so hyped up.”

Burt couldn’t be controlled in the postgame locker room, where, on a night when the game-time temperature was 52, Gatorade coolers filled with chicken bouillon were set up.

Burt, jubilantly screaming and cussing, knocked over a cooler — and soup drenched owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr.

“So Mr. D’s pissed, right?” Fagan said. “But Jim goes over and gets him in a headlock and gives him a noogie: ‘C’mon, what are you going to do?’ And Mr. D just broke down laughing. Our mouths were wide open because we’re thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh, man, you just got the owner in a headlock and roughed up his hair.’ We were all afraid of Mr. D. But Jim was just totally out of control.”

If Burt loathed the Giants organization, many 49ers had a specific distaste for quarterback Phil Simms.

The bad blood was tied to the final week of the 1988 regular season. The 49ers, who had clinched a first-round bye, rested key players and lost to the Rams, a defeat that prevented the Giants from reaching the postseason. Simms’ quote at the time: The 49ers were “laying down like dogs.”

Those words literally became bulletin-board material for the 49ers, recalled former public-relations director Jerry Walker. He said the players often had a similar response when he asked them to fulfill an interview request from New York media.

“I’d get responses like, ‘They want to talk to us dogs? We just lay down,’” Walker said. “It was like ‘Ooooooh-kay.’ That was definitely still at the forefront of everybody’s minds.”

No player was more livid than Lott.

“You know, Phil’s actually a pretty decent guy, but back then he was kind of a punk,” Jones said. “… And Ronnie was not going to let that go. If you said it to him right now, he might rise up and take a swing at you.”

In 1990, Lott butted heads with Simms, the force unbuckling Simms’ chinstrap, during an animated fourth-quarter conversation. In the moments after the game, Lott and Simms had to be separated by teammates after screaming, pushing and shoving.

But Lott’s biggest shot was reserved for tight end Mark Bavaro. In the third quarter, Lott, at full speed, planted his right arm into the upper chest of Bavaro, who was outstretched in an attempt to corral an overthrown pass over the deep middle.

Said Dierdorf: “And Ronnie Lott almost kills Mark Bavaro.”

But Lott didn’t even sideline him. Bavaro didn’t miss a play.

“He took Ronnie’s best shot and lived to tell about it,” Jones said. “You talk about a beast.”

Twenty-eight years later, Fagan enjoys talking about a game punctuated by his signature sack. With the Giants at the 49ers’ 27-yard line, the game ended when Simms rolled right to avoid Haley, but he was corralled by Fagan before he could heave a potential game-winning pass.

In his den at his home in Dunnellon, Fla., Fagan has a picture of the moment after that play. It captures the half-crazed Burt hugging him in an expletive-filled celebration that began with one of the game’s most bone-jarring shots.

“Jim,” Fagan said, “just about knocked me over.”

Seven weeks later, the Giants knocked the 49ers out.

The NFC Championship Game at Candlestick mirrored the regular-season meeting: There was just one turnover, the 49ers didn’t allow a touchdown and Taylor was the only player to end up in the end zone.

But the Giants won 15-13 when the last of Matt Bahr’s five field goals sailed through the uprights as time expired, preventing the 49ers from a shot to become the only team to win three straight Super Bowls.

The 49ers won the game of the year. The Giants won the game that really mattered.

“Those games were made for the true football fan,” Jones said. “… If I could do it over again, I’d much rather win the rematch.”