Anthony1
07-21-2005, 06:05 PM
***WARNING***
(Super long rant on Anthony1's history with video football games)
After reading the post about the new version of Madden, I started to think back about all the great football games of years past.
You see, since the beginning for me, I was always a big time sports videogamer. Football has always been my #1 game.
My favorite game of all time happens to be a football game. Madden '93 on the Sega Genesis.
But it started much earlier than Madden on Genesis. It started way back on a rainy day in December 1977. Football for the Atari 2600 was the game, and me and my brother and dad played the crap out of that game. Man, I especially love how you could kinda steer the ball after it was thrown, and how you could get a safety, and it would play that "ala bama" tune.
Football for the 2600 only featured 3 players on each team, and it was as primitive as it could be, but man we played it for several years.
Around 1983 to the launch of the Nintendo NES, I didn't play any video games.
Then when the NES came out, you know damn well what one of the first games I had for it was.
10-Yard Fight, baby!
Yep, launch title for the NES, and I was playing that game like crazy. It was a pretty huge upgrade for me to go from Football on the 2600 to 10-Yard Fight on the NES.
But it wasn't until a couple years after that Tecmo Bowl came out that the obsession was really in effect. When Tecmo Bowl first came out, we would play that game till our fingers bled. We had huge wagers on our games. It was like a freaking underground gambling ring. Everybody wanted Chicago, because Gentry was the kick off returner, and if you knew how to use him perfectly, you could almost always return the kick for a touchdown, or at least get tackled inside the 20 yard line. Everybody wanted to have Gentry. Of course, there were all the money plays. So the games ended up being a battle of who was more effective at completeing their money plays effeciently.
Basically, I stuck with Tecmo Bowl for a few years. When Tecmo Super Bowl came out, I don't think I had a NES. At that point, I had a TurboGrafx-16, and I was anxiously awaiting TV Sports Football.
At the time, TV Sports Football was a huge game, that was heavily hyped up, and it looked to take video game football beyond the arcade antics of Tecmo Bowl.
When TV Sports Football first came out, I was one of the happiest guys around. This is why I bought my Turbo, I thought. 4 people could play at one time. I was in college, living in an apartment just off campus near San Diego State University, and we would get down with some 4 player TV Sports Football action. That game was actually pretty damn good. Doesn't get much respect when people look back on it, cause it was so overshadowed by a Genesis cart that would come out less than 2 weeks later.
Man, I'll never forget the day I first saw Madden. I got home from school, and everybody was talking about this new game. Madden, Madden, Madden. They kept saying "oh my God, and you won't believe it!!!
My best friend went up to me and apologized to me, because he knew how long I had been waiting for TV Sports Football, and how much I had been bragging about it, when he knew that this other game totally obliterated it.
He said, "I'm sorry dude, but I played a football game that Shawn brought over today, called , John Madden Football, and it blows TV Sports totally out of the water.
At first I was kinda dissapointed. I only had TV Sports for a couple of weeks, and then this other game comes out of nowhere. But I got over it. Then I rushed my ass over to Toys R Us and grabbed me a copy. Brought it back to the pad, and it was on. We played that game non stop for several months. Had a number of tournaments and leagues. But at that time, it was just so obvious that Madden was lightyears beyond anything that had come before. The 3D engine that it used was totally revolutionary at the time.
In fact, Joe Montana's Football was in development at Sega, and they originally had a game with a horizontal perspective, with larger characters, (actually if you see a pic of this game in really old magazines, it looks like it's going to be an amazing game) and Sega totally scrapped that game after Madden game out. The completely changed the perspective to try to copy the style of Madden, but it just didn't work. It was rushed and it didn't play very well at all.
Madden basically ruled the roost for the next several years. John Madden Football '92 came out, with basically the same basic engine, but some ehancements. Then the dream. John Madden '93 for Sega Genesis. The best football game of all time in my opinion. The best pure flow to a game both offensively and defensively. I've never ever seen both sides of the game be so balanced and counter balanced for each player.
Since Madden '93 on Genny, no other football game has quite got it right in relations to having a lineman at the line and just totally rush the QB and dare anybody to stop you. In Madden '93, if you had a guy that was a Terror, you could use him like crazy, and just go right after the QB, and the QB would only have a split second to get a throw off. Alot of times the throw would be batted down. But it was pretty amazing, that back then, in late 1992, there was a game that really simulated what it was like to be a QB in the NFL and to have some tremendous pressure on you to make a decision in a split second. The running game was amazing. The defense in the secodary was amazing.
Madden '93 for Genesis will always have a special place in my heart.
Well after Madden '93 for Genesis, came Madden '94. You would think that Madden '94 would be even better, right?
WRONG
THEY CHANGED THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GAME ENGINES EVER IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAME FOOTBALL!!!!!!!!!!
How could they do such a thing?
You don't fix what isn't broken. Madden '93 was the ultimate, and Madden '94 they changed the engine and messed the game up. It was still the best football game out there, but I hated how they changed the engine. They used the Bill Walsh engine, and it wasn't as smooth in gameplay.
In Madden '93, when you intercepted a pass on the run, it was this perfect running, snag, and keep running feeling. In '94, it was click, then run. It wasn't seamless. And the ability to rush the QB with a defensive lineman was taken away. You couldn't get in the line like you used to.
I'm a purest about Madden '93 for Genesis. And people at EA will tell you too. All their top designers believe that Madden '93 had the best gameplay ever. Sure, games have come out since that have graphics a billion times better than Madden '93, but in terms of pure gameplay flow, I think it went all the way till NFL2K1 on Dreamcast before there was a game that truly had equal gameplay balance.
So what did I do during the days of Madden 94 and 95? I went to the Panasonic 3DO. In Spring 1994, I got my hands on a 3DO, and a copy of Madden. At that point, it was all about Madden on the 3DO. The experience seemed so next level. It was so far beyond the Maddens on 16-bit. You had these giant players, and realistic animations and the CD music and everything. It was a pretty overwhelming experience for Madden fans when they first got to play the 3DO version.
But the 3DO version was also very hollow. The uniforms didn't look accurate at all, and it just didn't have the production values of the Maddens on 16-bit. It seemed kinda rushed. It had that next-generation engine, that definitely was impossible to beat at that time, but the soul of the game was missing.
Well, then you start to get to the arrival of the Playstation. I'll never forget the launch of the Playstation, and they hype regarding Madden 96 for Playstation. Remember if you have one of the early Playstation boxes, it has a picture of Madden 96 on it, and this game was actually being designed by none other than "VISUAL CONCEPTS". But at the 11th hour, EA didn't like this version of Madden that they made, (I would kill for a prototype of that game) and they ended up canceling the game for the Playstation, and they fired Visual Concepts. They didn't have a Madden game on the Playstation until the following Christmas with Madden 97. But the football game that was the top dog during the first year for the Playstation was NFL GameDay.
NFL GameDay came out of nowhere to steal Madden's thunder. Madden was a no show, and GameDay took advantage of it. At the time nobody really knew anything about 989 Sports. They just knew it was an internal team for Sony (featuring some of the key members of Park Place Productions, the makers of Madden '93 for Genesis) Park Place Productions was based out of San Diego, and 989 Studios basically had all of Park Place's key members, and they secretly worked on their Madden killer. GameDay was a damn good game, and everybody that had it that first year quickly forgot about Madden.
Then the next XMAS, Madden finally showed up on the Playstation with Madden 97. GameDay also had their 97 version as well. Alot of people that had GameDay bought the new version, and alot of the old Madden supporters bought the new Madden too. So in late 1996, both Madden 97 and GameDay 97 shared the spotlight.
The next year came the first Madden for the Nintendo 64. I think this was the first Madden to try polygons, and at the time it was pretty next level and pretty advanced, but it definitely didn't play as well as previous Maddens.
The the Maddens on the Playstation and the GameDay's on the playtation all went polygon.
At this point, I started playing Madden on a 3DFX accellerated PC. That was the most next level Madden there was, and probably the best Madden out there during those years.
Then finally, in 1999, we have the arrival of NFL2K and a new star is born. I can still remember the frst day I saw NFL2K. It was at e3 in May of 1999. I saw it on the screens in Sega's booth, and I practically couldn't believe my eyes. The company that was fired by EA, because of their displeasure with their version of Madden 96 for the PSX, resurfaced on the Dreamcast with a game for Sega called NFL2K.
How interesting.
Man, when I saw that game, it almost looked like a game on TV. At least that was what I was thinking back in May of 1999, when I first layed eyes on it.
Then I got a Dreamcast and NFL2K, and that was the game that I played over and over, and then the arrival of the Playstation 2.
With the Playstation 2, came the first next generation Madden on this level, and there was tremendous hype and fanfare about the new Madden. I got a PS2 the day it came out, and a copy of Madden.
At the time, I thought that I loved that Madden. Actually, I forced myself to love that Madden. NFL2K1 which also came out at the time, and featured Internet play, was actually the superior game.
Madden for the PS2 was in slow motion when compared to NFL2K1. At first, I forced myself to believe that Madden for the PS2 was definitely the superior game, because I had to justify the fact that I just spent $500 on a PS2 and a few games and accessories. But I quickly realized that NFL2K1 was the better game.
Then when the XBOX came out, my attention was totally focused on NFL Fever. The XBOX was a very advanced system, and NFL Fever looked just like NFL2K, except on super duper steriods. NFL Fever was a decent game, but NFL2K1 was actually probably a better game, but I was a NFL Fever guy that first year of the XBOX.
Then after that it was all about NFL2K3 on XBOX. That game was absolutely amazing. NFL2K3 is an absolute achievement in the history of football games.
(Super long rant on Anthony1's history with video football games)
After reading the post about the new version of Madden, I started to think back about all the great football games of years past.
You see, since the beginning for me, I was always a big time sports videogamer. Football has always been my #1 game.
My favorite game of all time happens to be a football game. Madden '93 on the Sega Genesis.
But it started much earlier than Madden on Genesis. It started way back on a rainy day in December 1977. Football for the Atari 2600 was the game, and me and my brother and dad played the crap out of that game. Man, I especially love how you could kinda steer the ball after it was thrown, and how you could get a safety, and it would play that "ala bama" tune.
Football for the 2600 only featured 3 players on each team, and it was as primitive as it could be, but man we played it for several years.
Around 1983 to the launch of the Nintendo NES, I didn't play any video games.
Then when the NES came out, you know damn well what one of the first games I had for it was.
10-Yard Fight, baby!
Yep, launch title for the NES, and I was playing that game like crazy. It was a pretty huge upgrade for me to go from Football on the 2600 to 10-Yard Fight on the NES.
But it wasn't until a couple years after that Tecmo Bowl came out that the obsession was really in effect. When Tecmo Bowl first came out, we would play that game till our fingers bled. We had huge wagers on our games. It was like a freaking underground gambling ring. Everybody wanted Chicago, because Gentry was the kick off returner, and if you knew how to use him perfectly, you could almost always return the kick for a touchdown, or at least get tackled inside the 20 yard line. Everybody wanted to have Gentry. Of course, there were all the money plays. So the games ended up being a battle of who was more effective at completeing their money plays effeciently.
Basically, I stuck with Tecmo Bowl for a few years. When Tecmo Super Bowl came out, I don't think I had a NES. At that point, I had a TurboGrafx-16, and I was anxiously awaiting TV Sports Football.
At the time, TV Sports Football was a huge game, that was heavily hyped up, and it looked to take video game football beyond the arcade antics of Tecmo Bowl.
When TV Sports Football first came out, I was one of the happiest guys around. This is why I bought my Turbo, I thought. 4 people could play at one time. I was in college, living in an apartment just off campus near San Diego State University, and we would get down with some 4 player TV Sports Football action. That game was actually pretty damn good. Doesn't get much respect when people look back on it, cause it was so overshadowed by a Genesis cart that would come out less than 2 weeks later.
Man, I'll never forget the day I first saw Madden. I got home from school, and everybody was talking about this new game. Madden, Madden, Madden. They kept saying "oh my God, and you won't believe it!!!
My best friend went up to me and apologized to me, because he knew how long I had been waiting for TV Sports Football, and how much I had been bragging about it, when he knew that this other game totally obliterated it.
He said, "I'm sorry dude, but I played a football game that Shawn brought over today, called , John Madden Football, and it blows TV Sports totally out of the water.
At first I was kinda dissapointed. I only had TV Sports for a couple of weeks, and then this other game comes out of nowhere. But I got over it. Then I rushed my ass over to Toys R Us and grabbed me a copy. Brought it back to the pad, and it was on. We played that game non stop for several months. Had a number of tournaments and leagues. But at that time, it was just so obvious that Madden was lightyears beyond anything that had come before. The 3D engine that it used was totally revolutionary at the time.
In fact, Joe Montana's Football was in development at Sega, and they originally had a game with a horizontal perspective, with larger characters, (actually if you see a pic of this game in really old magazines, it looks like it's going to be an amazing game) and Sega totally scrapped that game after Madden game out. The completely changed the perspective to try to copy the style of Madden, but it just didn't work. It was rushed and it didn't play very well at all.
Madden basically ruled the roost for the next several years. John Madden Football '92 came out, with basically the same basic engine, but some ehancements. Then the dream. John Madden '93 for Sega Genesis. The best football game of all time in my opinion. The best pure flow to a game both offensively and defensively. I've never ever seen both sides of the game be so balanced and counter balanced for each player.
Since Madden '93 on Genny, no other football game has quite got it right in relations to having a lineman at the line and just totally rush the QB and dare anybody to stop you. In Madden '93, if you had a guy that was a Terror, you could use him like crazy, and just go right after the QB, and the QB would only have a split second to get a throw off. Alot of times the throw would be batted down. But it was pretty amazing, that back then, in late 1992, there was a game that really simulated what it was like to be a QB in the NFL and to have some tremendous pressure on you to make a decision in a split second. The running game was amazing. The defense in the secodary was amazing.
Madden '93 for Genesis will always have a special place in my heart.
Well after Madden '93 for Genesis, came Madden '94. You would think that Madden '94 would be even better, right?
WRONG
THEY CHANGED THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GAME ENGINES EVER IN THE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAME FOOTBALL!!!!!!!!!!
How could they do such a thing?
You don't fix what isn't broken. Madden '93 was the ultimate, and Madden '94 they changed the engine and messed the game up. It was still the best football game out there, but I hated how they changed the engine. They used the Bill Walsh engine, and it wasn't as smooth in gameplay.
In Madden '93, when you intercepted a pass on the run, it was this perfect running, snag, and keep running feeling. In '94, it was click, then run. It wasn't seamless. And the ability to rush the QB with a defensive lineman was taken away. You couldn't get in the line like you used to.
I'm a purest about Madden '93 for Genesis. And people at EA will tell you too. All their top designers believe that Madden '93 had the best gameplay ever. Sure, games have come out since that have graphics a billion times better than Madden '93, but in terms of pure gameplay flow, I think it went all the way till NFL2K1 on Dreamcast before there was a game that truly had equal gameplay balance.
So what did I do during the days of Madden 94 and 95? I went to the Panasonic 3DO. In Spring 1994, I got my hands on a 3DO, and a copy of Madden. At that point, it was all about Madden on the 3DO. The experience seemed so next level. It was so far beyond the Maddens on 16-bit. You had these giant players, and realistic animations and the CD music and everything. It was a pretty overwhelming experience for Madden fans when they first got to play the 3DO version.
But the 3DO version was also very hollow. The uniforms didn't look accurate at all, and it just didn't have the production values of the Maddens on 16-bit. It seemed kinda rushed. It had that next-generation engine, that definitely was impossible to beat at that time, but the soul of the game was missing.
Well, then you start to get to the arrival of the Playstation. I'll never forget the launch of the Playstation, and they hype regarding Madden 96 for Playstation. Remember if you have one of the early Playstation boxes, it has a picture of Madden 96 on it, and this game was actually being designed by none other than "VISUAL CONCEPTS". But at the 11th hour, EA didn't like this version of Madden that they made, (I would kill for a prototype of that game) and they ended up canceling the game for the Playstation, and they fired Visual Concepts. They didn't have a Madden game on the Playstation until the following Christmas with Madden 97. But the football game that was the top dog during the first year for the Playstation was NFL GameDay.
NFL GameDay came out of nowhere to steal Madden's thunder. Madden was a no show, and GameDay took advantage of it. At the time nobody really knew anything about 989 Sports. They just knew it was an internal team for Sony (featuring some of the key members of Park Place Productions, the makers of Madden '93 for Genesis) Park Place Productions was based out of San Diego, and 989 Studios basically had all of Park Place's key members, and they secretly worked on their Madden killer. GameDay was a damn good game, and everybody that had it that first year quickly forgot about Madden.
Then the next XMAS, Madden finally showed up on the Playstation with Madden 97. GameDay also had their 97 version as well. Alot of people that had GameDay bought the new version, and alot of the old Madden supporters bought the new Madden too. So in late 1996, both Madden 97 and GameDay 97 shared the spotlight.
The next year came the first Madden for the Nintendo 64. I think this was the first Madden to try polygons, and at the time it was pretty next level and pretty advanced, but it definitely didn't play as well as previous Maddens.
The the Maddens on the Playstation and the GameDay's on the playtation all went polygon.
At this point, I started playing Madden on a 3DFX accellerated PC. That was the most next level Madden there was, and probably the best Madden out there during those years.
Then finally, in 1999, we have the arrival of NFL2K and a new star is born. I can still remember the frst day I saw NFL2K. It was at e3 in May of 1999. I saw it on the screens in Sega's booth, and I practically couldn't believe my eyes. The company that was fired by EA, because of their displeasure with their version of Madden 96 for the PSX, resurfaced on the Dreamcast with a game for Sega called NFL2K.
How interesting.
Man, when I saw that game, it almost looked like a game on TV. At least that was what I was thinking back in May of 1999, when I first layed eyes on it.
Then I got a Dreamcast and NFL2K, and that was the game that I played over and over, and then the arrival of the Playstation 2.
With the Playstation 2, came the first next generation Madden on this level, and there was tremendous hype and fanfare about the new Madden. I got a PS2 the day it came out, and a copy of Madden.
At the time, I thought that I loved that Madden. Actually, I forced myself to love that Madden. NFL2K1 which also came out at the time, and featured Internet play, was actually the superior game.
Madden for the PS2 was in slow motion when compared to NFL2K1. At first, I forced myself to believe that Madden for the PS2 was definitely the superior game, because I had to justify the fact that I just spent $500 on a PS2 and a few games and accessories. But I quickly realized that NFL2K1 was the better game.
Then when the XBOX came out, my attention was totally focused on NFL Fever. The XBOX was a very advanced system, and NFL Fever looked just like NFL2K, except on super duper steriods. NFL Fever was a decent game, but NFL2K1 was actually probably a better game, but I was a NFL Fever guy that first year of the XBOX.
Then after that it was all about NFL2K3 on XBOX. That game was absolutely amazing. NFL2K3 is an absolute achievement in the history of football games.