Maddenoliday - a day late...

Picked up my copy of Madden 07 last night... but didn't get a chance to throw it in the 360 till 11:30PM because of some Podcast recordings earlier in the evening.

I debated getting the title all together because I picked up NCAA 07 with the purchase of the 360 a week ago... but found a brand new copy for 46 bucks (retails for $59) at a local WalMart. Knowing that I would pick it up at some point I opted to get it now... throw it in every once in a while until I totally commit to starting a franchise on it.

Threw it into the console late last night to see the differences between it and NCAA 07... Both games were developed by the same development team so there were a number of similarities in the game play and controls. This was good.. particularly in the game play so I could get through a tune up game without getting my ass handed to me by the computer.

While tooling around in a practice game (Pats VS Bengals) I decided to alter the elements to see what a game would be like in the rain. The game played incredibly well with the altered settings... the graphics are amazing and EA went out of their way to show that they could detail little things such as field conditions when players tear up a wet turf.

I've read a lot of good and a lot of bad reviews for the latest Madden installment. The Madden franchise is everything that's great about sports gaming while at the same time it represents everything that is bad about gaming... I haven't purchased a Madden football game since Madden 2001 so I'm looking at the game from a very different perspective.

The game has come a long way since I first started playing Madden. While it's a very solid game... its not my favorite Madden of all time.

That honor still goes to Madden 1993. I purchased that Madden for my Super Nintendo and I played that fucking cart until it could be played again... Those who had this madden will remember that it only had the Players Union agreement so there wasn't any official teams.


The game lacked from any key features. it didn't have a regular season. you could only participate in a playoff and you had to write down really long codes to continue play after a game because it didn't have any memory on the cart to save your progress.

The reason I loved the game so much... Madden 93 started the playbook calling by having you select your play calling by selecting - STRONG, PRO, FAST (i can't recall the terminology) but that had a very big effect on who was in the huddle. You could catch a Defense napping if you were quick enough with your play calling so that their player assignments were back on the field yet.

How did a feature this good get lost over the years?

Player substitution is a big deal. It happens on almost every play - thanks largely in part to players having "specialist" duties. Players now magically appear in the huddle and you get to the offensive line with far too many pre-snap options.

Ok... maybe you can't have enough pre-snap options... but introducing player changes would add a much needed degree of difficulty.