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The Asterisk on Madden's Annual Release Legacy (polygon.com)
Madden '96 for PlayStation never shipped, yet it changed the history of football video games -- and sports games in general -- for decades in its wake. Polygon has the behind-the-scene story. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: The story starts back in 1992, when EA Canada (formerly Distinctive Software) began working on Super Nintendo versions of the NFL series. Over its first two entries -- John Madden Football and John Madden Football '93 -- the studio struggled to match the quality of Blue Sky Productions' Sega Genesis work. EA Canada's developers faced a coding challenge: The slower processor speed of Nintendo's 16-bit console limited what they could do. The games hovered around 15-20 frames of animation per second, making the games feel sluggish despite looking nice in stills. As the studio moved on to its third try, Madden NFL '94, it seemed like the performance issues would continue. Enter Visual Concepts, then a 6-year-old upstart known for parody fighting game ClayFighter and platformer Lester the Unlikely. The team had been working on isometric helicopter sim Desert Strike for EA, and had been getting a lot out of the SNES hardware.
Mostly it's about Sony Computer Entertainment America's failure to adequately support third-party developers during the launch window for Sony's debut console, the original PlayStation. Japanese developers and SCEA got usable docs; North American third parties didn't at first. Because of the timing of that particular console release cycle, Visual Concepts couldn't get a PlayStation version of Madden '96 out by November 1995 without accepting the limits of the engine that had been used for the 3DO version of Madden '94.
I saw Slashdot's posting of this story as possibly egging on yet another PC vs. console debate, with PC fans bragging that their platform's release cycle isn't nearly as abrupt as that of consoles. It would also provoke a debate about whether EA's acquisition of exclusive rights to the rosters of the major leagues for a particular sport at both professional (NFL) and collegiate (NCAA) levels ought to have triggered an antitrust investigation, as competing gridiron football video game publishers would have no league from which to license a roster.
It's WAY past time to break up the "single license for the entire fricking league" licensing that's in place today.
Colin Kaepernick's NFL Pre-Game Positional Protesting 2016 had terrible game play. Good online chat engine though.
I read this a couple days ago. It is an interesting piece of game development history, but the article really didn't back up the claim of how the PS Madden '96 "changed the history of sports games for decades to come". If anything it just resulted in the establishment of 2 game development houses: Visual Concepts (the 2K sports games) and EA Tiburon (Madden).
I thought by the misleading title that it would be for the Tom Brady cover.....
"The team had been working on isometric helicopter sim Desert Strike for EA"
There are several ways I'd describe that game, simulation doesn't make it on that list. That's like calling your old slot racer kit a driving simulator.
Madden was absolutely rubbish back then, I remember 989 made an NFL that used to smoke Madden. Then suddenly 989 disappeared and was Madden or nothing.
Mutant League Football was the greatest football game ever made. Any other opinion is invalid. No need for NFL stuff.
That is all.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
How haven't Koei (Tecmo's parent), the NFL, NFL Players Inc., and current exclusive licensee EA already shut this down?
ESPN NFL 2k5 was much better than Madden for the same year. That was the last year they didn't have an exclusive license and pretty much killed that franchise.
Why is parent marked "Troll"? It's a worthwhile question that has prompted useful responses.
The three co-founders of EA Tiburon were Jason Andersen, John Schappert, and Ian Schmidt. Steve Chiang didn't come on-board as GM until some months after Tiburon had been established.
Source: One of the actual original three is a good friend of mine.