The surprisingly interesting tale of the canceled Madden NFL '96 on the Playstation, and the Gameday verses Madden, Madden vs 2K feud

The surprisingly interesting tale of the canceled Madden NFL '96 on the Playstation, and the Gameday verses Madden feud.

Still busy at the time making Madden for the 16-bit consoles, EA contracted out the first Madden game that was to be a launch game for Sony's console to Visual Concepts.

It didn't take long before EA figured out that things weren't coming along as expected. According to this article [EGM, Issue 137, pg. 164]: "They tried to render each team individually," "Instead of rendering a player, then applying different uniform textures, they painstakingly rendered the 49ers, Cowboys, Etc.” What this meant was, the engine was chuggy, and would even take 5-10 seconds to load in defensive players after a change of possession.

As you may imagine, this meant the game was in rough shape. Imagine having to wait for a Madden game to load in offensive, and defensive players seperately. Apparently, they did send some early preview versions of the game to some gaming outlets at the time, saying it was still work in progress (I wonder if any of those preview disks are still floating around out there), and EA still maintained that the game would come out. They even put a screenshot of Madden '96 on the demo disk that came with launch PS1 systems.

However, there was one big thing that made EA stop the production of Madden. They saw Sony's own NFL Gameday on the Playstation. By comparison, they knew that Madden '96 wasn't up to snuff, so they canceled Madden '96 thanks to NFL Gameday. Gameday was already showing Madden up. EA, apparently barely got Madden '97 out in time by the next year. Madden was off to a rough start on Sony's system.

A lot of this had to do with the bitter rivalry of one-upmanship between NFL Gameday, and Madden. In 1998, Madden '98 came out, and while Madden fans vehemently praised it for it's sim elements, Gameday completely embarrassed Madden that year with Gameday '98 being a completely polygonal football game, something they said couldn't be done on the PS1. By comparison, Madden's two-dimensional sprite-based character graphics looked incredibly outdated. Gameday showed Madden up with a fully 3D football game that used motion capture technology to make the players move in a lifelike manner, and, at the time,  had detailed graphics that could immerse football fans even deeper into it's gameplay.

EA had Produced a fully polygonal Madden on the N64 the same year, but stuck with the 2D spirte graphics for the PS1 version. On the N64, it was Quarterback Club verses Madden, and Quarterback Club definitely won the graphics battle. However, nothing beats the complete humiliation of a fully polygonal NFL Gameday '98 verses a 2D Madden 98. EA had egg in their face.

Madden '99 was EA's first foray into polygonal graphics on the PS1, and the rivalry between Gameday that year was still deadlocked. Gameday was more arcadey, and had more detailed graphics, but Madden had the more sim feel, a franchise mode, and even a play editor. Some magazines gave Madden the edge, some gave it to Gameday.

For Madden 2000, the reviews for Madden saw it finally pull ahead of Gameday. Gameday still reviewed well, but Madden was the king again. EA had finally pulled themselves out of a rut, and put out, according to the reviews, the best Playstation and N64 football game that year.

Madden NFL 2001 was a premiere launch title for the PS2. It showcased fantastic next-gen graphics, amazing animations, and TV-style presentation. As silly as it is to gush over a football game for a launch title, Madden 2001 was a special next generation step up for the series, and really showed off the power of the console. Gameday 2001, however, was a complete mess. Glitchy, ugly, unfinished. 989 should have had the wisdom to cancel Gameday 2001, because the finished product was an unfinished product. The series, which did start to improve a lot before EA bought the NFL license, never recovered. By then, there was another epic football game rivalry in full swing.

In the year 1999, when EA was finally pulling ahead of Gameday with Madden 2000, Visual Concepts, the same team who fumbled Madden '96 released NFL 2K on the Sega Dreamcast. EA, who refused to support the Dreamcast never put a Madden game on the system. DC gamers got, by many counts, and superior franchise to Madden on the DC thanks to NFK 2K. I don't play sports games, but even I like the NFL 2K games, whereas I don't play Madden.

In 2001, Sega pulled the plug on the Dreamcast, and became a 3rd party developer for the three major consoles. This was a surreal time to be a gamer. We never thought we would see the day Sega games went to Nintendo or Sony consoles. Since, at the time, Sega owned the 2K franchise, this meant NFL 2K2 was released on the PS2 and Xbox, and for the first time went head to head against Madden.

Madden always won in the sales department, but a lot of gamers still maintain that NFL 2K was the best football franchise ever. This rivalry between Madden and 2K was the last great football game rivalry, because, as we all know, in 2005 EA bought the exclusive rights to the NFL license, thus killing all other NFL football franchises. Dirty pool EA.

It is still fun to look back on the rivalry between Gameday, and Madden, and then NFL 2K verses Madden. It's just one of those interesting rivalries from gaming history. I don't care about sports games. I almost never play them unless it's something like NBA Jam. However, for sports gamers, it would have been awesome see at the time, because you got to see each company put their best efforts into their games just to top the competition. Competition is good. It brings out the best in developers who's efforts would eventually stagnate without it. Whether you were a Madden fan, a Gameday fan, a 2K fan, or are like me, and never played sports game, it's still fun to look back on these old rivalries that force developers to put out the best games possible in their day.

Again, sports games aren't my personal interest, but you've gotta give credit to Gameday, and 2K for giving Madden a run for it's money. They came, their died, but they fought well. You've gotta admire their effort.