Tag: Madden NFL Football

Bite-Sized Game History: Video Games at the 2021 Hugo Awards, Shining in the Darkness’s Hobbit Problem, and RIP John Madden

The Hugo Awards are arguably the most prestigious prize in the science fiction and fantasy community, but it took until 2021 for the members of Worldcon (AKA the World Science Fiction Society) to finally recognize video games with an award of their own.

In this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, we’ll look at the Hugo’s first foray into video games, as well as another example of gaming’s lax recognition of copyright law, and say goodbye to the man who defined how football was meant to be played as a video game.

[Continue Reading…]

Bite-Sized Game History: Exploring the US’s Best-Selling Games from the 1990s to Now

Using data from The NPD Group’s vast archive, Mat Piscatella recently shared some historical data on the best-selling video games from the 1990s to today.

Tracking the weekend box office results has become something of a spectator sport for moviegoers of all stripes since the lists were introduced in the early 1980s. Arguing about the financial merits of Star Wars, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Titanic, and Avatar became just as important as discussing each film’s critical reception.

You won’t find this sort of organized ranking of moneymakers in the video game industry, but the closest analogue would have to be the monthly Best-Seller Lists published by The NPD Group. However, the proprietary nature of this report means that the picture will always be incomplete.

Using data from the analyst firm’s vast archive, Mat Piscatella recently tried to pull back the curtain a little bit by sharing the list of best-selling games on several legacy consoles (the Saturn, the original PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, the Game Boy Color, and the Dreamcast) and a nearly defunct handheld (the Vita). He also examined the best-selling games through September 2018 on two modern consoles (the PS4 and Xbox One) and published a list of the top-selling titles for each year from 1995 to 2017.

It’s a very interesting collection of information, and the lists provide our best window yet into what games were considered popular in the United States in the 1990s and into today.

[Continue Reading…]

Welcome Class of 2018: Four New Games Inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame

Yesterday, the Strong Museum and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games announced this year’s inductees to the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

Yesterday, the Strong Museum and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games announced this year’s inductees to the World Video Game Hall of Fame. The Class of 2018 includes Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix’s beloved RPG; ​Tomb Raider, Eidos Interactive’s 1996 introduction to Lara Croft; John Madden Football, EA Sports’s first football simulation; and Spacewar!, an early game created by the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT in 1962.

[Continue Reading…]

12 Finalists Announced for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018

Curators at the International Center for the History of Electronic Games and the Strong Museum have announced the finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018.

Curators at the International Center for the History of Electronic Games and the Strong Museum have announced the finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018. Eight games will get their first chance to be inducted into gaming’s inner circle this year, including Asteroids, Call of Duty, Dance Dance Revolution, Half-Life, King’s Quest, Metroid, Ms. Pac-Man, and Spacewar!

Two other games, Final Fantasy VII and Tomb Raider, were previously in the finalist pool for the Class of 2017. They’ll get another chance this year alongside John Madden Football and Minecraft, which were previously on the ballot in 2016.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame will announce the inductees for the Class of 2018 on Thursday, May 3, at 10:30 AM. But this year, fans will get a vote in the first-ever Player’s Choice ballot. According to the rules, “the three games that receive the most public votes will form one “Player’s Choice” ballot, which will join the 27 other ballots submitted by members of the International Selection Advisory Committee, a supporting group composed of journalists, scholars, and other individuals familiar with the history of video games and their role in society.” Fans can make their voice heard through the Player’s Choice ballot once a day until April 4th. So vote early and vote often!

If for some reason you’re unfamiliar with this year’s finalists, the World Video Game Hall of Fame put together a helpful cheat sheet…

[Continue Reading…]

What Happened? The Stories Behind Duke Nukem Forever, Street Fighter: The Movie, Madden NFL 06, and THQ

In his introduction to Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier wrote that a game developer once told him it’s a miracle when a team manages to complete a game. But not every team is so lucky, and the development cycle for even the most well-funded games can often turn into a comedy of errors.

In his introduction to Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made, Jason Schreier wrote that a game developer once told him it’s a miracle when a team manages to complete a game. Over the next 300 pages, developers from Blizzard, Bungie, and Naughty Dog reinforce this point again and again. Using brutal honesty, they all discuss how close they came to disaster.

But not every team is so lucky (including the members of LucasArts that Schreier interviewed for his last chapter), and the development cycle for even the most well-funded games can often turn into a comedy of errors.

[Continue Reading…]

A Brief History of Video Games – Madden NFL Football (Series)

The latest VGC Essay examines the validity (or lack thereof) of the Madden Cover Curse. Here’s a teaser…

A gambler will tell you that they believe Lady Luck will reward them for respecting a streak, and a professional football player will tell you that he doesn’t believe in the Madden Curse. The former is a wishful thinker, and the latter is a liar.

The sports world is filled with superstitions. As a Little Leaguer growing up, I could show you what a “rally cap” was and explain the importance of never touching the baselines. I understood completely why retired Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland refused to change his underwear during a 12-game winning streak in 2011. I’ve even got strong opinions on what you say to a pitcher in the middle of a perfect game. The answer is you don’t say anything, because talking to him at all is bad luck.

For decades, the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx served as a well-known precursor to the Madden Curse. Those who believe in the Jinx are convinced that any player who appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated will experience some form of terrible luck, even though a handful of high-profile hits have obscured the long list of players who avoided the Jinx over the years. If the sheer number of cover subjects doesn’t dissuade you (more than 3,000 issues have been produced since the magazine’s launch in 1954), the illustrious career of Michael Jordan should. The basketball great has appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated a record 50 times, and he’s had the kind of career that other athletes dream about… not counting his detour through Minor League Baseball and Space Jam.

But what of the Madden Curse? Although you’ll find a few executives at Electronic Arts who enjoy hyping up the current year’s game with talk of the Curse, most of them like to downplay it. In 2008, the then-President of EA Sports, Peter Moore, said, “I guess when you look back there’s a grain of truth to the Madden Curse.” At the time, he wasn’t wrong. Five of the last six offensive players on the cover succumbed to some horrible calamity. The publishing giant even considered producing a movie based on the Madden Curse in 2010, though that project seems to have fallen off the radar in the years since.

And that’s probably because the Madden Curse is as mythical as a wild turducken.

Continue Reading the Full Essay →