Original Release: EA, 1996, Genesis / SNES / PC / PlayStation / Saturn / Game Boy
Madden ’97 was the first of the series to switch focus to the new CD-based consoles and true 3D environments, though the other platforms got simpler ports of it in keeping with the previous entries.
Madden ’97 (Genesis, EA, 1996)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
The gameplay isn’t significantly different from the previous installment, yet somehow it feels a lot less janky than game ever has to this point.
The one major downer is that we’re back to the All Whitey League again – why did EA have so much trouble with different skin tones on their sprites? Thankfully, the awful Combine is gone, and new characters are instead allotted a finite amount of points like an RPG. You’ve also now got free agency w/ free agents from the beginning of the 1996 season, plus the characters you’ve created at a cool 2 mil apiece.
This was also the first of the series to have visible player fatigue, so you can’t spam an epic running back over and over ten plays in a row (though fatigue can also be turned off.)
There’s no more FOX license so no more obnoxious music, but they made a remix of it that actually sounds way better than the original.
Graphics are largely the same exception of slightly more detailed player animations – they point and gesture prior to plays, and limp off the field painfully when injured.
There are also a shit ton of “classic” teams, and they don’t have to be unlocked, you get them right from the outset.
This one is about as good as it gets for 16-bit football games that aren’t called Tecmo Super Bowl. Still far from ideal, but pretty damn playable all the same.
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