In search of a testimonial for the product, Electronic Arts arranged a meeting with John Madden, the former Super bowl coach of the Oakland Raiders. EA company leader Trip Hawkins presented Madden in the mid-1980s on the ride to a TV show together with programmer Robin Antonick his idea of a football simulation in which the number of players due to the low hardware performance of the current game was originally six or seven instead of the official Eleven players, one of the most common for sports simulations at this time. With this, he met a strict refusal at Madden, who only wanted to lend his name to a simulation that was as realistic as possible: “If it’s not 11 on 11, it’s not real football. “If it’s not 11 to 11, it’s not a real football, I will not give my name for something that is not realistic.”) EA began searching for a way to implement Madden’s prescriptions.
In 1986 the American developer Bethesda Softworks published the abstract, tactical football simulation Gridiron !. In Gridiron! The player from the bird’s perspective will be presented with a simply sketched playing field on which 22 points are placed, which symbolize the players. A special feature of Bethesda’s game was that the performance of the moves was not only calculated by means of statistics, but also took into account an early form of game physics. For example, larger and heavier players could break tackling attempts by smaller, lighter players. Ball and players interacted with each other as well as with the environment, which gave the title retrospective assessments such as “first modern sports game”. EA signed a contract with Bethesda to develop a continuation to Gridiron !. Despite the agreement, the cooperation was never implemented. [2] Instead, Bethesda Electronic Arts complained to the court in 1988, the publication of a successor to Gridiron! Deliberately delaying the use of large parts of Bethesda’s program code to develop their own football game. For this, Bethesda of EA claimed $ 7.3 million. [3] To what extent the allegations were correct and how big the contribution of Bethesda to the later John Madden Football was, was never publicly clarified, but still 2002 claimed Bethesda founder Chris Weaver furthermore that Madden was originally on the code of Gridiron! Based. [2]
The first edition of the game was finally developed internally at Electronic Arts and came 1988 under the title John Madden Football for the Apple II, a year later synonymous for MS-DOS and Commodore 64 on the market. However, the available hardware performance proved to be insufficient. The breakthrough came with the first console version for the Sega Mega Drive in 1990. A year later the game also appeared for the Super Nintendo. EA Sports has improved the game since 1991 and John Madden Football ’92. The Madden NFL ’94, published in 1993, proved to be significant in several respects. In the same year, EA changed his label ESN (EA Sports Network) to EA Sports at the request of the sports station ESPN. [4] [5] Madden NFL ’94 was the first game that used the longtime advertising slogan “EA Sports – It’s in the Game”. In addition, the series received for the first time an official license of the National Football League and thereby their current name. [6] The player licenses were added two years later.
There are versions of the game for Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, Xbox 360, Wii, iPhone and since Madden NFL 08 also available for PlayStation 3. Madden NFL 09 on August 28th 2008, was the first version that was not available for PC
The game is characterized by ever-increasing improvements in game mechanics, graphics and simulation. The game was commented by John Madden, accompanied by Pat Summerall and later by Monday Night Football commentator Al Michaels. Since Madden 10, NBC sports reporter Cris Collinsworth comments on the game together with Tom Hammond and since Madden 11 with Gus Johnson.
On December 13, 2004, EA Sports announced that the company holds the exclusive NFL rights for five years, which prohibited anyone else from marketing games with any NFL license. Many saw this as an attempt at EAs to take over the absolute monopoly on football games. Although the games NFL GameDay from 989 Sports and Microsoft’s NFL Fever had to be taken off market, there was through Sega / Take 2s ESPN NFL 2K5 and its lower selling price hard competition.
With Madden NFL 10 (2009), the opportunity was opened for the first time to buy game advantages by Micropayment.
In 2013 the series celebrated its 25th anniversary, which is why the offshoot published this year, instead of (the series logic) of the title Madden NFL 14, bore the deviant title Madden NFL 25. On the occasion of the anniversary, the American Museum of the Moving Image launched a special exhibition titled Madden NFL: 25 Years and Running from 9 January to 23 February 2014.
Since 12 August 2014, Madden is also available for mobile devices.