John Madden Football '92

"It's the game that began a legendary franchise. Unfortunately, the first title isn't without its fair share of issues."

Madden. The very mention of the name in the gaming world stirs up feelings of admiration and hate alike, but few can deny that the franchise is one of the most successful in the history of gaming.

The first title in the series, Madden 92, was a feeling out process. Madden got together with a little-known company called Electronic Arts and pieced together a project known as Madden Football 92. John Madden himself likely had no idea that this idea would eventually become the biggest sports series in all of gaming, especially given how bad the first game was.

When the game begins, you're given very few options of how to play. You pick a team, and you'll either play against the computer or a friend. There is no regular season simulation, regardless of the fact that there is a regular season option. The main focal point of the game is the playoff mode in which 16 teams -- 8 from the AFC and 8 from the NFC, respectively -- are thrown into a single elimination bracket. But don't get your hopes up for a big celebration should you win it all, because your reward will be seeing your team name in the center of the tournament bracket for one screen before returning to the title screen. Other than single exhibition games, multiplayer and the playoffs, Madden 92 doesn't have much to offer in terms of options.

And it gets worse. When a game begins, there is no coin toss. The home team automatically receives the opening kickoff. Don't bank on this being the only in-game flaw either, as it's only the beginning. You will not see a game clock until the final two minutes of each half, you will not see how many timeouts each team has remaining without pausing and you'll never see how many the opposing team has, and the playbooks are very bland. Each team will have the exact same playbook and options with absolutely no variety among each. The only differences among each team will be their colors and player attributes, but it barely matters when all 28 teams in the NFL all run the same plays.

Before each play, the offense has to first decide what player package to send on the field (the choices are Normal, Big, Hands, Fast, and Special Teams), and then must decide on the formation and finally the play itself. While player packages offers an element of realism in that you'll be watching players run on and off the field both on offense and defense, it gets annoying to look at in between every single play and eventually only serves to slow the game down. And you can forget about any form of hurry-up offense given this, as well.

If this weren't all bad enough, the actual gameplay itself is horrendous. Only one stat in the entire game matters, which is speed. The only way you'll get anywhere on offense is by either using the NFL's best teams of the time (which incidentally all have the fastest players) or by using nothing but your Fast package. If you try to be realistic with your playcalling, you'll soon find that most of your players are too slow to be of much use, especially on running plays in which you'll be lucky if your starting halfback can even make it back to the line of scrimmage half the time. Slap in the Fast package, however, and a halfback screen turns into a wide receiver screen in which the defense won't touch you until you're 20 yards down the field a good deal of the time. We'll ignore the fact that even the fastest players in the NFL always inexplicably run slow as hell once they're behind the defense, a "feature" (if you can call it that) that would go on to plague the Madden games until the Playstation 2 era.

There are only two real options on offense: outspeed the defense or master the passing game until you're unstoppable. The latter option isn't too difficult given that all you ever need to do in the passing game is send all your receivers deep and lob the ball to them. Before the ball gets there, you'll be given manual control of the receiver and can almost always make the catch with ease.

On top of all this, the spin move in the game is horribly overpowered. As a good test, use the Bears and see if any defense in the NFL can stop your overly fast, overpowered running backs. It all adds up to very imbalanced gameplay in which a desire for realism will equal extreme challenges. All you ever need to do to win is to employ one cheap tactic after another, and the computer will be lucky to be within 30 points of you by game's end regardless of which teams are in the game. Even the worst teams in the NFL can run all over the 49ers, Bills and Cowboys in the right hands.

And what may be the worst feature of them all? The game has no save feature, and to continue your beloved tournament should you decide to power down in between games you'll have to enter a password.

The view of the field is the standard Madden view in which you're looking from behind the offense. The graphics are actually not bad for the time, though what little music there is in the game offsets this by being outright horrendous. You'll almost be afraid to score touchdowns or even turn the game on given the music you'll be stuck listening to during said events, though thankfully you'll likely get bored of the game and stop playing before this becomes a true problem.

Madden 92 was a good game for its time and can still be fun to first-time players even today, but the game has not aged well and the balance issues are too large for this game to be anywhere but in a museum. The one bright side are the highlights you'll see from other games in between each quarter, but you know there are huge gameplay issues when the bright spot of a game is when you're watching the computer play itself.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/19/05