Madden NFL '94

"Wow.... This actually made it to market...?"

Madden NFL '94 for the SNES is not a good game. I expected their third attempt at the series to have some redeeming qualities in terms of Game play, but alas, that is not to be found. It confuses me how 8-bit NES football games can be better than 16 bit SNES games but some how, it happened. Maybe it came from a lack of effort on the game developers...

Game Play
Well, it is football... or at least it tries to be. What we got here is a vertical scrolling football field with the camera always behind the offense. There are many plays available to each side of the football, but unless you are an expert at football, most will seem foreign to you. Little X's and O's with arrows help you figure out which way the players will be moving. You select plays by highlighting the one you want and pressing A, B, or Y in "Bluff mode" or just highlight a single play in "direct mode" and pressing B. This is actually not a bad idea if you are playing a 2 player game. With Bluff mode, your opponent can only guess between the 6 plays you have on screen (3 of which are actually highlighted) to defend against. Direct Mode is alright for single player, but bluff mode works faster for selecting plays as you have less buttons to press to cycle through your plays.

You can choose between many different styles of play such as One game, full season, play offs, super bowl, or recreate past playoffs with teams from each year dating back to the 1960's. You can use all the teams that were in the NFL in 1994 as well as teams dating back as I just mentioned as well as All Madden teams. You also have your choice of Grass or Turf and indoor and out door stadiums. You cannot choose grass and indoor together though. The weather can be set to fair, wind, rain or snow but does actually little to affect the game. That's about it for anything exciting about the game.

While on defense, you hardly have any control at all. You can pick your play and select a guy to control, but everything gets jumbled in the middle and it is impossible to tell what happened. Did he get tackled? Fall down? Who has the ball? WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!?! You can select the exact same defensive play each time and the result will be the same. I like to do the Monster Blitz. The good thing about defense (when you are on it is) is that they can get away with cheating 90% of the time. About the only thing that is called with any type of consistency is off sides. So go ahead and pass interfere or drill that guy 3 seconds after the play is dead. No late hit for you! Un-sportsman like conduct? What's that?

Offense is just as bad. Passing is pretty much useless as 90% will fall incomplete, quite often because of passing interference. Rushing is slightly better. You may get positive yards about half the time. This Madden game, like many others used the term HB or Half Back for the Running back. While it is a correct term to use, some may get confused because it isn't used much in football today. Using him will quite often net you negative yards. Why? It is because the game doesn't recognize forward motion! If you run for 2 yards and then get bumped back 4 and are tackled there for a loss of 2 yards. If you dive forward as you are being brought down and stretch out 2 yards past the line of scrimmage, you will gain nothing! This is because the feet of the player is where the ball is marked, not the knee or elbow like it should be.

Another terrible thing is that the refs call things before they happen! If you are sacked in the end zone for a safety, the ref calls it the second there is contact, making it impossible to do a spin move and break free from the tackler. When kicking a field goal or extra point, the refs call it before it goes over the cross bar so if it is hooking left and fast, as long as it is still in between the up rights when the ref calls it, it counts, even if it misses! I am glad the real NFL refs aren't this blind...

If all this isn't bad enough, the game doesn't have the license from the NFL Player's Association. With no NFLPA license, you aren't Terry Bradshaw on the 75 Steelers, you are QB #12. Every player is called by number and not name. While the stats for the actual player are accurate, the names of the players do not exist in the game. Joe Montana? No. Willie Namath? No. Just numbers, nothing more. This is done to save money so they don't have to pay each and every player for use of their likeliness, but why bother with all the teams from the past without their names.... It is hard to hold their legacy up without calling them by their names. At least John Madden is there...

Score 1

Graphics
It looks like football. That's good. It is brightly colored. That's good. It has John Madden's picture with several different facial expressions and animated lips. That's alright... It would be good but some of his facial expressions look like Eric Cartman the time he faked being "special" to win the special Olympics.. Check out the second one at the very beginning when he is giving the credits for the game. Alright, Madden looking stupid isn't all that bad, just funny. However, the game has some other graphical flaws. The players on each team all look the same. While each team has different colors that don't confuse it with the other team, they are easily confusable with their own team. As a play is in progress, everyone converges towards the ball and you cannot tell who has the ball, who you are controlling or what the heck is even going on.

I suppose one good thing is the players actually look like football players. Shoulder pads are noticeable and their upper bodies are huge compared to their lower bodies, much like what actual football pads do to the average looking NFL player. However, at times the upper body completely disappears. Graphical glitches don't happen often, but when they do, it is very annoying. Sometimes players will partially or fully disappear on screen, but still be there. If they have the ball, that is bad because it makes it even harder for you to try and tackle them. Thankfully it doesn't happen too much.

Logos and other things are done well. The colors are bright and other than the players, things don't run together. You are even treated to a small video clip of fans cheering when you do well and fans booing when you do poorly (or opposite if you are the away team). Despite being a vertical screen, you can see a majority of the football field at once. Usually 45-50 yards at a time so nothing surprises you out of nowhere. However, these are not enough redeeming qualities to make up for everything else.

Score 3

Sounds and Music
At first I thought the music was alright. Nothing spectacular. Once I let it sit at the pause menu for 2 minutes so I could type some of this review, I started to loathe it. It is extremely repetitive and very annoying. All of the game music is. I couldn't find a way to turn it off, otherwise I would have. It is best that you don't listen to it. Ever. As for the sound effects, they are alright. On big plays John Madden cuts in and says some generic saying like "That's how you hit" or "No one saw that coming." Thankfully they are few and far between so they are actually welcomed and are not annoying. There are generic crunches as helmets supposedly collide as well as whistles when plays are called but they are nothing spectacular. In the end, throw in a CD and listen to that. Don't bother with the game's sounds.

Score 3

Controls
What controls? You hardly have control over any thing in the game. Menu navigation works fine without any flaws but in game controls are terrible. When on defense, you can select a guy but things break down so fast that once he touches someone else, he is caught up in the middle and nothing really happens. On offense running works... sort of. Your bes bet is to take the guy outside and hope to gain a few yards up the sideline before you get closed in on. Reversing directions and squeezing through holes don't happen often, if at all. As for passing, forget it. You have to press B to bring up three windows with different receivers. The windows take up most of the screen and you cannot see more than 2 feet in either direction of the guys and the QB is stuck in the bottom half of the screen, not knowing what is around each guy. You can try to run with him, but you will be sacked. I think you will have a better chance just pressing buttons at random....

Score 2

Well, if you want a good football experience, this is not it. While it tries, it fails miserably. The flaws far out weigh anything good this game has to offer. The game feels like it was rushed though production and put out to market before it should have been. I think that even if it were held and more time spent on it, it wouldn't be much better. Don't bother, it isn't worth your time.

Pros:
1. Madden looks funny

Cons:
1. No NFLPA license.
2. Players blur together
3. Can't tell what is going on
4. Refs are cheap

Overall Score 2

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 05/18/07