Madden NFL 99
Slightly behind its peers, EA’s ‘Madden’ franchise finally takes the 3D leap across multiple platforms, laying the groundwork for the series as we know it today.
Released: July 31, 1998
Version(s) Played: PlayStation, Nintendo 64
Developer: EA Tiburon
To be fair, EA Tiburon had already produced and released a 3D Madden game in October, 1997, but it was sort of a test drive for the real thing. It was called, simply, Madden Football 64, which was unable to obtain the rights to use NFL brands in time for its release (EA was, however, able to wrangle NFLPA rights, allowing real players to exist in the game, at least). Its release was also limited to the Nintendo 64 which in 1997, wasn’t the hottest console on the market due to its then-limited library, so it was easy to miss.
Despite being a slight oddity in the Madden catalog — on the series Wikipedia page, it’s listed under “other games” — it still earned praise for its transition to 3D polygonal graphics while maintaining detailed play-calling options. It also introduced the legendary “fantasy draft” mode to home consoles, a feature still present in most sports video games today.
Madden Football 64 received positive scores from the games press, but it still wasn’t a complete product. Tiburon lost its supremacy ahead of other football simulators that successfully made the jump to 3D several years before them, most notably its N64 rival, NFL Quarterback Club.
The Madden series would not reclaim that supremacy until an exclusivity deal in 2005 made it the only football simulator on the market. But Madden NFL 99 is a strong statement that the series — and EA — were serious about competing against other NFL game franchises to be the best option for football fans.
Released on July 31, 1998 for PlayStation and later in September for the N64, Madden NFL 99 would be the first fully-immersed 3D football simulator in the series to be issued across multiple platforms. It also had the NFL and NFLPA licenses this time around, significantly boosting the feeling of authenticity.
Whether you’re booting the game on a Nintendo 64 cartridge or PlayStation disc, the first thing that stands out is the overall presentation: the intro video, the “Press Start” screen, the easy, minimalist menu spelling out all options for players and — my personal favorite — the jazzy, horn-heavy music. Everything about launching the game is way more modern and aesthetically better than the presentation of Madden Football 64, which looks stuck in 1995.
During the N64’s life-cycle, I can’t think of a football game I played more with my friends than Madden 99. It wasn’t my favorite — I was always partial to NFL Quarterback Club, though I enjoyed Madden — but that menu screen makes popping in the game and playing against your buddy almost instantaneous. It’s a minor quality-of-life improvement that goes a long way, even if sports games abandoned this kind of simplicity a long time ago.
As soon as you click “start game,” things get more interesting. There, you can select your team of control and the opponent, but the development team went further than just updating the teams to their full name/brand. Scroll deeper into the available squads and you’ll find 12 “classic” teams you can control, as well, from the 1966 Kansas City Chiefs to the 1994 San Francisco 49ers.
None of the rosters of these teams feature actual player names, they’re only represented by their jersey number that season — for example, Troy Aikman is just “No. 8” on the ’92 Cowboys. But the ratings accurately reflect the player’s capabilities of that time, and while the Internet and thus access to real rosters for those teams was far less available in 1998, fans have the option to edit player names under “Front Office” to make them feel more authentic.
With how much the NBA 2K franchise has embraced and revolutionized the presence of “classic” teams in sports video games (and EA’s NHL series looks to be making similar strides, albeit slowly), it’s pretty remarkable to see how far ahead of the curve the Madden 99 team was. The classic teams are really just a throw-in bonus and not much else, but if you’re playing regularly with friends, they allow for significantly more replayability than any competing NFL game.
To this day, I still remember the first “classic teams” match-up I ever played: the ’72 Dolphins versus the ’85 Bears. It blew my mind that I could pit these two legendary squads against each other, and legitimately changed the way that I view sports video games and their overall longevity.
“Longevity” is a word that was used a lot in reviews of Madden NFL 99, but not with great regard to classic teams. That was reserved for “Franchise” mode.
In Madden 99, you could select your favorite team and play up to 15 seasons of NFL football (up to the 2014 Super Bowl!) featuring accurate year-to-year scheduling, a level of depth that was unheard of for a sports video game. In 1998, most sports games offered a “Season” mode, but Madden was the first to expand on that idea for greater staying power.
The result was a profound success, opening the door for other sports games to attempt a long-term gameplay mode similar to it, under various monikers like “Be A GM” or “Dynasty.” With how bare-boned Madden Football 64 was, this ups the ante on the game’s overall quality considerably.
It’s a slightly imperfect mode: players can only control one team for all 15 seasons, and created players are unavailable in the free agent pool. That’s a slight bummer, especially if you were prepared to create yourself and play through a full 15-season career.
The biggest drawback to Madden NFL 99 is probably gameplay itself. Once you settle on a team, you’re taken to blocky polygonal field with a virtually non-existent crowd and the staid, dry delivery of Pat Summerall on play-by-play. A game itself feels like a massive drag, because everything moves in such a stiff, robotic manner. You may be thinking, “Well, it was 1998, you can’t expect too much,” but compare Madden NFL 99 to its N64 competitor, NFL Quarterback Club 99.
To the defense of Madden, Acclaim Sports had been issuing regular 3D NFL titles for several years, allowing them more time to smooth out rough edges of the game’s overall appearance. But compare them side-to-side and it’s jarring how much worse Madden 99 looks, even through all the time it took EA to embrace 3D NFL football gaming.
Initial reviews, as they often did at the time, fawned over the graphics of the N64 version over the PlayStation game. In hindsight, it’s difficult to take that seriously, as the PS release plays much more smoothly and looks moderately better. I was able to play through several full games in a Green Bay Packers franchise on PS, and could barely make it through a quarter on N64 before becoming frustrated with the feel of the game.
Time did the N64 version of the game very few favors; my friend Sean and I probably played thousands of hours of this game against each other as kids when it came out, and 100 percent of the time it was the N64 version. It was unfortunate to see it age as poorly as it has.
Tackling was a big source of improvement in Madden NFL 99, and indeed every tackle feels massive. Wrap-around tackles are introduced in this edition of the game as well, but these changes come at the expense of a nice, clean offensive game. Running the ball is frequently not viable, not only due to the general stiffness of the game but the challenge of breaking tackles, which is difficult if not impossible most of the time.
Despite these flaws, it would be incorrect to call Madden NFL 99 a bad NFL property. The fun memories I have playing this game have outweighed any disappointment I feel after playing now, and that’s important. Even more, the vast amount of important features/extras in the game, some of which are now standards across the spectrum of all sports games, alter this game from being another mediocre NFL title to an important sports entry on consoles.
In Madden’s nearly 30 years on video game shelves, its success is defined not simply by being the only NFL game on the market (it doesn’t hurt), but its ability and willingness to take the very best aspects of previous editions and either keep them as a series standard, or expand on them to make the series better. One can now play 80 seasons of a franchise in Madden 19, with the ability to edit playbooks, create players and even share rosters online.
So many features Madden players expect annually — in their NFL or general sports game — were introduced on Madden NFL 99. While its gameplay may not hold up nicely in 2018, it’s still one of the most notable entries to one of the most successful franchises in video game history.
Takeaways
- “Franchise” mode, while imperfect, revolutionized the Madden series and sports video games in general. It’s now a standard in any sports franchise.
- The depth of gameplay — from all then-30 NFL teams to 12 “classic” teams to unlockables, Madden 99 offered far more than its peers.
- The blocky, polygonal 3D models, plus the game’s sound editing, make Madden 99 feel slower than other NFL games on the market, especially on the Nintendo 64.
- BONUS: Enter the code “WELCOMEBACK” and you can play as the Cleveland Browns, which were obsolete at the time but about to re-enter the NFL one year later.
