Attention Saturn gamers on a tight budget that still shop around for
the best bargains: Electronics Boutique, one of the few national chains
that still carries an ever-shrinking selection of domestic Saurn games,
recently reduced the price of brand-new copies of EA Sports' "Madden '97"
and "NHL '97" to $0.99 per copy. You better go looking for your own copy
of these games soon because I'm buying as many as I can myself (four
"Madden" and seven "NHL" titles so far) in order to have enough back-up
Saturn cases to replace the one's that I keep cracking. What can I say
honey? I'm clumsier than Clouseau drunk on egg nog. A decent football
collector's item for those of us who just aren't into playing sports in
real life or videogames (although like to watch them on TV), "Madden '97"
is a harmless and acceptable title for non-sports fans to kill a few
minutes on Sega's planet. Besides, IT'S ONLY $0.99!
But in the case of "Madden '97" there is a long-running franchise that
has kept improving with every update, and this was EA Sports' first
attempt at developing a football game on two mainstream 32-bit systems
(Saturn/PSX) since the cancellation of the first "Madden" project sent the
reputation of EA tumbling down. For those who might not remember, "Madden
'96" was a FMV-heavy upgrade to the same game EA Sports released for the
3DO in early 1995 that got canned at the last minute when the "NFL
Gameday" franchise proved itselfto be a better-looking/playing/handling
console game. As a result of this debacle "Madden '97" was re-written from
scratch for the following '96-9 season, and it shows in all the little
quirks and trappings of a virgin effort: graphics/audio are serviceable,
control is adequate, there is way too much multimedia glitz trying to
masquarade an outdated (by "NFL Gameday" standards) gameplay model and
there are none of the bells and whistles today's gamers have been spoiled
to expect. But, with only "Madden '98" and the horrendous Sega "NFL '97"
as the alternatives on the Saturn, "Madden '97" is a cheapo that still
walks tall and carries a big memory hog with it. Bring your Backup
cartridge for this one.
GRAPHICS / VISUALS: C+ (76)
------------------
Textures are accurate as of the start of the '97-98 season, with 31 NFL
stadiums (check out Lambaugh Field), 100 NFL teams (including historic
teams and even the programmers of Tiburon Entertainment!), hundreds of
real players and LOTS of neat (but badly-compressed) FMV segments starring
James Brown in the TV studio and Madden/Summerall talking nonsense in the
fakest-looking booth you've ever seen. The intro is your typical
collection of video highlights edited with CG images to a rousing musical
beat (yawn!) and, like the FMV segments featuring the Fox Sports stars, is
likely to be seen once by gamers before they realize it is just filler
material to justify the existence of video equipment. A variety of camera
angles are available including the classic 'Madden' and 'Tecmo Super
Bowl', and most of them are playable and gamers will probably find two or
three they like and stick to them.
Menu/option screens feature the traditional arrangement of drafts,
stats, offensive/defensive plays and assorted choices that "Madden"
veterans and newbies alike have come to expect from the annual updates;
the last time I played a "Madden" game was in 1995 with the 3DO version,
and I was able to recognize the similarities with "Madden '97" in just a
few minutes. The resolution in these menu/option screens is a tad higher
than the actual game graphics, which are a little on the low-res side of
things and features lots of sprites moving at a steady but chunky 20-24
frames-per-second; I've seen the PlayStation version of "Madden '97" and
it looks slightly better than the Saturn version (higher resolution,
faster speed, cleaner FMV segments), although the Saturn effort isn't as
far behind its PSX counterpart as the late '97 ports of "NHL '98" and
"FIFA: RTTWC". Although outdated, "Madden '97" (and the '98 edition too)
seems like an honest and thorough attempt by EA Sports to get the best
results out of their Saturn development know-how.
MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS: B- (80)
---------------------
Forget the inane, lackluster, off-the-mark and repetitive commentary
that Madden spouts once every few moons; it's fuzzy, sounds muffled and
recorded in low-sampled rates that make them sound pretty bad (although
Summerall's play-by-play is decent and more in tune with the on-screen
activity). What little music there is in this football sim is confined to
the menu/option screens and the FMV, and its mediocre and forgettable
keyboard crap that just fills the air with wannabe heroic tunes. But, as
the game proudly proclaims in its manual when it highlights its 'QSound
Virtual Audio' technology, where "Madden '97" earns its aural money is in
the sound effects that surround the player and makes him/her feel like
they are experiencing the sights and sounds of the National Football
League: piles of big sweaty men colliding, bodies being thrown to the
ground like dummies, audible yells and taunts, roaring crowds supporting
the home team (the Vikings crowd is pretty roudy) or sitting on their
hands quietly when the visitor is ahead, the whistle of the referee, etc.
GAMEPLAY / FUN FACTOR: C+ (78)
---------------------
Since this is a football simulation the absence of updated rosters and
statistics is a major strike against the game being taken seriously by
either an arcade ("NFL Blitz", "NFL X-treme") or sim football fan ("NFL
Gameday" and the latest "Madden" update), to which the PlayStation/PC/N64
is a better alternative than the dead-and-buried Sega Saturn. But as a
nice little football game that you can get for $0.99, "Madden '97" is
worth the time of newbies for the cheap thrills of one-one-one
offensive/defensive blasts with either the CPU (in Exhibition, Season or
Tournament Modes) or up against several other players in multiplayer
games, assuming you have eight Saturn controllers laying around and none
of the gamers present ask for "Goldeneye", "Mario Party" and/or "Saturn
Bomberman". Although I have yet to win a match against the CPU, it is
worth trying for that rare opportunity in which I can use the 'money play'
to actually make my N.Y. Jets score a TD against the Philadelphia Eagles
(yes, I like my football games with as much green as possible). IF you can
live without the latest technological bells and whistles (wrap-around
control, polygons, not even the much-ridiculed 'V-polys' EA Sports used
for "Madden '98", etc.) and updated rosters, "Madden '97" plays a decent
and mean game of football in which, yes Virginia, there will be a Jets
team winning the Super Bowl (don't ask me when though :-p).
OVERALL: C+ (77)
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Did I mention this game is being sold brand-new and shrink-wrapped for
$0.99 at EB (along with sibling EA Sports product "NHL '97")? Nowhere near
the tragedy that was Sega's own "NFL '97" but also not as fun and exciting
as a "Gameday" or a "Blitz" on PlayStation, "Madden '97" is a
bargain-hunters dream even if sports videogames aren't your thing; after
playing with a friend for a couple of days (after we were done with "Death
Tank" and "Goldeneye") and giving that copy to a co-worker who says he
hasn't stopped playing with it ever since, I'd say that I got my $0.99
worth pretty fast. And I have a handful of copies yet to give away; isn't
nice that the Sega Saturn finally allows homeless gamers to buy their own
titles :-(?
-
J.M.Vargas
