Madden NFL 07 Interview & Screens

[Dante]

Wii.IGN.com

 

Electronic Arts hasn't always made Nintendo's platforms a priority where its lucrative Madden NFL franchise is concerned. The company's GameCube iterations of the videogame football king oftentimes lacked some of the extra bells and whistles of their counterparts. But as Jason Armenise, producer for the upcoming Wii build of Madden NFL 07 explains below, that's all about to change.

 

Madden NFL 07 for Wii not only features enhanced gesture-based controls, but includes all of the gameplay modes of the other versions plus brand new ones, such as multiplayer centric mini-games like two-on-two and kicking combine. And as readers will see, EA has not sacrificed on graphic quality in Madden's transition to Nintendo's new generation console.

 

 

IGN Wii: All right. If you could, please gives us a basic overview of Madden NFL 07 for Wii. Why is this game different from any of the other Madden titles in your view?

 

Jason Armenise: Gosh, there are whole bunch of things that differentiate Madden NFL 07 Wii from the other versions. One, it's been retooled to take full advantage of the Wii controllers. So using our FreeMotion control system you'll be able to do many of the actions that happen in the real game of football, and as a result you feel like you're in the game. It's very immersive to play Madden that way.

 

IGN Wii: Can you break down the running and passing controls, as well as how you hike, juke, and stiff arm with the Wii-mote?

 

Jason Armenise: So, have you played Madden Wii before?

 

 

IGN Wii: Yeah. We played it at E3 2006 and liked it.

 

Jason Armenise: Okay, right on. So I'll just go through some of the different controls. Obviously, you guys have probably seen hiking. To do this, you pull the controller back up to hike. To pass you make a throwing gesture.

 

And just to make a small point here, when we demonstrate these controls we show big movements. We show somebody actually making a throwing motion with the controller. Those will all work, but wrist flicks will all work as well. At first, when you're showing your friends how to play, you're going to say, "Hey, you throw just like this!" Right? But once you've played for a couple hours, you're going to be like, "Wow, this is kind of tiring." I refer to it as the couch potato syndrome. People play want to play relaxed, and so all of our controls can be done with very small movements, too.

 

IGN Wii: So are you using the Wii-mote's rumble feature as a means of feedback when you're performing these in-game gestures?

 

Jason Armenise: We do them, but the rumble feature isn't usually associated with a FreeMotion gesture. Usually, they're associated with getting hit. We use it actually in some of our Wii-specific content. For instance, when it's your turn, we'll rumble the controller to let you know it's your turn. Most of them we don't have tied specifically to a FreeMotion gesture.

 

IGN Wii: Can you speak specifically to throwing passes with the FreeMotion system?

 

Jason Armenise: Yeah, let me really talk about how passing is done because I haven't read any interviews that have really broken down the passing system. I want to make sure that people really understand the passing system.

 

 

If you hike the ball and just want to throw, touching no buttons, you will throw to your primary receiver. So whenever you call a play, one of your players is listed as your primary receiver. That primary receiver is usually orange on the play diagram and before the play, pre-snap, if you hold down the Z button it will pull back the camera and you'll actually see your play arc; that's typical Madden. So when a user is new to the game and they don't know how to change receivers - because there is a way to change them - all they need to do is hike and throw and the ball will go to their primary receiver.

 

Prior to the snap, if they want to they can change their primary receiver. So to do that you hold down the Z button or the C button, which activates the Coach's Cam - that's where you don't see the play arc and you just pull the camera back to see where your receivers are. When you pull back using Z or C (and hold the button), you can change your primary receiver by tapping one of the D-Pad directions or the A button. Each receiver has a D-Pad direction over the A button icon above their head and that's how you change receivers prior to the snap. So let's say you're playing the game and you want to make Randy Moss your primary receiver during a play when he isn't. He's lined up to the rightmost on the play. You'll tap right on the D-Pad and he'll become your primary receiver. So, again, when you snap the ball, all you'll have to do is make the throwing motion and you'll throw to Randy. It's very easy for people to do that.

 

Now, as people play, of course they're going to start scrambling. And just like a real quarterback they have to evaluate the field and decide where they're going to throw the ball. In that case, when you identify which receiver you want to throw to, you tap his direction on the D-Pad (or potentially A button) and then make the throwing motion. By tapping on the D-Pad or A button, you're changing your primary receiver on the fly. So now when you do the throwing motion it goes to your new receiver, who you've called up as you're scrambling around. This means, for instance, that if you knew you wanted to throw to Randy Moss, but didn't do it at the beginning of the play, you could select him in mid-play and then throw.

 

 

IGN Wii: Sounds great. Now if you're playing local multiplayer, is that going to highlight? In other words, will it give any visual tip to the defense, or is it all kind of covert?

 

Jason Armenise: Just like on regular Madden, what'd you'd do in that case is you'd want to pre-snap and press the C button, which wouldn't give away your play arc. Just like on regular Madden, there's a slight warble on the icon for the guy who's actually the intended receiver. It is kind of a giveaway to the defense if they're very quick in observing it, but if you know what you're doing you'll just tap to the other guy you want. When the play is actually on, there is no indication to the defense that you changed receivers.

 

IGN Wii: So it's like the QB vision precision you had before, but without the giveaway.

 

Jason Armenise: You do not know who you're throwing to, correct. Vision precision is an option in Madden Wii, but it's not the default option.

 

 

IGN Wii: Great. So continue on with your breakdown of the passing mechanics.

 

Jason Armenise: What we found is that first people just want to throw the ball so naturally they're throwing to their primary receiver. As they become a little more advanced they start to mix it up and throw to different guys. Once they understand how to do that, what we found is that it feels a little slower than passing in the other versions of the product, but it also makes you think a little more about where you're throwing. And when you're scrambling, you are really scrambling. You're really affected by that.

 

IGN Wii: Tell us about the intricacies of hiking in the Wii version of the game.

 

Jason Armenise: You just pull the Wii remote up and you hike the ball. But in order to do a hard count, or a fake snap, what you do is hold the B button on the trigger of the Wii remote and then you do the snap. And so to somebody who is sitting on the couch watching you, it looks like you've just snapped the ball. And then you've got the sound of the guy doing the higher hut and the camera pulls back. I think it's by far to full a human player with a fake snap in the Wii version of the game because you've sold it with your entire body and they believe it. So if you're really looking for them to jump across the line, you'll get them with that.

 

The same thing applies when you want to do a pump fake. You hold the B button down and you throw and your guy is going to do a pump fake.

 

Our B button is kind of our fake button throughout the game. So, for instance, if you're playing against another human player and you're looking at the play picker, what you do is point to a play that you want and you press the B button, but the player picker doesn't go away at that point. What the play picker is waiting for is for you to press the A button and that will dismiss the play picker. So what you can do is go and navigate through the player picker and get to a running play, press the B button and then back out to a passing play. If your cheating friend next to you is watching what you're doing, the last thing they see the play picker on when you press the A button is a passing play. The cheaters will think you've picked a passing play but meanwhile you've actually picked a running play.

 

This is especially good when you're in the formation playbook. We have two playbooks in the game now: play type playbook and the formation playbook. Classical Madden is the formation playback where each team has its own playback and there are hundreds of plays in there. It's especially effective here because you can call an I-form play that's a running play or an I-form passing play. They see your guys line up in I-Form and they believe it's one or the other, but only you know what you've actually done.

 

 

IGN Wii: What kinds of passes can you throw with the FreeMotion system?

 

Jason Armenise: Bullet, lob and normal. So most of your passes will probably be normal passes. In order to throw a lob you need to do the throwing motion softly. In order to do a bullet, you really need to put some acceleration on the Wii remote when you're throwing. You can also do precision passing, but that's not part of the FreeMotion system. That's actually done on the joystick. We didn't want to make it any more complex than lob, normal and bullet because there are so many controls in Madden for Wii and we really wanted to make it extremely approachable and easy to play. Being able to softly gesture with the Wii remote and then see the quarterback kind of lob it - it's such a visceral connection. We wanted to hold off on making anything more complex than that at this time.

 

IGN Wii: All right. Tell us about the running game in the Wii version of Madden.

 

Jason Armenise: The running game is great. So, you can sprint by holding down the Z button and cover by using the C button. You can spin with the A button and dive with the B button. But those aren't the controls you probably want to hear about.

 

What you want to hear about is how you juke. To juke left you flick the nunchuck controller to the left. To juke right you flick the nunchuck to the right. If you pull it back, your runner will do a back juke.

 

 

There's going to be a learning curve for people to get into the Wii. It's not the typical setup. These controls are new and they're awesome, so people are going to have to learn them a little bit. We've done some things to make the learning process easier. One thing we've done for jukes for instance - and all of our FreeMotion controls - is we've created in-game tutorials where the first time you go to run the ball, a tiny little piece of text will pop up and tell you to press the 1 button to learn how to run. If you hit the 1 button, it'll stop the game, bring up a tutorial, explains to you how to juke, and you'll actually have the chance to practice juking in the tutorial. You can practice as many times as you want. So let's say you're not feeling comfortable with juking. You can bring up the tutorial and it'll lead you through it - it'll tell you to juke to the right and will give you a success or failure. If you fail, it will give you a tip on how to do it correctly. You can do this as many times as you want. If you want to practice 100 jukes before you start the game up again, you can practice 100 jukes - it's up to you. When you're done, you go right back into the game, just as you were before. This all happens while you're playing the game. All the tutorials are also in the pause menu so you can practice everything from there, too.

 

Besides juking, there are stiff arms and stiff arms are done with the Wii remote pretty much exactly the same way as juking is. So if you want to stiff arm to the left you flick the Wii remote to the left and if you want to stiff arm to the right you flick it to the right.

 

Then there are the power moves, which are called highlight sticks. We've broken this up into a couple different things. There are double jukes and power moves, which enable guys to duck under or avoid the oncoming defender. These are done by taking both the nunchuck and Wii remote and jamming them forward. So just as the player in real life is ducking their head down, bracing for impact, you do kind of the same thing when you take both controllers and push them forward quickly. Once again, that can be done with a big or small gesture depending on how you play the game. It feels very good because you're in this situation where you want to stick it to somebody.

 

If you want to do a double juke, you use both controllers as well. If you flick both controllers to the left, it'll do a quick sidestep to the right and then a juke to the left and if you go to the right it's the opposite.

 

IGN Wii: Very cool. So are you using FreeMotion gestures for defense, too?

 

Jason Armenise: What we found is that when we put all these FreeMotion controls in for offense, it felt like the offense had a whole list of weapons. Offense has stiff arms, jukes, back jukes, double jukes and power moves and defense seemed like it didn't have as much action with it. Defense had big hits and dives. Big hits and dives have risk/reward system associated with both moves. With big hits, your reward is that you could cause a fumble and your risk is that you may miss the hit. With dives, your reward is that you may be able to tackle someone outside of your tackle range and potentially cause a fumble, and your risk is that you could miss the device completely, go flying away and then you're out of the play.

 

 

What we wanted to do - and this is something we actually haven't talked about at all, so you guys are getting the scoop here - is make every part of the game in which you have an interaction with the ball or somebody to have some action with it. We wanted you to feel like you're constantly engaged with the game. One way we do that is that you can catch. Catch assist by default is on, but you can tap into your guy when you're catching and if you take both controllers and raise them up quickly, your guy will cue a catch up, which feels very satisfying. You're like, "I caught that. The AI didn't do that - that's me."

 

We wanted to do that throughout so one of the things we looked at was tackling. Like I said before, the offense has all these weapons that make them more effective at running, but we felt the defense didn't have as many. So one of the things we've added for Madden 07 for Wii is the ability to do what we call a tackle boost. So as a defender you say, "You know what? I'm going to do whatever it takes to tackle this guy and I'm going all-out for him." Typically in Madden you run into a guy and that's how you tackle them. With the tackle boost, when you're running into a guy, you jam both controllers forward, kind of like you'd do with a power move. And what you've done is increased the ability for your guy to tackle for a brief second. The reward there is that if they are stiff arming or juking, you're helping to balance that equation.

 

 

In any videogame ever, when it's one player versus player there are a set of calculations that go into determining who is successful. With sports videogames, when it comes to two players interacting over something, they take into account the attributes of the players, situations, animations, etc, etc. With this version of Madden, we wanted to give something do defense that said, "You know what? You, for this brief period of time, are actually going to boost up your tackling, but you've got to time correctly." This keeps you engaged in the game. So when you're running in for a tackle and don't want to take any chances, you try to tackle boost. You try to get in there and add onto your tackle.

 

Or, if you want to do a big hit, all you do is hold the Z button down and then do the tackle boost move and that will do a hit on somebody. Same risk and reward. You could make them fumble. You could get a big hit on them. But you could also miss.

 

IGN Wii: Is the tackle boost a safer way to do that or more dangerous?

 

Jason Armenise: It's a safer way. It's more of a benefit to tackling. It has no benefit to fumbling or anything like that. Boosting your tackle is simply about making that tackle happen. And we found that people really like the ability to do that.

 

IGN Wii: We seem to remember previous mentions of mechanics that challenged two players to shake the Wii remote faster than each other in order to win-out during offense/defense match-ups. Is this still in the game or did we stumble upon an unconfirmed rumor?

 

Jason Armenise: Yeah, what you're talking about there is breaking tackles. They have that in Madden this year, in the running game. You tap the A button and try to run through it. It's the same thing, but what we've done is when you lock up with someone else, a little pop tells you to drum your controllers. It's an up and down motion with both the Wii remote and nunchuck. They represent your legs. You're basically powering up the legs in your guy to see who's going to win.

 

IGN Wii: How are you handling audibles and hot routes in the Wii version of the game? Can you draw your own hot routes on-screen using the Wii-mote?

 

Jason Armenise: All of our audibles, hot routes and formation shifts come down to one set of controls, which has greatly simplified things. You point to who you want to control. So if you wanted to audiblize the entire side you'd point to your quarterback. Let's say you wanted to do a hot route or shift your alignment. On the field you'd have a little reticule that's your player color. So you'd point to your lineup and hit the A button and all of your linemen would line up. On the right-hand side you'll see the audible menus come up and you'll be able to use your joystick or D-Pad to indicate which audible or hot route you'd like to do.

 

 

Basically, instead of being a whole bunch of different button presses you control every different audible whether you're on defense or offense by highlighting the guy and pressing the A button. It is a little bit slower than doing it the traditional way. There are a lot of hardcore Madden users out there who can do audibles in a half second. But once again, we're trying to make this easier for everyone to use and we felt that having one system was easier.

 

IGN Wii: When you're navigating the playbook, are you doing that with the D-Pad and joystick, or can you actually use the Wii-mote and simply point?

 

Jason Armenise: Either. With the new play picker, you point to the play you want with the Wii remote and press the A button or you can use the joystick and D-Pad.

 

IGN Wii: Are you able to draw your own plays using the Wii-mote? Is this something you've thought about?

 

Jason Armenise: You know, we thought about that early on and there were a lot of things that we wanted to do with the game this year that we got into the game. Once we can go through and show you every feature in the game you'll see that there is just a massive amount that's been done this year. Very early on people were like, "Hey, you should be able to draw your plays." And that would be a great feature. I think that probably will be a feature that will come out for Madden Wii next year or the year after, who knows. But for this year it wasn't something that fell into our three high points. We wanted to make the game Wii usable, to make the controls very deep and still very accessible, and then to focus on the multiplayer fun in the game. So it didn't come in this year. You can still make your own hot routes and you can still make your own plays, like you could, but you're not drawing on the field or anything like that.

 

IGN Wii: When EA brought Madden to 360, the game lacked a number of gameplay modes. It almost felt like a barebones rendition of the football franchise. Will the Wii version of Madden NFL 07 include all the features of the others?

 

Jason Armenise: This is something we're going to talk about this week with folks. The fact is that we do have what we think is going to be an incredibly stellar list of features that are part of this game. The features that people have come to know for Madden will be found in Madden NFL 07 for Wii.

 

IGN Wii: Can you be a little more specific? EA sent us over the official fact sheet for the Wii version and we know, for instance, that franchise mode, lead blocker control, and NFL Superstar modes are all included in the title, which is spectacular.

 

Jason Armenise: Basically, they're there. [Checks with public relations representative to make sure he can go into detail. She gives him the go ahead.] I can definitely say that yes, we have lead blocking. Yes, we have franchise, superstar, tournament - it's all there. There has basically been no loss of features at all for Madden Wii. In fact, because of the Wii-only content in Madden, I'd say that Madden Wii is the most feature rich version of Madden that's out there.

 

IGN Wii: That's really fantastic news. Now, tell us about the Wii-specific multiplayer modes.

 

Jason Armenise: Yep, so this Thursday at EA event I'm going to show one of the multiplayer mini-games in the Wii version off. So I'll talk about one of them first with you guys. The one I'm going to be showing off is called two-on-two. It's exactly what you think it is. It's a multiplayer version of the schoolyard game two-on-two, which is basically a quarterback and a receiver versus somebody rushing the quarterback and a safety or defensive back trying to cover the receiver.

 

IGN Wii: So are you going to be counting bananas?

 

Jason Armenise: It's Mississippis. And it's funny you mention that because I'm an American, but I work with a Canadian team and the Canadians love steamboats for some reason. They wanted steamboats. So I had a hard time convincing them it's Mississippis. But luckily Gatorade put out a commercial recently that had Mississippis, which pretty much ended the debate.

 

IGN Wii: Well, apple and banana have always been nice, but you could cheat by saying them really quickly and rushing forward.

 

Jason Armenise: It's funny you mention that because there is a way to cheat on the counting. This is one of the features I love about two-on-two. You know it's a five-Mississippi count and they actually pop up - text pops up and counts to five Mississippis. When you were a kid, you would quickly say the Mississippis as one word in order to cheat and speed up your rush. So in order to do that for Wii, you do the drumming I was talking about for break tackles. If you're the defensive end, you drum up and down with the controllers as fast as possible and the faster you drum up and down the quicker it cuts the Mississippi count. You can go from a five-second Mississippi count to a two-second Mississippi count if you bang up and down with the controllers really, really fast.

 

IGN Wii: That is really cool. Any game that encourages cheating is a winner in our book. So after the play, does the quarterback get to complain that your rush counted as your blitz?

 

Jason Armenise: [Laughs] Basically, it's fun. As the guy who is sacking, every time you want to drum it as fast as possible. The quarterback, meanwhile, is trying to scramble from the left to the right because once they cross the line of scrimmage they can't throw.

 

 

We wanted to make the game fun for multiple people. So two-on-two is built toward that. Two-on-two is all about that. You don't have to worry about anybody else. It's all about burning your friends and making those deep passes.

 

IGN Wii: And two-on-two takes place on the football field, right?

 

Jason Armenise: Yeah, you're on a football field. One of the things you can do in this mode is something we call buzz your buddy. When you're on the offense, you can tap the A button on the Wii remote and it rumbles the Wii remote of your partner. So, at first you're wondering what the hell is that used for. Well, what it's good for is that when you're playing four-player you can talk to your friend before the play and tell them to cut on the buzz. If I buzz twice, cut left or when I buzz, just throw the ball because I'm open. You can go back and forth and buzz each other. It's useful and fun. The two-on-two game is hard to talk about without playing. But at our event you'll be able to play it. It's all about smack-talking with your friends and it's a lot of fun.

 

IGN Wii: So can you compile your favorite two players from all the NFL teams in two-on-two or do you have to simply choose your favorite team and use their players?

 

Jason Armenise: We tried being able to put together mixed teams and it just turned out that the feature became too big and expensive. So what you do is pick teams. You pick the Raiders, the Vikings, etc. and you get their best quarterback and their number-one receiver. You'll also get their best rusher and their number-one guy on safety, or that sort of thing.

 

IGN Wii: Will created players be accessible in two-on-two?

 

Jason Armenise: If they're in your roster, yeah.

 

IGN Wii: How does the kicking function work in the game?

 

Jason Armenise: So for the kicking function you wait until your guy is set and then you point down with the Wii remote, press the A button, and then swing the controller up in an arch. The faster you swing it up, the more power you put onto your kick. Now, what you want to do is hold the Wii remote as level as possible because if you tilt it to the left or right while kicking it will add slice onto your kick. So basically when you swing it up you want to keep it straight. It feels very good to kick and you figure out the power really quickly, but there is some difficulty in that you need to keep it level. This way, it's not a timing thing - it's completely up to you.

 

I think kicking overall seems like a deeper experience on Wii. For certain things it's easier, like when you're kicking extra points. Extra points are pretty easy in the NFL - not many kickers ever miss extra points. But when you're trying to punt to a certain location, it takes a little while to learn that. There's a challenge to it. It gives the game depth and it feels good.

 

IGN Wii: Let's talk about graphics. Right or wrong, Madden for Wii is undoubtedly going to be compared to the GameCube build. Meanwhile, we've been playing a lot of the 360 version. In terms of visuals, where does the Wii incarnation fit in?

 

Jason Armenise: We get the graphics question all the time. Every time we talk about the game we get the graphics question. A lot of people - even passionate Nintendo fans - are kind of dismissing the graphics, saying, "We know it's going to be third, yadda, yadda, yadda." We didn't take that attitude. Right from the beginning, we said, "You know what? We need to make this game look better than Xbox at the very minimum. And if possible, we need to challenge the Xbox 360 version." That was our goal from the first day.

 

So we've done a whole host of things that put the game far in advance of the GameCube and we think better than the Xbox. And in some cases, we're challenging the Xbox 360 on graphics. First of all, the game is HD compliant. You can play 480p and 16:9 widescreen. That means everybody who has a HDTV can play the game with their component outputs and play in 480p and 16:9 widescreen while running at 60 frames per second, which is awesome. Additionally we've upped the texture quality on players. Textures are a higher quality. In many cases, they are higher than the Xbox version. We've added a whole host of features like depth of field. We've added a feature we call cinematic lens effect, which is like when you look through an actual television camera and straight lines get a little bit bowed in real life. We've increased the shadows. The shadows are better. We have something called contact shadows so that if two players get close to each other you'll see the shadow of one bleed onto the shadow of another. We've increased the grass. Our grass looks like it has more depth to it. It looks more lush than GameCube. It's definitely a much better looking game than on GameCube and we think that it really is challenging Xbox 360 in some places.

 

IGN Wii: Great. Any chance we're going to see an online mode for the game this year or is that pretty much out?

 

Jason Armenise: You know, we really haven't talked about online too much. At this point, we're not talking about it.

 

Jason Armenise: Is it something that has been ruled out - can you say that?

 

Jason Armenise: I think for now I'm not going to discuss it. Anything that has to do with online, for now no comment.

 

IGN Wii: Tell us about the Learn Madden mode in the game.

 

Jason Armenise: When you first turn on the game, the top-most item in the main menu is called Learn Madden. When you go into the Learn Madden menu you'll see four mini-games that say learn how to pass, learn offensive running, learn how to tackle, and things like that. These games are basically versions of the mini-camp games that have been retooled a little bit to be easier and they have tutorials in them. We know there's going to be a learning curve to Madden Wii so we've made it so that when somebody first buys Madden Wii they'll put their disc in and they can go through Learn Madden mode and when they come out they will have the basics of playing Madden for Wii down. They'll know how to pass, select receivers, run, they'll know how to do stiff arms and jukes, how to kick and how to tackle. With those abilities, they'll be able to play the game. The basic needs, in other words.

 

We know there will be new users who never played Madden before. Ideally, you'll have people who played GameCube and never gave Madden a try because it was too hard to play. So this is a way for users to go in, enjoy themselves - you earn trophies inside the games - and quickly go from not knowing anything to being able to do the basics in about 15 minutes. So if you sat down with your friend who loves the NFL, but never played Madden, you could convince him to play. Or your girlfriend. Your father. This is opening Madden up so that anybody can play the game.

 

IGN Wii: At the end of the day when you're playing Madden for Wii, do you feel that the new controls make the experience better?

 

Jason Armenise: You know, it's very different. I know there are a lot of Madden hardcore out there that love the way the controllers work on PlayStation, Xbox and GameCube. I know there will be some of them who want won't to play the Wii because it is so different and unique. From my perspective - you're talking to the guy who's passionate about making Wii Madden great - so I love playing it on Wii. I think it's a unique way to control the game. I feel very immersed in the game all the time. It's just fun.

 

IGN Wii: Thanks so much, Jason. Finally, do you have any closing comments for fans interested in the Wii version of Madden NFL 07?

 

Jason Armenise: The biggest thing we want to do is to make people aware that Madden for Wii is a new chance to try Madden. If you were on the Nintendo platform before and didn't try it, now's your chance. If you are somebody who loves Madden and want to play it in a new and unique way, you should try it for Wii. We're going to be doing things differently than they have been done before and I think some people may not like that. But if you come with an open mind, you're going to find Madden NFL 07 for Wii to be a really fun experience.

 

[Zombie_Fan]

That was a long read, but it was good. The game looks good and sounds fun.

[Pit-Jr]

im every bit as excited to try this game out on the wiimote as i am for Metroid and Zelda. It sounds like they went above and beyond on both the controls and graphics.

 

 

Its a shame that they (apparently) had to struggle to get the game looking better than the Xbox version, but it looks like they sorted it out.

Hmm, all this EA praise is a first for me, im a bit nauseated

[gaggle64]

Wow, the graphics have come a long way since the original shots. I can't wait to start chucking long passes with the FHC.

 

Prediction - Lots of American Footbal fans with Wiimote shaped holes in their TVs.

[PioRow]

I have never bought a madden game but this is really interesting me. It sounds like a game that really utilises the wiimote and nunchuck to create a new type pf gaming experience. If this receives good reviews I will probably get it.

[Patch]

Totally agree with you, PioRow. Haven't owned an American Football game since Joe Montana Sportstalk Football for the Megadrive.

 

But this is in essence what the Wii is all about. All those games you wouldn't usually care about are seen in a new light.

[ThePigMarcher]

Excellent (if long) read.

 

It's about time EA put a bit of effort into this franchise for long suffering Nintendo fans. I really do hope they can pull this off , not only will it be a suitable reward for us Madden fans but the number of Wii's this title could sell in the US will be huge.

 

Definately looks like I will be picking this up on launch day.

[Pit-Jr]

i cant wait to try out those fake gestures and draw offsides and false start penalties to piss off whoever im playing. The passing, running, and tackling should be entertaining too.

 

Im still hoping some kind of cheap VMU attachment will be available for hidden playcalling but either way i need this game

[Guest Stefkov]

Havnt read it all yet, will do later but I like the look of those screens.

I cant wait for this game though, its the first EA sports game im actually looking forward to.