[Nunyerbiz]

Lots of great names in this thread... I'll take things back to ye days of yore:

The original 1988 PC version Hall of Fame:

That's where I started with Madden, the original PC release. It didn't have any NFL or NFLPA licenses, so the base game had nicknames and soundalike names. But... they did release separate roster sets on 3.5" floppy for both the 1989 and 1990 seasons that had only the NFLPA license. No team names, but player names. After that, Madden 2 came out for PC (which sucked dead donkey ball) and I believe that's around the time it became fully licensed.

Anyways, in high school we played the hell out of this first version. The main draw was the play editor, which was incredibly in-depth for it's day... and arguably more powerful then any play editor included with Madden since. All of us in our little 8 man league had custom playbooks, with most of the 90 offensive plays being ones that we created ourselves. Some HoF players from this era:

Brent Fullwood / RB - I imagine your response is "Brent who?". He had a solid college career at Auburn, he was a Heisman finalist and was the 4th overall pick in the '87 draft. He played a few unremarkable seasons for the pre-Favre Packers before washing out. For whatever reason, whoever made the Madden roster loved him. He wasn't a speed burner guy, but did everything well... broke tackles, caught passes, didn't fumble, didn't get hurt. He was more coveted than Bo Jackson (terrible injury and catch ratings) and Barry Sanders (1989 was his one pro season where he had fumble issues and he never had a good catch rating either). Fullwood was the guy that would eat up LBs in pass coverage and still give you 100 ypg on the ground, which was a very rare combination for the PC game roster sets. Runners rushed, receivers caught and rarely did this overlap.

Marion Butts / RB - The original Bus. Just a trucking machine in the '90 roster set (the rating was called "tough yards" back then). Now we're talking a very, very primitive game... but imagine a HB dive play where six defenders smash into the RB one after the other and every tackle gets broken. That was old school PC Marion Butts. I had custom blitz plays with five DLs and six LBs, all targeting one or the other A gap.... and Butts would still usually gain the needed short yards up the gut.


Cartridge Era Hall of Fame:

Christian Okoye / RB - Back in the Sega heyday, players didn't so much "truck" as "bounced off" defenders... and Okoye was a human pinball and just bounced off tacklers like crazy... at least for one or two magical years.

Randall Cunningham / QB - Pretty sure he was the fastest guy in the game, not fastest QB, just the fastest player for the first release on Sega. Ironically, this was after his big ACL injury that robbed him of his raw speed... but I think the designers at EA gave him a mulligan for that first release. He was the original video game Vick.

Reggie White / DL - What Bo Jackson was to Tecmo RBs... Reggie White was to Sega DLs.