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The Original John Madden Football Gameplay Video

11:10 AM - January 11, 2014 by Steve_OS

Some of us old gamers grew up on John Madden Football, from the very first release on the Apple II in 1988. For those that are curious, this is what the game looked like. Just think what football games will look like in 25 more years.

Any of our old-school OSers have any memories of this one?

Member Comments

# 61 number1thumbs @ 07/30/14 11:31 PM

NCAA '94(I think) was the best for its time. They had the cards with the player ratings and throwback teams. Wasn't even licensed I don't think.

# 62 ManiacMatt1782 @ 08/01/14 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by treq21


	Yes, I played this, and I still have it. It came on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk. It was amazingly fun for the times. I would love to load it up but I do not have a drive for the disk anymore

There is a NSFW joke in there somewhere.

# 63 KBLover @ 08/02/14 11:39 AM

I never played that game - I didn't much into sports games until Tecmo Bowl and Baseball Stars, then later on PC with the Baseball Pro and Football Pro series. I don't know how old the MicroLeague games were - but they were some of the first PC games I played.

I played 10-yard Fight and was like...why can't I throw it 40 yards downfield. Then I got Tecmo Bowl and that's when sports games opened up to me.

Football Pro changed my expectations for football games forever, though. 20 years later, haven't found a game that can do what it did. Thought Madden was heading there with the play editor - but then they took it out. Blah.

"Just think what football games will look like in 25 more years."

I'm more wonder how they'll "think" and "behave" in 25 years. Game graphics have come a ridiculously long ways in even the last 5-10 years.

Game *AI* however...it seems stuck in the mud across all genres in the last decade or so. It's better than the NES era...but that's not say a lot considering I'd be comparing an 8-bit cartridge to a Quad-Core 16 GB+ RAM machine with 3-5+ GHz of speed.

# 64 Sheba2011 @ 08/03/14 01:10 AM

This thread got me thinking about two of my all time favorite football game growing up: NFL Football 94 featuring Joe Montana by Sega. The spiritual successor to the NFL 2K series. Also was a big fan of the QB Club games back in the day (to this day QB Club 2002 still has the most realistic coin toss of any football game).

# 65 orion523 @ 08/03/14 08:25 PM

Ah, the good ol' days, although I played the originals to death(2600 football, Real Sports, Intellivision, Mario Football. Play Action, Tecmo Bowl), it wasn't until That first Genesis year(Madden, Lakers v Celtics, and later on in 91 NHL) that I truly was hooked forever.

# 66 Connolly22 @ 08/03/14 08:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kjcheezhead


	I actually feel bad for kids today. Sure, there game is insanely better than what I had. I started out with the hand held, Atari, and a football card game. But I had something these kids never had...those wow moments. When I first popped in tecmo and realized it had real players, the first time I turned on Game day and saw the intro with a real nfl montage, the first time I saw nfl2ks halftime show. Madden is all these kids know, if they started on ps3 or Xbox360 then they've really never experienced a moment like that. That's a shame.

im 24, and Ive had some of those wow moments, a little later than yours, like when the PS1 came out, those graphics were groundbreaking back then. Being INSIDE the stadium and seeing actual bodies tackling and running was amazing, my parents even brought the PS1 to my aunts on Xmas day and plugged it in to play a game and show everyone how cool it was. Also create a player was another thing that had me from the start. I remember making myself like 7 foot 7 295 pounds and 99 ratings in everything and just hand myself the ball every single play every single game…those were the days

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The Original John Madden Football Gameplay Video