John Madden Football '93: История разработки и особенности игры.

1992 American football video game

John Madden Football '93 is a 1992 sports video game developed by Blue Sky Productions and Electronic Arts and published by EA Sports. Based on the sport of American football, the player controls a football team in modes such as tournament play and sudden death. Officially endorsed by John Madden, it was the third Madden game for home consoles and the first one that saw a simultaneous release on both, the Sega Genesis and Super NES. The game's Sega Genesis version was developed by Blue Sky Productions, which was simultaneously creating Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. John Madden Football '93 adds new animations and features, and it allows players to play as and against famous teams such as the Oakland Raiders of 1976. Aside from Madden Football 64, the game was the last in the Madden franchise to lack the NFL license, which was featured in Madden NFL '94 onward. Selling over one million units, John Madden Football '93 was a commercial success. Critics awarded the game high scores and praised its updated graphics; but several reviewers complained that little had changed since John Madden Football '92. Royalties from the game funded the expansion of Blue Sky Productions, and the company's director, Paul Neurath, later commented that the size of these royalties led Electronic Arts to develop future Madden titles in house. The game can be played on the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation version of Madden NFL 2002, Alongside the PlayStation versions of Madden NFL 2003 to Madden NFL 2005 alongside the collectors edition of Madden NFL 2005 on the PlayStation 2, with updated rosters and official NFL team licenses.

John Madden Football '93 is an adaptation of American football that takes place from an isometric perspective in a two dimensional environment. The player begins each match by selecting such variables as the game mode, weather conditions and team(s). Game modes include pre season, regular season, playoffs, and sudden death. In addition to the game's single player mode, two player competitive and cooperative modes are available.

John Madden Football '93 was developed for the Sega Genesis by Blue Sky Productions (credited as "Looking Glass Technology"), They were approached by Electronic Arts soon after production on Ultima Underworld began, Neurath said that Electronic Arts was dissatisfied with the work that another studio had been doing on John Madden Football '93, and that the publisher was "scrambling to find a [replacement] team" to meet the game's rapidly approaching deadline. Blue Sky received the source code of John Madden Football '92 and had to develop a sequel in five months. Neurath later said that development was "part out of house and part in house". In 1991, Neurath contracted the outside programmer Mark Lesser, who had previously worked on Mean 18, to develop the game's technical aspects. According to Lesser, this was necessary because none of Blue Sky's employees had experience programming for the Sega Genesis. Neurath believed that Blue Sky introduced "some nice improvements" to the franchise. A writer for Mega Drive Advanced Gaming believed that "the most obvious addition is the digitised speech", which did not appear in the game's Super NES version. In its November 1992 issue, Electronic Gaming Monthly estimated that the game was "100% complete". The game's Genesis and SNES versions were released at the same time. which prevented the inclusion of official teams, colors, player names and stadiums. Sega's competing title, the Joe Montana endorsed NFL Sports Talk Football '93, had received the license that year. A prototype of the cancelled Game Boy version was obtained from the Nintendo data leak.

John Madden Football '93 was a commercial success, with over one million copies sold. It has been cited as the highest selling game developed by Looking Glass Studios, and Neurath later called it "one of the most successful games I've ever worked on". The staff of Mean Machines Sega called the game "hopelessly redundant" and "very, very disappoint[ing]", and they believed that the John Madden Football series was "on its last legs". They considered the game to be arguably worse than its predecessors, largely because of framerate problems. The reviewers concluded that it was "not a bad game at all", but they suggested that readers buy "the slightly better John Madden Football '92 if [they are] after the definitive American Football game". Carl Rowley of N Force called the visuals "sharper than ever" and believed that the character sprites were "small but well defined". He found that the game played "brilliantly", and he praised the instant replay feature as "superb" and "amazing". He wrote that his "only niggle is the lack of sampled speech", which he considered to be "a bit of a let down". Finishing his review, Rowley wrote that the game was the "best American football game available".

After the game's development concluded, programmer Mark Lesser was contracted by Electronic Arts to work on NHL '94, a series that he remained on "for many years". Neurath said that the royalties Blue Sky received from John Madden Football '93 "were quite substantial", and that "it was really the royalties of Madden more than anything else [ ] that allowed us to grow the [company]". Neurath believed that the size of these royalties led Electronic Arts to develop future Madden games in house, in order to maximize profit. Aside from Madden Football 64, John Madden Football '93 was the last game in the Madden franchise to lack the NFL license, which the series first obtained with Madden NFL '94. In 2012, Michael Rundle wrote in The Huffington Post that John Madden Football '93 "really set the bar" for the franchise, and he believed that its gameplay was superior to that of Madden NFL 13.