John Madden Football NES prototype?

[justinthebull]

Has anyone ever found any evidence of a prototype for an NES version of John Madden Football? I swear I remember reading a small preview for the game in one of the gaming magazines around 1991 or so, complete with a couple of screens.

[MCHufnagel]

Has anyone ever found any evidence of a prototype for an NES version of John Madden Football? I swear I remember reading a small preview for the game in one of the gaming magazines around 1991 or so, complete with a couple of screens.

I can't believe this would have been made. I thought EA didn't work with Nintendo because they wouldn't agree to Nintendo's licensing agreement.

[8th lutz]

Gameinformer has scans of the game a couple of time in 1993. The game was meant to be released in 1993, not 1991. It had a month planned to be released. The game was shown at the Summer CES 1993. The publisher was ubisoft.

 

It was never planned to be part of the EA Madden Series. It was developed by NMS Software.

Edited January 21, 2008 by 8th lutz

[TheRedEye]

Has anyone ever found any evidence of a prototype for an NES version of John Madden Football? I swear I remember reading a small preview for the game in one of the gaming magazines around 1991 or so, complete with a couple of screens.

 

There is a cart that is only some cycling screenshots, with no gameplay. I've never actually heard of it being playable.

[justinthebull]

Thanks for the information. I knew I'd seen screens in some magazine at some time... I just wanted to make sure I hadn't gone crazy.

[DreamTR]

Thanks for the information. I knew I'd seen screens in some magazine at some time... I just wanted to make sure I hadn't gone crazy.

 

Yeah, I have the cart for it, it has the cycling screens, but yep, no gameplay.

[pbrain]

I actually worked on this game, didn't realise it was never properly released. I done loads of graphics for this including all the helmet logo's, intro screen (which got me the job in the first place!) also a neat trick (at the time) overlaying sprites & characters to achieve an 8 colour Madden photo.

There was some arguments about the players animations, i was in the middle of the programmer, which only allowed me a 16x16 sprite and UBIsoft which wanted players from a side angle. To get the best i could, i done a slight overhead view (similar to Gauntlet characters...without axes!). UBIsoft didn't like it and said they 'look like monkeys!'

...before i left NMS, i worked on the Gamegear/Mastersystem conversion of 'Robocop vs Terminator' which was enjoyable.

 

I did have all the graphics on 1.44'' disks, we used to develop the graphics on Amigas back then, the other artist Steve Beverley used to write the art software as well...clever (& nice) man.

At that time as well, in the other room was Mark Cooksey, well known computer musician of the 8bit era (mainly from Elite software), still see him walking around the village with his iPod!

Edited October 29, 2012 by pbrain

[MrMark0673]

I personally dumped this proto for the current owner and I can confirm it was just a rolling demo with like 3 still screen shots. Very uninteresting proto.

[TheRedEye]

That rolling demo has the top-down sprites, though some later magazine coverage showed screenshots of the side-view players. Do you remember if the top-down version was just a mockup, or was it ever playable?

[Greg2600]

I actually worked on this game, didn't realise it was never properly released. I done loads of graphics for this including all the helmet logo's, intro screen (which got me the job in the first place!) also a neat trick (at the time) overlaying sprites & characters to achieve an 8 colour Madden photo.

There was some arguments about the players animations, i was in the middle of the programmer, which only allowed me a 16x16 sprite and UBIsoft which wanted players from a side angle. To get the best i could, i done a slight overhead view (similar to Gauntlet characters...without axes!). UBIsoft didn't like it and said they 'look like monkeys!'

...before i left NMS, i worked on the Gamegear/Mastersystem conversion of 'Robocop vs Terminator' which was enjoyable.

 

I did have all the graphics on 1.44'' disks, we used to develop the graphics on Amigas back then, the other artist Steve Beverley used to write the art software as well...clever (& nice) man.

At that time as well, in the other room was Mark Cooksey, well known computer musician of the 8bit era (mainly from Elite software), still see him walking around the village with his iPod!

Wow, great first hand information!

[pbrain]

That rolling demo has the top-down sprites, though some later magazine coverage showed screenshots of the side-view players. Do you remember if the top-down version was just a mockup, or was it ever playable?

 

I left before it was finished (one of the reasons I 'left' was due to the very awkward programmer!...I won't go into details of the day I left!) I do remember seeing the sprites moving on screen & passing the ball. TBH I think the game with all the team formations etc was out of the scope of the programmer at the time. Also in the same period he was working on an 'Indiana Jones' (the one with the wooden cup!) NES game* , which technically would be a lot easier to program (platform & shoot'em ups where moderately easy to create).

 

I've been asked if I still got any eeproms etc, I never done any burning there, i used to create the graphics & animations and use floppies. I'll have a look on my server to see if i still have the original bitmaps (i may also have the bitmaps from Robocop vs Terminator as well)

 

* Ha Ha, i still remember Steve working on the title screen of the Indy game and he had to reduce the screen to a small amount of characters (8x8 pixels) to fit on the ROM, so he created this program which finds similar characters and reuse them on other parts of the screen (bit like jpeg nowadays). I remember by the end, Harrison ford looking slightly cross-eyed!...i'm pretty sure it was used on the final ROM image.

[TheRedEye]