News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:
• SBNation put together that delightful compilation of chiptunes and pixelated highlights to give us Blake Griffin’s theoretical NBA Jam highlight reel from the 1993 classic. Enjoy.
On Friday, Mike Young, the creative director for Madden NFL 13, revealed that the game would feature the notorious “Tebowing” posture, whose namesake drops to one knee in a solemn and evidently religious celebration. Operation Sports today published the first screenshot of what that would look like. In fact, they said it came on a fake punt play.
This is sure to rankle a ton of axe-grinders, which makes it remarkable the development team for Madden NFL 13 chose to poke this snake. But there will be a “Tebowing” celebration animation in the game this year, according to Mike Young, the game’s creative director.
It drives me nuts every time I hear it. A professional athlete delivers a gobsmacking statistical performance, whether for a single game or a longer span, and a commentator or a columnist inevitably describes him as “putting up video game numbers.”
Going on about five years now, EA Sports’ FIFA and NHL series have been reliably acclaimed, strong-selling titles, a remarkable run for a video game genre and publisher so henpecked by hardcore gamer criticism. Both games have smart, motivated, multinational communities that greatly value evangelising for their sport overseas and appreciate what these two video games have done in that regard. It’s easy, from a distance, to get the sense these are perfect sports video games.
News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:
• QuickHit Football had a solid debut year in 2009 and won an NFL licence a year later. Then it lost its director of design, a veteran of the beloved NFL 2K5, and was bought up by Majesco around E3 last year. Now it’s losing the NFL licence that seems to be the holy grail of sports gaming.
Madden NFL 13 will sound a lot different this year. Some quarterbacks will call audibles in their own voice. Bone-crunching hits have been mixed in from NFL Films audio. The crowd is going to explode on big plays and go stoic on drive-killing turnovers.
One of the few broadcast features in Madden NFL 12 that I didn’t punch away with a quick button press was the official league bumper video at the end. You know, when the smooth narrator puffs up and says “This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL” and lays down the law of the league’s expressed written consent.
Career modes in sports video games do a superb job of helping you create the story of a single team or a player. Where even the best ones fall short is in making you feel part of something larger. Players are forced to hunt through menus for results and standings, and even then, it’s hard to tell who is overachieving and who is having a disappointing year.
