61 Frames Per Second

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• The Madden IQ and The Future of Competitive Gaming

  I’ve said it before here at 61 Frames Per Second, but the Madden series baffles me. The game’s massive popularity here in the states — three Madden titles are among the ten all-time best selling titles in America — makes sense. Football is awesome and people love it. It’s the game’s popularity in spite of monumental difficulty that makes my brain itchy. Sometimes, you just need a different perspective on things. Nerve’s own Joseph Lazauskas is an old school Madden-ite. In this 61FPS guest spot, he gives us some insight into why Madden ’06–’08 are three of the best selling games ever made and why the just released Madden ’09 represents not just the future of the franchise, but the future of mainstream competitive gaming. – JC Written by Joseph Lazauskas There once was a time when John Madden’s illustrious football video game was my crack; I’d be in a sleepless fit the week before it’s release, and oh yes, I was a proud participant in the midnight-Madden release “parties” at the Wayne, New Jersey Gamestop for years. I’d run home and play all-night with the other Madden junkies in online “sim” leagues. From 2003 to 2006, Madden catered to us obsessives, and we were eternally grateful for the increasingly complex control. I played enough to be ranked in the top 100 online at one point (a stellar feat, if I say so myself). But Madden’s switch to the current console generation found the game significantly dumbed-down, and my interest in it dropped as a result. Starting college, embracing substance abuse and entering a relationship didn’t help. I go to a very liberal arts school outside NYC, with a 3:1 girl to guy ratio. No one there, as you can imagine, really wants to play Madden. Even when I found someone that would play, the difference in our skill levels was too great for the game to be any fun. That’s why, unlike a lot of hardcore Madden-ers, I think the mainstream-focused — but re-balanced — Madden 2009 is fantastic, and it might be the future of head-to-head games thanks to the Madden IQ. Read More... Posted Aug 22 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: mario kart, madden, smash bros, joseph lazauskas, nba live

• This Just In: Olympians Play Video Games

  Did you guys hear? Michael Phelps is a gamer. He loves hip-hop music, video games and watches DVDs endlessly while relaxing between races. He's also kind of a jerk about it. One week, he played so much Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf on his Nintendo Wii, he came to practice with a sore shoulder, and Bowman said if that ever happened again he was taking the video game console away. Video games are one of his favorite escapes, and if he wants to play them, no one is going to stop him. This is especially true of girlfriends or potential girlfriends. "If I want to play video games, I'm playing video games," he says. Amanda Beard is a gamer, and she's totally jazzed about being on the cover of that new Olympics video game. Read More... Posted Aug 18 2008, 06:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: cole stryker, halo, madden, olympics, tiger woods, mainstream media, michael phelps

• Brett Favrerererer Wins: The Inexplicable Popularity of Madden

  You may or may not have noticed this whilst reading 61 Frames Per Second, but we don’t talk about simulators that often. Personally, and you’ll most likely find this true of the rest of the team, I don’t play Gran Turismo or Microsoft Flight Simulator. If I’m playing a videogame, I want my cars going too fast and defying physics a la Burnout. If I’m playing a videogame, I want my airplane to be shooting many other planes while looking awesome and defying physics a la After Burner. The same goes for sports. Tecmo Bowl, NHLPA ’93, and Hot Shots Golf are fun because they don’t provide authentic football, hockey, and golf experiences. This is why I’ve always been somewhat mystified by the Madden franchise’s massive popularity; in its modern incarnations, it is a brutally realistic simulation of football. In order to play Madden well – not competition level, but actually using the game’s mechanics properly – you need to have both a deep understanding of the actual sport’s rules as well as the game’s incredibly complex controls. Football rules, sure, but how did a game so hard become so damn popular? Read More... Posted Aug 07 2008, 04:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, ea, gran turismo, madden, after burner, brett favre, hot shots golf, nhl, burnout

• Guns and Football: The Ten Best Selling Games in America

  It’s one thing to hear people in the international community exclaim that Americans are loud slobs who don’t care about anything except violence and football. It’s another to see it spelled out in raw numbers. Brian Caulfield of Forbes, using data provided by the NPD Group, wrote an article early last week looking at the ten best selling videogames in the US as of April 2008. The list, after the jump. Read More... Posted Jun 09 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, top ten, call of duty, guitar hero, halo, grand theft auto, madden