Amiga Rediscovery - John Madden American Football - Electronic Arts

[Angus]

I've never delved deeply into this game but from the first time I saw
it, even knowing nothing about American Football, I was very impressed
with the slick presentation, that seemed to have been coded by somebody
who wanted to show off what the Amiga could do. It turns out, the lead
programmer, Gary Roberts, was originally a demo coder responsible for
the Pink Floyd - The Wall demo, which I gather was highly respected.
There is a picture of him apparently trying out-cool the Bitmap
Brothers, complete with shades, at the back of the manual.


The good news is Nate is on-side (did you see what I did there?) as
CATT, Chosen American Technical Translator and is highly familiar with
both the game and the sport. He posted some interesting comments in the
original thread which I have taken the liberty of including below.


Anyway, let's give this a go and see if the game is actually the gem it
appears to be. Anybody want to suggest a supporting game for those of us
that are easily confused? :)


Anyway, Nate's comments:

I'm definitely in! I could not count how many times I've played this
game! I actually already have the disks out as I was playing this about
6 weeks ago. It is one of the best Amiga sports games I've seen. There
is one really nasty bug though that I'll mention later. It has to do
with the 'On-side Kick'.

I always wondered if this game could be rewritten to accept a 'data
disk' that could be released every year to reflect previous year's team
stats. That would have been really cool. Or it seems that one might be
able to edit the data on the disks with an editor to tweak team
strengths and weaknesses.

One thing that always impressed me about this game and a few others is
the statement 'Extra Memory Detected' when you boot the game and it
detects a full one-meg of RAM available. The graphic displayed is
usually pretty cool as well.

[Nate Brazil]

I've never been a CATT before! Well cool! I'll look at my games tonight and see if I can come up with a 'supporting' game. But, as most of you probably know, I tend to couple strategy type games with less involved 'arcade' and 'platform' type games so that those with time limitations can jump into the conversation with less play-time on the 'Miggy involved. We've had some good ones - Lemmings, Lost Vikings, RoboCod... so many games, so little time...

:-)

Nate

[Nate Brazil]

Ok hoping to get some Amiga play in this weekend as I have a 4 day weekend coming up! (Thanksgiving) Friday or Saturday I'm going to play a 10 minute per quarter game and post observations here. Anyone want to pick the teams who will play - or pick whether the game is inside or outside and what weather conditions are present. I *think* you can choose a day or night game as well...

I'm also going to find that 'onside' bug and post about it. It only occurs with one team, and I have yet to find a way to stop it.

I'll look on LemonAmiga to see if I can see anything about game versions. Perhaps I have an earlier version of the game...

Nate

[Angus]

In article <6e381fef-cd82-4e59...@googlegroups.com>,
nateb...@comcast.net says...

Well Nate, I'm pretty clueless... I know that from watching the original
movie Rollerball that matching Houston against Tokyo is probably a
mistake... certainly for Moonpie, but more seriously, How would those
San Francisco guys stand up against LA?

Chris Vella pointed out in his AGDB review, "A good
choice for a beginner to start with is the Minnesota Vikings, This team
has some of the best attributes and will play a strong game."

So, I'll probaly start with them myself. :)

[Nate Brazil]

The Vikings are pretty good in this game. I do remember some teams that - no matter how hard I tried - they didn't seem to be able to do very well. Then again, I typically played with a friend that somehow excelled in EVERY football game we played - from the ancient Atari 2600 to 'Fourth and Inches' on the Commodore 64, to of course John Madden on both the Amiga and future gaming consoles. He just seemed to have a knack for electronic football. Almost undefeatable, at least to me. He loved football.

I didn't get a chance to play last weekend but am going to try again Saturday. If I succeed, I'll post my results here. I have terrible time-management skills! :-)

Nate

[Angus]

In article <a761452c-a861-4780...@googlegroups.com>,
nateb...@comcast.net says...

>
>
> The Vikings are pretty good in this game.

I should have tried them. :)

Okay so, two places I have actually been to, San Francisco and Los
Angeles, met on the field of battle with me representing L.A.


Initially, in the game I was foxed by the option selection method, but
after I worked out it was: hold button, move joystick, release button,
things started to move forward.

Now being an advocate of the Liddell-Hart strategy of the indirect
approach, (and this game does seem to have a lot in common with
Blitzkrieg) I was selecting options that reflected that tendency,
attemtping to sweep round to one side and bypass the enemies strong
points. Unfortunately I was let down by the fact that:

a) The opposing team is also highly mobile, and

b) I never really understood how to throw the ball.

And really, most of the available tactics that you can select, I was
almost choosing at random after a while, despite the nice diagrams that
are displayed.

But all that is down to me not really grasping the game yet. It
certainly seems to be very well designed, with plenty of depth - and
even if you are clueless like me, its pretty enjoyable.

I definitely want to get a better grasp of how to play.

24 - 7 if anybody cares, you'll never guess who won. ;)

[Nate Brazil]

Who won Angus? :-)

This is definitely a game that takes some getting used to. Ok I have another weekend coming up - another chance to try to get down into my basement and give this game a go. I keep asking my wife if I can just bring my Miggy upstairs and put it in the living room, but so far the answer has been a resounding NO. I could play this using an emulator, but it would not be the same.

Look for a post Monday or Tuesday from me and I'll post some notes from my gaming replay. There - now I'm committed! :-)

Nate

[Angus]

In article <08ee7a6c-2f89-4aac...@googlegroups.com>,
nateb...@comcast.net says...

>
> >
> >
> > 24 - 7 if anybody cares, you'll never guess who won. ;)
>
> Who won Angus? :-)

:)

>
> This is definitely a game that takes some getting used to. Ok I have another weekend coming up - another chance to try to get down into my basement and give this game a go. I keep asking my wife if I can just bring my Miggy upstairs and put it in the living room, but so far the answer has been a resounding NO. I could play this using an emulator, but it would not be the same.
>
> Look for a post Monday or Tuesday from me and I'll post some notes from my gaming replay. There - now I'm committed! :-)
>

And then, and then?????

I noticed there is an American Football being shown on the TV tonight,
and thought I'd tape it for some tactical advice - but its several hours
long!

Seppo, Hidehiko? Are you there? We need your input, and I need somebody
else about who understands the game as little as I do. :)


P.S.
I managed to get Battle Isle working on my phone through emulation, but
I don't think JMAF would lend itself to a tiny screen.

[Nate Brazil]

Well with 'SuperBowl' weekend approaching, I figured I'd spend some time playing and finally posting to the group. Though I do watch a lot of football (especially college but not so much Professional football), there are a lot of 'terms' used in the game that I wasn't really familiar with, so I decided to pull out the manual and read up to learn what I don't know. I'm glad I did... The manual exposed me to a few features of the game with which I was not familiar (such as 'pushing forward' when you 'anticipate the snap', and the reading is fun and occasionally humorous.

One of the first *very* interesting things I noted is that the mailing address for 'Electronic Arts' on my book is in England! I looked up Electronic Arts to see if they started out in England but it appears that they started in the U.S., so I'm wondering if EA had an English 'headquarters' to coordinate distribution there. Specifically, the location is 'Langley, Berks, SL3 8YN England'.

Now I always thought that all of Europe was on the PAL standard, whereas I have an Amiga based on NTSC standard and have to use a special utility to boot into PAL mode. Isn't England on the PAL standard as well?

So for my first game, I pulled out my old 'Dungeons and Dragons' dice so I could roll randomly to see who would play who as well as randomly roll for field conditions. I ended up with a match-up between Atlanta (whom I would play) and Minnesota (who would be played by the system).

It's interesting to note that you can have the team play itself, which I found interesting. I decided to re-roll if the 'All-Madden' team came up as I believe this team is 'the best of the best' and would be very difficult to beat by a regular team.

As I played, I began to find that I have a major issue trying to catch a pass when thrown during a pass play, and went into a mode where instead of actually playing a game to win, I was just trying to get used to the game again. At this stage, I'm going to read more of the book and continue to practice pass receptions before playing a 'real' game and posting back the results and my other findings.

If anyone has any questions about the game or football in general, go ahead and post and I'll reply here, pulling the answer from the manual when possible.

I'll be back...

Nate

[Hidehiko Ogata]

On 2013/01/21 03:23, Nate Brazil-san wrote:
>
> One of the first *very* interesting things I noted is that the
> mailing address for 'Electronic Arts' on my book is in England! I
> looked up Electronic Arts to see if they started out in England but
> it appears that they started in the U.S., so I'm wondering if EA had
> an English 'headquarters' to coordinate distribution there.
> Specifically, the location is 'Langley, Berks, SL3 8YN England'.

They go *way* back... right about when Pinball Construction Set was
somewhat new on Apple][. Now *that* title didn't materiarize on our
Amiga, grrrr...

> As I played, I began to find that I have a major issue trying to
> catch a pass when thrown during a pass play, and went into a mode
> where instead of actually playing a game to win, I was just trying to
> get used to the game again. At this stage, I'm going to read more of
> the book and continue to practice pass receptions before playing a
> 'real' game and posting back the results and my other findings.

Yeah, pass plays seem to be tough, both to play and play against. The
opponent's QB usually has like forever to throw some *huge* long-bombs
against me, so I returned the favor with nasty QB sneaks. The poor AI
gets totally confused with human improvisations (^o^)v

I've done a quick comparison of joystick control between the Amiga
version and the original Sega Genesis version, and the Ami version fares
much better than I had imagined. While the SG version excels with a
simple association of 3 buttons = 3 choices, the Ami version's intuitive
imitation of a snap with the stick motion is quite brilliant.

> If anyone has any questions about the game or football in general, go
> ahead and post and I'll reply here, pulling the answer from the
> manual when possible.

That's an easy one - Ravens or 49ers? ;)
--
// }{idehiko ()gata "I'm not like other people.
\X/ Amigan since '86 I can't stand pain.
It hurts me." - Daffy Duck

[Nate Brazil]

Ravens! ;-)

[Hidehiko Ogata]

On 2013/02/04 23:20, Nate Brazil-san wrote:

>> That's an easy one - Ravens or 49ers? ;)
>

> Ravens! ;-)

You have guessed wisely :).

Wild game, wasn't it? Shame about the outage, but that was a great case
of retreat & regroup. I wouldn't have minded one last Hail Mary moment,
but still, I had a good time.

[Angus]

In article <57e688d1-a4c3-4b61...@googlegroups.com>,
nateb...@comcast.net says...

>
>
> One of the first *very* interesting things I noted is that the mailing address for 'Electronic Arts' on my book is in England! I looked up Electronic Arts to see if they started out in England but it appears that they started in the U.S., so I'm wondering if EA had an English 'headquarters' to coordinate distribution there. Specifically, the location is 'Langley, Berks, SL3 8YN England'.
>

Ah yes, the Langley Business Centre, the well known EA/CIA undercover
establishment.

I thiink the original game was developed in California, but gary Roberts
prorammed it for the Amiga in England. EA also mention an Australian HQ
in my manual.

EA were very keen on the Amiga, but I think back then there was a lot of
programming talent for the machine in the UK and Europe.


My main problem with the game, and I'm not blaming the game, is I find
it tricky to string together a sequence of moves, without losing
posession of the ball so any tips on this would be welcome. I guess its
largely practice.... :)

I recorded a game shown some weeks back on the TV which I keep meaning
to watch in the hope I can pick up some moves.

[Nate Brazil]

It is tricky, but one thing to realize is that football is just a hard sport. In real life as well as in the game, a team will often try three plays to get 10 yards, fail to do so, and punt the ball. Even if they get the 10 yards, then they have to do it all over again until they score. A majority of sequences will in fact typically end in a punt, which is realistic, but there will occasionally be those sequences in series that get you points on the board. It's a game of maneuver in an attempt to have more scoring sequences than your opponent.

Nate