Tonight’s the night. Madden NFL 10, the latest release in one of the most popular video-game series, comes out at midnight. And it will be hard not to know about it, because an advertising blitz for the game will accompany tonight’s season premiere of Monday Night Football (yes, even though it’s Thursday night).

Really, I don’t get all worked up for the latest Madden games each year. To me, their popularity is due more to updated rosters than anything else. Sure, there are all kinds of bells and whistles added each go-round, such as “the all-new Pro-Tak™ animation technology,” and the Wii version has been “completely redesigned and built from the ground up.” But I think most gamers just want to play using the most current version of their favorite teams. (Update: I haven’t played the game yet, but the Associated Press and Game Informer are calling Madden NFL 10 the franchise’s best entry in years, if not ever, in their early reviews.)

Why do you play the Madden games? Do you buy the newest one each year?

I’ll always love John Madden Football ‘92 for the dearly departed Sega Genesis. That was the version in which it was fun to deliberately injure a player, because then an ambulance would race onto the field to retrieve him — running over the other, uninjured players in the process. Hilarious.

Madden NFL 10 will be available at midnight at stores such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Gamestop.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 6:54 am and is filed under Video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.