Sport is the greatest thing in the world, with the possible exception of New Order songs, so it’s cause for celebration that Madden NFL 09 is nearly with us.  Its release also marks the 20-year anniversary for the mega-popular game series.  By mega-popular we mean, “Popular in the US”, which is effectively the World after all.

Named after the legendary John Madden, the series has had more iterations than Kerry Katona’s had column inches.  Mr Madden himself, who started working on the game way back in 1988 said, “I’ve been in the development of this game since day one.  One of my goals was to make the videogame look like television.”

Well, the graphical excesses have continued unabated, that’s for sure, and the game now looks more like a TV broadcast than ever before.  We’re not sure how helpful “…85 new features and enhancements,” are going to be, but that’s the name of the yearly-iteration game, isn’t it?

15th August for us soccer fans.  It’ll never be as good as Blitz was on the C64 though, will it.