Personally, I can NOT wait until EA's deal with the NFL Players Association runs out so that we may at least have one year of NFL2K on the Wii... NFL2K games were superior in every single way when put up side by side to Madden. Franchise modes went deeper and unlockables were cooler. They even got clever and tried new things like First Person football, which while being incredibly difficult, was awesome because you knew the developer was trying to give you a new experience along side the old fail-safe style football.

I have boycotted Madden games since 2000, after I played Sega's NFL2K on Dreamcast simply because that game proved quite blatantly that Madden games are half-arsed and incomplete in every which way. I did break my boycott for Madden 08, because I can't get my fix for a football game anywhere else, and I regretted every second of it... you couldn't even make your own team! They took sooo much out of the Wii version of Madden 08 that they may as well have released an old copy of Madden '96... I called EA and complained, demanding a refund, and they gave me one with sincere apologies. That is the only thing good I have to say about EA, their customer service was polite and very willing to work with me to make me happy... and it made me very happy to be able to return that game for a full refund.

Competition in sports games is very important people! Since 2K Sports has gotten the license to MLB, that franchise has gone down the toilet, and since EA got the license to the NFL, that franchise has gone down the toilet... we need to boycott these games and get some competition going between developers so we can get some good games back out there! Look at the hockey and soccer games, no one owns the sole rights to the player and team names, so there is competition and the end result is gems like Pro Evolution Soccer!

But I guess I should get to the point: What can EA do to improve Madden for 09? A LOT...
1) the controls are always incredibly slow to respond... speed this up, when I move left make my character cut left, not take a big slow curve in that direction... lets get some fast paced action going here, it's football for Pete's sake!
2) update your graphics to something that doesn't look like a throwback to N64, us Wii owners deserve better.
3) Allow a control scheme for people who don't want to use the jiggle and shaking of the WiiMote, this might have been an option in 08, I'm not sure... I hated it too much to explore the control options.
4) Don't cut out features like player creation, and team creation.
5) Don't dumb down the franchise mode... when I do good playing a guy over the course of a year his statistics should increase. Players should hold out of training camp (which needs to be brought back so we can do it to improve players if we like) if I haven't updated their contract after a few years of franchise mode.
6) There should be NOTHING that Madden can do on another console that can't be done on the Wii... there's no excuse for this, just pure laziness.. which seems to be EA's trademark unless Spielberg works on the title (Boomblox is gonna rock).
7) Make the menus more intuitive, they were a huge pain in Madden 08... I could barely find anything I wanted to get to without having to go through every option possible in that maze you called a menu.

But really... what it comes down to... unless they copy NFL2k5 or NFL2k6, and then add some features, they won't make near as good a game as we should be getting in this day and age when it comes down to American Football games.

I apologize for the novel of a post, I just get passionate about this topic for some reason... with all that said, this does look like they may have fixed the lack of responsive controls.... and the idea of being able to draw a route for your receiver at the line seems awesome. I'll have to rent it with high hopes, but will most probably not buy this because EA just doesn't have the motivation to make a game better than Sega's 2K series.

Two quick things:

1) To those of you complaining about the lack of games making use of the Wii remote's capabilities... are you blind? You must not have played any of the first 3 dozen games released for the Wii. There were A LOT of games earlier on that OVERused the Wii remote's motion sensing abilities... in ways that were just unnatural and actually bad for the gaming experience, so a lot of developers have grown to kind of fear exploration into that territory which is lame because it's resulting in us missing out on more awesomely perfect control schemes like the one used in Metroid Prime 3. I think we will get cycles of games for the Wii that move in and out of taking full advantage of the remote's abilities... and right now we're in a slump, look for a lot of cool new 3rd party games in the 2nd half of '08.

2) To those of you complaining about the lack of games from 3rd party developers. Do you think Resident Evil 4, Zack & Wiki, No More Heroes, Okami, Guitar Hero III, Pro Evolution Soccer '08, Trauma Center: New Blood, MLB Power Pros, Scarface, and Excite Truck were made by Nintendo?? All these games are from 3rd party developers, and all of them are either rated highly by IGN/Gamespot and/or specific favorites of mine that make me happy to be a Wii owner. Not to mention that as much as I hate EA, their new game coming out called Boom Blox looks ridiculously fun.

I'm sure there are more examples for both my points, but I think these suffice in getting it across... it is a good time to be a Nintendo fanboy and a Wii owner, and it's only gonna get better.

Personally, I can NOT wait until EA's deal with the NFL Players Association runs out so that we may at least have one year of NFL2K on the Wii... NFL2K games were superior in every single way when put up side by side to Madden. Franchise modes went deeper and unlockables were cooler. They even got clever and tried new things like First Person football, which while being incredibly difficult, was awesome because you knew the developer was trying to give you a new experience along side the old fail-safe style football.

I have boycotted Madden games since 2000, after I played Sega's NFL2K on Dreamcast simply because that game proved quite blatantly that Madden games are half-arsed and incomplete in every which way. I did break my boycott for Madden 08, because I can't get my fix for a football game anywhere else, and I regretted every second of it... you couldn't even make your own team! They took sooo much out of the Wii version of Madden 08 that they may as well have released an old copy of Madden '96... I called EA and complained, demanding a refund, and they gave me one with sincere apologies. That is the only thing good I have to say about EA, their customer service was polite and very willing to work with me to make me happy... and it made me very happy to be able to return that game for a full refund.

Competition in sports games is very important people! Since 2K Sports has gotten the license to MLB, that franchise has gone down the toilet, and since EA got the license to the NFL, that franchise has gone down the toilet... we need to boycott these games and get some competition going between developers so we can get some good games back out there! Look at the hockey and soccer games, no one owns the sole rights to the player and team names, so there is competition and the end result is gems like Pro Evolution Soccer!

But I guess I should get to the point: What can EA do to improve Madden for 09? A LOT...
1) the controls are always incredibly slow to respond... speed this up, when I move left make my character cut left, not take a big slow curve in that direction... lets get some fast paced action going here, it's football for Pete's sake!
2) update your graphics to something that doesn't look like a throwback to N64, us Wii owners deserve better.
3) Allow a control scheme for people who don't want to use the jiggle and shaking of the WiiMote, this might have been an option in 08, I'm not sure... I hated it too much to explore the control options.
4) Don't cut out features like player creation, and team creation.
5) Don't dumb down the franchise mode... when I do good playing a guy over the course of a year his statistics should increase. Players should hold out of training camp (which needs to be brought back so we can do it to improve players if we like) if I haven't updated their contract after a few years of franchise mode.
6) There should be NOTHING that Madden can do on another console that can't be done on the Wii... there's no excuse for this, just pure laziness.. which seems to be EA's trademark unless Spielberg works on the title (Boomblox is gonna rock).
7) Make the menus more intuitive, they were a huge pain in Madden 08... I could barely find anything I wanted to get to without having to go through every option possible in that maze you called a menu.

But really... what it comes down to... unless they copy NFL2k5 or NFL2k6, and then add some features, they won't make near as good a game as we should be getting in this day and age when it comes down to American Football games.

Sorry about the novel, just something I'm passionate about.

hi im sorry but did this really need to be asked? Orcarina of time for sure, 1 it was the foundation of all 3d zelda games and of course it was the first step in bringing zelda to be a great game, and also i remeber that 1 or 2 years ago tehre was a "Best and Worst Video games Ever" and what do you know, ORCARINA OF TIME WAS #1, sure tp has better graphics but its next gen system, its all about the classics just like Final fantasy 7 for the ps one, everyone loved it and believed it was the best because it was the best out of the series because it was the first 3d one and the foundation of bring all final fantasy games so thats why ORCARINA DUHH!PoweredByHonda

Are you kidding? Did you seriously just say that OoT was the first step in bringing Zelda to be a great game??? You need to go back and play SNES's Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past ... that was definitely the biggest step forward for the franchise, going 3D was a no brainer... it was practically a necessity to keep some Nintendo franchises alive, it was what people were coming to expect and another 2d game wouldn't have made any #1 rankings in magazines. OoT is awesome, don't get me wrong, but it was far from the "first step in bringing zelda to be a great game".

Edit: (do to some restrictions for safety, all my typings of "c l a s s i c" have been censored by the forums, so when you see those *****'s, you know what it is now.)
I also just noticed that you called Final Fantasy 7 a ****c... now, maybe it's my age (25) coming into play here... it seems a bit old for the average gamer in these forums, but a ****c Final Fantasy to me is Final Fantasy 3 (least it was FFIII in the US, forget which one is was in Japan)... now THAT is a ****c. Again, FF7 was awesome, but if I think about the ****c FFs I don't think of sequels so late as 7. That's like saying Star Wars Episode III is a ****c... it's not even part of the original 3, it's #6 in the line of movies (release date wise).

[QUOTE="Mack2D2"]

I can't believe I just read this.

First off, even if Yoshi or Birdo is an "it"... common english 'rules' state that if you don't know the sexuality of something, or are speaking in a general unspecified nature, you should use "he" when referring to them.

Personally, I always assume that any unspecified pink creature with a questionable name is a girl.

sexy_chimp

Kirby's a girl?!?!

No no, Kirby is specified a male by his name. I've never known a girl to be named Kirby, maybe I'm wrong, maybe there are girls named Kirby but I've never met any of them and I've known a Kirby in real life... he was a guy. I've never met anyone named Birdo, so I can't relate the name to specific sex... thus: "I always assume that any unspecified pink creature with a questionable name is a girl."

I can't believe I just read this.

First off, even if Yoshi or Birdo is an "it"... common english 'rules' state that if you don't know the sexuality of something, or are speaking in a general unspecified nature, you should use "he" when referring to them.

Personally, I always assume that any unspecified pink creature with a questionable name is a girl.

[QUOTE="slimdave21"]I think there should be only very good games (aswell as imports) and no bad games.JordanElek

Revenue from the bad games pays the bills just like the good games. Also, Nintendo isn't the one making all the decisions about which games are being released, but you'll have to ask Jaysonguy about that.

In all honesty, I've been practicing the idea of your strike since day one. I don't buy bad games; I only buy the ones I think are great. ;)

I couldn't have said it better. I too have been practicing the idea of your strike since day one. I only buy the classics, and by classic I don't mean just plain old... I mean, the ones I remember really really enjoying back in the day. The fact that they release things like Mario Bros Lost Levels, which until know was only available in japan (or on an emulator) is pretty frickin sweet. So do your boycott, don't reward the developers letting Nintendo release their old craptacular titles... just make sure you don't pass up a great game.

First off, a hard drive would be friggin awesome and a huge improvement... why we haven't already seen a USB harddrive or some equivalent, I'm not sure. What about some USB Flash Drive support if you don't want to use SD cards?... there are usb slots in the back, why not make it an option?

The controller definitely needs help. They took the simplicity thing a bit too far... the 1 and 2 buttons are practically useless unless you're playing a game where you hold the controller sideways. They should consider slightly shrinking the A button, and moving it over a little bit to make room for a B button right next to it, just that one extra button would help immensely. What about maybe putting a button or two on the side, so that when your fingers wrap around the controller your pink/ring/middle finger could work that button while your index has the trigger and your thumb gets the D-pad and A button?

The simplest, and cheapest improvement I can think of is to incorporate a little more customization into the main wii menu. I'm actually baffled as to why Nintendo hasn't already given us a few choices for themes here. Why can't we take a screen shot in a game and use it as a background/wallpaper for our wii menu with the channels and stuff? Why not release themes for download to celebrate the release of new games?... they could use new sounds for events (maybe the sound of a Mario coin box being hit when you click a channel, or the sound of a plasma blast from Metroid) and even new background music. At the very least we should have the option to customize the colors and maybe even choose from a few select fonts. When I'm playing Wii at a friends house, he should be able to rub in his love for Twilight Princess with a wallpaper... and when he's at my place, I should be able to display Kirby's dominance over Princess Zelda with a screenshot of SSBB for my wallpaper. This could be taken even further.... what about a channel where people could upload their color, sound, and wallpaper combos to allow for downloadable and share-able themes made by other wii owners?? It's all so simple, why do we not get to enjoy this???...

okay, my rants done... sorry about the novel.