All the depth you need in a football game
Pros:
Franchise Mode, Madden Cards
Cons:
Takes too much memory to save your Franchise Mode
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
As a big football fan, I was looking for the best football game on the N64 and I knew that I could count on EA Sports to deliver the goods in Madden 2001. I bought NFL Quarterback Club 2000 last year and was so disappointed in the game due to the fact that it had so many bugs in the program. The game would always freeze up and it would always give me problems everytime I tried to substitute a backup player into the game. From what I hear, Acclaim released Quarterback Club 2001 without fixing the problems that plagued last year's game. I am proud to say that after three months of playing Madden 2001, I have not come across any problems.
The graphics have definitely improved over last years version of the game. The control seems very impressive as well. Where this game really shines is in the long-term fun. To this day, I am still motivated to play through the games just to get all the Madden Cards. They are a challenge to earn, but it never gets to the point where it is too difficult. Once you earn the cards of Hall of Famers such as Dan Marino and John Elway, they are placed in free agency to be played in your Franchise or Season. At the end of each season, you can trade, draft, sign, release and create players to get ready for the next season.
This game has also improved in the sound quality. The sound in previous N64 Madden titles have gotten low marks by me due to the lack of speech. More Maddenisms have been added to this game and they do not seem to ever get repetitive.
The one flaw to this game is somewhat of a minor one. I feel that it is ridiculous that you have to dedicate an entire controller pack to save a Franchise. On top of that, if you want to save your game settings, you must have another controller pack and that will take about 16 pages.
Despite this complaint, I recommend this game to any football fan out there. For single player gaming, I prefer Madden over not only Quarterback Club, but also the NFL Blitz games. If you like multiplayer gaming, you might want to rent a Blitz game before you buy Madden. Madden provides a solid multiplayer experience, but it's modes clearly favor the single player idea. Stay away from the Quarterback Club games and you should be fine.
