Madden NFL 2002 - Australian Idiot

05/12/24

One thing that is universally true of video game reviewers is the fact that not every reviewer is suited to every game. Some are the real racing car heads, able to list off every car brand and model in existence, and know exactly *how* they should race. Or the MMO freaks who’ll know every drop, every bit of efficiency that exists in the game. Well, as someone who pledged to review pretty much every Game Boy Advance game under the sun, such limitations don’t apply, and occasionally, I’ll find a game that just escapes my grasp, and I can’t in good conscience deliver what I’d consider a subjectively *good* review. So, today, we’ll be ‘reviewing’ Madden NFL 2002, a game through which a combination of complexity, lack of instruction, and being the subject of a sport and world practically alien to me, utterly defeated me.

I’m not a sports guy. Hell, even when it comes to ‘arcadey’ sports, they rarely draw me in. Mario Golf, sure, but something like FIFA or Madden? Horrifying. I barely even watch sports in my free time (unless you count pro wrestling, in which case… well, I have a problem), so don’t expect a single ounce of sports related knowledge in this review, though I’ll try and hold back on being an unceremonious dick about it. Sport games rae going to be the big black spot for the Game Boy Abyss, but I’ll work hard to try and give them their due. Whilst some sport games are fairly intuitive - car goes vroom, tennis players go HWAH, and so on - there are few sports that feel as alien and un-intuitive to me, a humble Australian then American Football and the NFL as a whole. But, maybe I’d just pick it up? Maybe it’d be a decent introduction to American Football, to Madden as a whole!

Uh, I won’t keep you in suspense - it didn't.

Now, I wish to underline the fact that I did go out of my way to note that I *did*, in fact, read the manual for this game. I’d been burned before, so I made sure to give it a read before I started playing. I can safely say it did almost nothing to help me delve into the infinite labyrinth that is this game (from my Australian perspective). Thankfully, or not so thankfully, depending on your amount of interest in NFL games, the variance of the labyrinth of Madden 2002 is pretty poor; whilst you can choose to play a full NFL season or an exhibition match, it’s really just different formats for doing the exact thing - the great United States mystery of playing NFL. That’s really it - I suppose you could also count simulating an entire season, rather than playing through the game, but outside of something like a WWE game, the idea of just watching the computer play the game - or worse, only showing the results - just does nothing for me whatsoever.

With a lack of any real options, I decided to opt for playing a full season - who knows, maybe I’d find myself addicted. Ugh, who am I kidding. I barely even knew which team to control! I looked up and down the list, but genuinely the only team I recognized was The Steelers, so I just went with them, not knowing if I was giving myself any real advantage or disadvantage or if it was all just varying levels of set dressing. But still, there’s got to be some intuitiveness to this game, right? It’s just football, right? How different could it be to Australian Rules football, really? So, as I entered my first match, I had some confidence I’d be able to wrangle this game well enough to deliver a sufficiently detailed review. And then, once the two teams were assembled, the formation screen popped up, and any hope I had was flushed away, like that rat in the film Flushed Away.

Madden’s UI is baffling, utterly baffling, and there’s nothing more baffling than the goddamn formation screen. A mess of arrows, lines, and terms that do nothing to explain to me which are used for what. How do I know how the opposing team is going to perform? How should I act when I’m on offense or defense? To make matters worse, it’s not like the action pauses whilst you’re deciding on which baffling formation to use - take too long, and you’re penalized. Once the action actually began, I accidentally moved during the kickoff. Bang, penalty. I immediately fumbled the ball and things just got worse from there. Simply put, this baffling (to me) series of events was the highlight of my time with this game, and it only got more confusing from there. The constant stopping and starting, the strange lack of continuity that I’m not sure is an issue with the game or the sport, but it’s in stark contrast to anything else I’ve watched, especially AFL.

And I’ll be honest, I tried, but I had to resort to watching someone who actually knew what they were doing to see what this game actually had on offer to an enthusiast, and really… even to them, the game just seemed boring. Anything you’d want from a video game version of NFL is just done better and grander on… well, *any* other version (except for the Game Boy Color version, which is a WHOLE other can of worms), sans its portability. In the stripped down version on display here, you’re playing the teams, not your favourite players, and it’s sadly just such a compromised experience I can’t imagine anyone sans the most devoted, or the most desperate, picking it up even back in 2002.

Now, I understand that these games are for enthusiasts, and I’m not interested in taking anything away from those people, but could I possibly just have a crumb of instruction, of tutorialization? Yes, I live in a country where probably 99% of it’s native inhabitants don’t give a single flying fuck about NFL, and for the yanks playing this, they’ve probably had their entire lives saturated by the sports - hell, you guys even adore your colleges NFL teams! Basically, this game is impenetrable if you don’t know what a formation is, what the rules are, or even what the hell NFL is; this game is not for you. It’s likely enough that the home console versions of Madden 2002 does has some tutorialization, and the GBA version is just for you enthusiasts, so, uh… play that instead, I guess. Or one of the myriad of later, probably better versions that’ve been coming out for the last two decades.

Honestly, I *think* the game looks fine? Again, the UI is an utter mess, but considering this is a 2001 game, I think the in-action visuals looks decent enough, though all the pixelated PNGs of various NFL stars is something that’ll never fail to make me laugh. All in all, considering it’s trying to collapse such a massive franchise into the portable space, it has some pretty decent pseudo-3D effects as you move up and down the field, and the audio has the perfect, almost delightfully crunchy bite to it that whilst objectively sounding like shite, I just can’t get enough of. Just give me more of those pixelated commentator PNGs, I love it.

Honestly, this review ended up being more of a joke than anything else, and I feel kind of bad for it. But the fact is I find this game impenetrable, in a way that only a 28 year old from Australia can find it impenetrable. It does seem to have done a good job of replicating the NFL experience of the game, and for such an early entry in the GBA’s lifespan, it doesn’t look half bad. But the fact of the matter is it really feels like there’s no reason to touch this game over any other version, sans the GBC one, unless you’re got no other option. If I’ve broken a Madden fan's heart with this review, I apologize, but I just can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Madden 2002 is a game I find almost impossible to judge - is it a bad game, or am I just bad? The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle (with some healthy weight towards my lack of skill), and so I think it’s fair to say that Madden 2002 is *just* a NFL game, and nothing more. Despite my inability to really reach this game, I do plan to eventually tackle the later entries in the series on the GBA, and hopefully I’ll find those a little more accessible - but only in the game itself, I really, really don’t plan to watch any NFL.

Thanks for reading my ‘review’ of NFL Madden 2002 on the Game Boy Abyss! Sorry for y’all hoping for a proper review, I really did give it a try but it just wasn’t working for me. Let’s try again in a year or so with Madden 2003, ‘kay? As always, you can email me for any questions or requests at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com, or find me on Twitch or Bluesky under GameBoyAbyss. Thanks again fro reading, and I’ll see you next review!