2020/10/31: Playstation: NCAA Football 99

[VideoGameCritic]

Filling in the gap in my college football reviews between NCAA Football 98 and 2000. I enjoyed this one. Some say sports games don't age well, but if you judge on gameplay alone they tend to hold up quite well.

[TheEagleXIII]

I still play NCAA '98 from time to time based on your review, I wouldn't have entertained it otherwise. I did give a few other PS1 NCAA football titles a go, namely 2001 and Gamebreaker 01. I didn't feel they held up as well and showed their age. I might give 99 a go, though - from what I remember at the time, EA seemed to hit the sweet spot with their 99 games across most sports on the PS1.

I totally remember the refs running the ball back after TDs for the kickoff in Madden 2000 too! 50 year old refs moved quicker than Barry Sanders apparently.

Good to see some old sports reviews and hearing how well they hold up now - especially this PS1/Saturn/N64 generation, which I don't usually feel time has been so kind on.

[jon]

I played this game a lot back then. It was the first college football game I played with a dynasty mode. The best part are the stadiums, which were done great. This was when EA was still good with games like this and Triple Play '98. I'd say this and the original Gamebreaker are the best college football games on the PS1. And second only to the Bill Walsh games. It was cool when these late '90s EA Football and Baseball games were the first ones to have the real stadiums. In the first 2 Triple Play games they have a 3d shot going into each stadium and it looks amazing, and was great for the time when it came out in 1996-1997.

[Breaker]

Nice review. I love games from this era.

Noticed one typo: "NCAA Footbal 98 contains 112 schools..." Should be NCAA Football 99, I think.

[Retro STrife]

Quality review. Always been a huge NFL fan, but never really got into college football. But with EA having a monopoly on the NFL license these days, you’d think someone else (like 2K) would step in with a new college football game.

[matmico399]

Good review. I played the heck out of this back in the day. good simple football the way it was meant to be unlike today's games. I just rewatched a video of it and thought it was a little clunky looking but then I remembered it was the PS1. My favorite football games of all time arrived on the PS2 and were fantastic. This game will always be a classic to me.

[MSR1701]

Filling in the gap in my college football reviews between NCAA Football 98 and 2000. I enjoyed this one. Some say sports games don't age well, but if you judge on gameplay alone they tend to hold up quite well.

YARP!

[jon]

I didn’t think of EA as being this huge billion dollar company even at this point. There was still competition like Gamebreaker.

I think the Gameday series among others were at least putting up some competition with Madden at this time although I might be wrong.

I basically played the computer versions of EA Genesis games like NHL ‘94 and the golf games. I played I think PGA ‘96 on the computer. It had 2 courses I think maybe 3. And they had an add on course that one could get at stores like Best Buy. I didn’t get it. I loved EA and didn’t think of it as this huge corporation.

[Retro STrife]

I think the Gameday series among others were at least putting up some competition with Madden at this time although I might be wrong.

From my personal recollections, Madden was always sort of popular in the 90s, but it didn't really explode into it's modern day popularity until the PS2 era. All the other competitors dropped off by the early 2000s and it was really just Madden and 2K. That's when Madden pulled away. Although 2K was the better series, EA had the better marketing and got more sales by appealing to the casual gamers that choose branding over reviews. And then we know 2005 was the last of that competition when Madden got the exclusive rights.

Gameday was a good series though. Gameday 98 was the only football game I had in that era and I played probably 100+ hours of it.

[Breaker]

Is there another video game franchise that has lasted as long as Madden while being named for someone who's no longer active in said field? Madden hasn't even been an announcer since 2008. There are a dozen games out since he retired. Why is his name still being used? I'm 41, and I barely remember Madden as a coach.

There's practically a generation of video game players that have never even heard John Madden call a football game on TV. I've never thought about this until tonight, but now that I have it seems really weird.