EA Sports Vol. 2, Issue 1

This is a 20-page magazine from EA Sports that I believe was distributed as an insert with an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. I also own Vol. 1, Issue 1 which has lower quality paper and Michael Jordan on the cover, but I chose to scan this one instead because it is football-centric and this is Super Bowl weekend. Although John Madden is EA's primary football guy and this issue features some John Madden Football articles, the issue's cover is not of John Madden but of Bill Walsh, who endorsed EA's first college football video game. I am including every page of the magazine, including ads, though you can find the same ads in the Electronic Arts albums posted back in 2017. However, I provide slightly larger article pages than I previously did in the past, and I matched the ads to that size as well, so these are bigger than my other ad scans.

As I said, it's Super Bowl weekend and at this time of year I do often put together a video or blog post with a score prediction, which is really just a complete guess as I'm not an expert and I don't analyze anything. Last year I picked the wrong winner in a game that went into overtime. Two years ago I was a single point off from guessing the exact score between these same teams. Philadelphia makes its second Super Bowl appearance in the last three years and Kansas City returns for the fifth time in the last six years, and is going for a three-peat! I did pick against KC last year and maybe I should learn from my mistakes but I'm leaning toward the Eagles pulling out the win. Either way, I'm expecting a close, high-scoring game, and I'll go with the same score I guessed two years ago but with a different outcome: 38-34 Philadelphia.

Electronic Arts Takes on the Video-Game Market (Video Games & Computer Entertainment - August 1990)

Today Electronic Arts (EA) is a juggernaut video game publisher but it was strictly a computer game developer and publisher for eight years before releasing its own games for consoles. Before 1990, other companies had licensed and ported EA's computer games to consoles. This article from Video Games & Computer Entertainment magazine was written shortly before EA's first video game releases for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis. Of course, we now know how significant EA's decision to make console games was and it entered the market at a great time, as 16-bit consoles elevated the gaming industry and EA's sports titles would eventually take the company to another level. One oddity about EA's Genesis cartridges is that they are about three quarters of an inch taller than the standard size and its earliest releases used cardboard boxes instead of the nice clamshell cases. That is likely a result of EA not actually having a Sega license at the time as is mentioned in the interview with Trip Hawkins at the end of the article.

[YouTube] John Madden Football

https://youtu.be/36fsK-VnwRA

The 16-bit console versions of John Madden Football are where Electronic Arts' football series took off but the series got its start on home computers. Released first in 1988 for Apple II computers and in 1989 for the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS, John Madden Football bares little resemblance to the first Sega Genesis game. John Madden worked with the game's lead designer and programmer Robin Antonick with the goal of creating a realistic football simulation. It's packaged with offense and defense playbooks that are 20 pages each and provide the basics of the variety of football formations. While there is a Quick Game mode, the 60+ page manual explains quite a bit more for setting up the Standard Game mode.

Players have quite a few options when it comes to customizing their game as they can edit playbooks, create plays, and edit team rosters. One thing the game is missing is the NFL license so there are no official team or player names. There are teams based on great Steelers, Raiders, 49ers, and Bears squads, plus there are All-Madden and All-Timer teams, as well as some other random teams. Virtual athletes are also based on real-life counterparts, and some are easily recognizable by nicknames, such as Sweetness (Walter Payton) and White Shoes (Billy Johnson). Aside from the aforementioned console games that began in 1990, a direct sequel to the computer game was released for MS-DOS in 1991 but that does not contain NFL licensing either.

I've got two magazine reviews of the MS-DOS version, one from Game Player's (GP) and the other from Video Games & Computer Entertainment (VG&CE). I'm also including a 1995 John Madden interview from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) that is primarily about Madden himself and football rather than video games.

GP Vol, 1, No. 6 - December 1989

VG&CE - February 1990

EGM #74 - September 1995

Gaming Ads: Electronic Arts

I'll do my best to keep this as short as I can, though Electronic Arts (EA) has a long history and one could write quite a bit about the company. I've got 135 ads which I believe is second only to what I have for Sega. EA Sports ads could be separated but for now I'm leaving them with the rest of EA.

EA was founded in California in 1982 by former Apple employee Trip Hawkins. A few other Apple employees joined EA and the company quickly grew as it recruited more staff from the likes of Atari and Xerox. In 1983 EA released its first games on home computers, including one of the most significant games in the history of the company. That game is Julius Irving/Larry Bird Go One-on-One, or simply One-on-One. This was the first time professional athletes appeared in a computer game, it was an important income source for EA, and it was the first stepping stone into the sports genre of video games that would shape the future of the publisher.

While EA did develop some of its own games, it also published games for other developers which led to a large number of releases annually beginning in 1986. EA published nearly 20 games in '86, then more than 25 in '87, and over 30 in '88. In such a short span EA became the largest third-party game publisher. Here is a brief list of some of the best known games that EA published in the '80s: John Madden Football (quite different from what would appear on consoles), Populous, Archon, Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer, Earl Weaver Baseball, Starflight, Skate or Die, F/A-18 Interceptor, M.U.L.E., the computer versions of Marble Madness, and some of Interplay's role-playing titles, such as the Bard's Tale sequels and Wasteland.

In 1990 EA entered the console games market as a publisher; previously it had only licensed its games to other publishers. Around that same time Trip Hawkins left EA to found The 3DO Company. The '90s was another successful decade for EA as its sports games became so popular during the 16-bit era that EA created the EA Sports brand that is still used today. As I said above, I want to keep this relatively short so I'll just mention a few more things as the company is still going strong today and it's likely many of you are quite familiar with EA. Along with EA Sports, EA Games became a publishing label EA used for a while and there was EA Sports BIG for the more arcade-like games, such as SSX. Jane's Combat Simulations was yet another publishing label EA used as it licensed the Jane's Information Group brand from 1994 to 2000.

The last thing I want to mention about its past are some of the most recognizable developers that have been acquired by EA (along with a major game each made before the acquisitions): Origin Systems (Ultima), Bullfrog (Populous), BioWare (Baldur's Gate), Westwood Studios (Command & Conquer), Maxis (SimCity), Digital Illusions CE (Battlefield), PopCap Games (Bejeweled), and DreamWorks Interactive (Medal of Honor). There were many others of course, though I'd say those are the most noteworthy due to the popularity of the games each one developed for EA. Unfortunately, some have since been closed or merged with other studios, and some have been renamed. This post also happens to fall during the week EA announced the closure of Visceral Games, one of its internal studios that was originally known as EA Redwood Shores. Visceral had been working on a single-player Star Wars game that many were looking forward to so I suspect EA's popularity is at an all-time low.

Regardless of what you may think of EA today, for better or worse, it's been a very important company in the history of computer and video games. If you were gaming in the '80s and/or '90s EA likely played a big role your time playing games. For myself, I was a big fan of EA during those two decades, especially the EA Sports titles released for the Sega Genesis.

Electronic Arts albums: Facebook - Google Photos