Per ESPN:

Sources confirmed to ESPN that the new title is actually one of the all-time classics coming back to consoles as EA Sports has acquired the rights from the NBA to deliver an updated version of “NBA Jam” that will ship to retail exclusively for the Wii.

This is cool, insomuch as like many kids during the early 90’s, I played the crap out of this game, and even busted out my old Sega during college breaks to play it. (Remember when you didn’t have to do anything for an entire month during winter break in college? How was this legal? I miss college.)

But I wonder if limiting this to the Wii is going to kill some of its mass appeal. The Wii is a video-game console for old people, women and little kids, Not Serious Male Gamers In Target Demographics.

Serious Sports Games are more suited to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. This doesn’t mean some gamers don’t have both systems, or that it can’t still have success on the Wii. It’s just that they could retro-fit this game for the Wii — meaning keep everything pretty similar to the original with updated graphics — and then throw the Wii’s cutsey controller into the mix where it’s like you’re in the game, instead of taking it to the newer, more updated level.

Have I told you I rarely play video games and actually own a Wii? And that’s why my opinion is possibly dead wrong?

Well, now you know.

Video games frustrate the hell out of me.

Now, I rarely play them. But my roommate just got the new Madden, and he plays NBA 2K9 a lot, and I’ll get suckered into playing, and I know I’m going to lose because he has much more practice and skill, and then I get mad when I lose even though I know I’m going to lose, and then I play him again, and I lose again.

Like I said: frustrating.

But hey, look, I can do all these cool things with Derrick Rose in NBA 2K10, according to the trailer that just dropped for the game. (HT: Dime.) Now when I lose, I can lose with style. Or something.

Whether or not you agree with any combat the US has engaged in as of late, you have to feel for the troops. Their girlfriends. Their kids. Their wives. Their husbands. Their parents.

Being thousands of miles away from your family is tough as it is; trying to avoid death every day while being thousands of miles away from your family is unbearable.

As such, the fine folks at EA Sports have given Madden 2010 to a submarine crew heading out on deployment before its release date on Aug. 14 in an effort to make the time go by a fraction faster.

Tailgate365 has the details:

… for a few Tailgate365.com members, that day comes after they leave on deployment with no connection to the outside world.  See, these guys live on a submarine for months at a time, protecting our rights.  Rights to keep on playing Madden till our fingers hurt and our eyes cry for sleep. These sailors, with not much to do, literally under water, spend all of their time eating, working, sleeping and of course, gaming.

But thanks to EA Sports and their commitment to our troops, they will get underway with a copy of the latest version of Madden.

According to Mr. Gaines over at Sports By Brooks, video games and the like are precisely the type of things that bring a sense of normalcy to an abnormal time in these people’s lives.

I just hope they have an Xbox on board to play the game.

Every year, a new Madden game is released. And every year, at least two things happen. 1) I purchase the game and then don’t get the full value out of it because I end up not playing it enough. And 2) several athletes complain about the fact that they are not rated high enough in the video game.

This year, that athlete is T.J. Houshmandzadeh. “Teej” (if you will — and you will, because I’m not writing Houshmandazdeh 30 times in the next several hundred words) is so cheesed off, in fact, that he’s going to boycott the game until EA Sports fixes his rating, according to an interview he had with everyone’s fav shockjock, Colin Cowherd.

“I understand I averaged 10 yards a catch, but it’s the offense, not me. I’m not playing Madden no more until they get my rating right. … I used to be the best in the world at Madden. I’m going to miss not playing it, but until they do me right, I’m not playing it any more.”

How did they do Teej an injustice? Well, they ranked him — *gasp* — a 91 overall. What exactly does that mean? Well, it means he’s just as good as Terrell Owens.

And not as good as the following people: Larry Fitzgerald, Andre Johnson, Steve Smith, Randy Moss, Reggie Wayne, Anquan Boldin, Roddy White, Brandon Marshall, Calvin Johnson and TO. Which, for the most part, seems pretty fair.

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In 2005, Electronic Arts and the NFL gathered in a smoke-filled room somewhere and signed an exclusivity agreement: from 2006 through 2009 (since extended to 2012), the Madden NFL video game series would be the only games to feature the League’s teams and players. With the possible exceptions of the Tecmo Bowl series, the early years of the NFL2K series, and Mutant League Football, the Madden games have generally been the best around. Nonetheless, they hold a monopoly on the NFL video game business, and as a general rule, monopolies are bad news for consumers. A couple of gamers are attempting to sue Electronic Arts, and one of their expert witnesses, an economics professor, believes that since 2006, EA has bilked gamers out of hundreds of millions of dollars. From the claim itself:

Multiplying the estimated unit volume of each Madden iteration by the introductory
price per unit and the assumed overcharge percentage, I am able to calculate a range of potential damages. If the assumptions in this hypothetical exercise were to hold, damages would be in the range of $701 to $925 million over the entire class period.

The idea is that ever since EA obtained exclusive rights, they’ve been charging $60 — almost double what they charged when they had competition. In principal, of course, this is a bad thing. To play the other side of the fence for a moment, though, the quality of the Madden games gets better and better every year. And for the average Madden player, $60 is money well spent.

A collective $925 million is something altogether different. Last season, if gamers weren’t allegedly overcharged for Madden 2009, they could have bought the services of every player from the Colts ($91 million) and Ravens ($90 million), and had them play each other in some guy’s back yard, sixteen games a season, for five years. Probably not as fun as playing Madden on a 27″ Magnavox. But still.

(Via Consumerist.)

I’m not sure whether this goes for most sports fans, but 2008-09 has marked a huge resurgence of hockey in the world of Eamonn Brennan. Between having a few Blackhawks tickets, the Blackhawks actually being good and me taking the time to get into the sport again (via my street hockey days in 1995), it’s been all good things. I like hockey again.

There is one factor I left out, though. One of the most important reasons I’ve returned to hockey — and this might sound weird, or might not — has been NHL 09. It’s really that good. A hockey-loving friend bought the game, we played a few times, I rented it, loved it, bought it, and played it constantly. It’s a ton of fun. And while there are flaws there (it’s probably not quite as good as FIFA 09, all things considered) it is a really, really good sports video game. Much better than Madden, and much better than either of the NBA franchises.

So of course I’m unduly geeked about this:

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There’s been a trend the last 10 years or so of making normal sports video games Xtreme. Take NFL Blitz. It’s an intense experience that is completely unlike anything that would ever happen on the football field. (At least until Pacman Jones gets reinstated … zing!). And, Ballerz, or whatever the video game that Stephon Marbury put his face on, is equally ridiculous.* Although, the “NBA Jam is beyond awesome” caveat certainly applies across the board; everybody loves that game.

*Ed. note: The game is NBA Ballers, and one time freshman year of college I stayed up all night on a Saturday to beat it. I was uncool then; still am now. I’ll let Brinson take us out on this post now.

Of course, as if that wasn’t enough, Jay Busbee at Devil Ball Golf was kind enough to point out that there’s a new dead horse in the stable: Ghetto Golf. Yes. Seriously. It’s apparently been described as “‘Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas meets Tiger Woods ‘09,’” which would presumably be rather attractive to youngsters that might enjoy golf, just not enough to play something as realistic and freaking awesome as Tiger Woods’s popular EA games.

There’s just one major problem: the name. I don’t want to get into a whole “the word ‘ghetto’ is a horrible choice for the name because of all the racial undertones/issues/problems that surround golf” type of thing, because, as Busbee pointed out, there will be puh-lenty of that from other sources. But seriously video game maker people, “ghetto”? Really? Whoever approved this name probably shouldn’t get fired, but there will almost certainly be some answering to do from different protest enthusiasts in society, and well, it might actually be well-reasoned.