EA Orlando shipped Madden NFL 09 in 2008 with Brett Favre on the cover, a quarterback who had already retired once that offseason and would unretire about a week before the game reached stores. That timing is the most interesting thing about the nineteenth annual installment in the Madden NFL franchise. The football underneath it is solid, familiar, and largely unchanged. Eighteen years on, the cover story still outlasts the game.
Trailer, via Universal “UG” Gaming.
The Numbers Behind Madden NFL 09
- Release: 2008
- Developer: EA Orlando
- Publisher: EA Sports
- Reviewed on: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
- Also released for: Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Xbox, mobile phones
- Genre: Simulator, sport
- Modes: Single player, multiplayer, split screen
- Perspective: Third person
- Cover athlete: Brett Favre
- Critic aggregate: 7.6/10 (IGDB, 8 outlets)
- Not released for: PC
Brett Favre Retired, Then Didn’t
The cover story is the story. When EA Sports announced Madden NFL 09, Favre had retired as a member of the Green Bay Packers. That made him the first non-active player to appear as a Madden cover athlete. Then he came out of retirement and was traded to the New York Jets, about a week before the game shipped.
That sequence is not a marketing beat. It is a real oddity in the franchise’s history. A Madden cover trades on the season ahead, and the Favre cover promised a farewell that never came. By the time players opened the box, the man on the front was wearing a different uniform in real life.
EA Orlando could not have planned it better or worse, depending on how you feel about the Jets.
The Original Xbox Got One Last Game
Madden NFL 09 holds two distinctions that matter more than any single feature. It was the last video game released for the original Xbox. It was also the last Madden game to come out for the Nintendo DS.
Both facts say more about the hardware shift of 2008 than about the game itself. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were the machines that counted, and Madden NFL 09 was built for them. The older platforms still got a version.
That is not a knock. It is a description of where the series stood. Madden had become an annual institution, and an institution ships to every platform it can reach.
EA Sports Skipped Windows
EA Sports did not release Madden NFL 09 for PC. The company said it was “retooling the PC version” after skipping 09.
PC users were ignored for most of the following decade. No Windows version of Madden NFL 10 through Madden NFL 18 came out. In June 2008, EA Sports announced that for the year 2009, the Madden NFL, NCAA Football, NASCAR, NHL, NBA Live, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour series would not be shipped for Microsoft Windows.
Read that list again. It was not a Madden decision. It was a PC decision across the whole sports portfolio. The “retooling” language did not match what followed, and what followed lasted years.
For a football fan on Windows in 2008, Madden NFL 09 simply did not exist. That is the sharpest fact in this game’s story, and it has nothing to do with what happens on the field.
All-Play Was the Wii Build
The Wii version carried its own title: Madden NFL 09 All-Play. It launched under EA Sports’ new All-Play brand, which was exclusive to that platform. The Wii build took a slightly different approach to the game and used the console’s motion controls.
This is the one version of Madden NFL 09 that tried something. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were the standard build. The Wii version went its own way with a different control scheme.
What matters is that EA Sports treated the Wii as its own product rather than a port. In 2008, that was not the default. It was a choice.
What the Football Does
Madden NFL 09 is a simulator. You play and manage football matches between real NFL teams, using the latest player lineups of 2009. The perspective is third person. The modes are single player, multiplayer, and split screen. The themes are non-fiction.
That list is accurate and it is also the whole review. Madden NFL 09 does what the series does. It puts real teams on a field, gives you the controls, and lets you run a season.
The game is not trying to surprise anyone. It is trying to be the current Madden, and it succeeds at that. Split screen multiplayer is there for anyone who wants to play football against a person in the same room.
A 7.6 Is a Good Game With No Argument
Madden NFL 09 lands at 7.6 out of 10. That matches the IGDB critic aggregate across eight outlets, and it is the right number for what this game is.
A 7.6 is a good game with no argument behind it. Madden NFL 09 is competent, current, and completely unsurprising. The Favre cover is a story. The original Xbox farewell is a footnote. The PC omission is a genuine loss for a chunk of the audience. The Wii All-Play experiment is the only place the game takes a risk.
None of that changes the football, which is fine. Fine is the correct word.
The Favre cover is the part worth watching, because it is the only piece of this release that time has made stranger. Everything else is a platform list and a score. Madden NFL 09 shipped to eight systems and skipped one, and the one it skipped spent years waiting. The aggregate says the game was good. The record says the game was also the end of something, twice.
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