Madden NFL 98 — stories left

Kraig Kujawa of Electronic Gaming Monthly called it "the smartest football game I've played", and Gary Cutlack of Sega Saturn Magazine said the new AI "Makes the game a lot harder, but a well earned victory is much more satisfying, don't you think?

GameSpot countered that "Although some might scoff at Madden 98 not using polygons like its chief competitor GameDay 98, these player sprites are well animated and detailed.", and pointed out several impressive graphical features accomplished with the sprites.

While most reviewers did not compare versions, GamePro noted that the Saturn version has greater pixelation than the PlayStation version and uses an antiquated "gliding sprites" method of animation.

They also named Madden NFL 98 a runner-up for "Saturn Game of the Year" (behind Saturn Bomberman) and "Sports Game of the Year" (behind International Superstar Soccer 64) at their 1997 Editors' Choice Awards.

Madden NFL 98 was the last installment of the Madden series to be released for the SNES, Genesis, and Saturn, as well as the last to utilize 2D sprites on 3D playing fields.

Despite this, the Saturn's much smaller library of football games (Sega's only answer to Sony's NFL GameDay was the critically panned NFL '97) left critics with few reservations about declaring the Saturn version of Madden NFL '98 the best football game on the system.

However, other aspects of the game were widely praised as well, particularly the lively audio commentary, realistic animations, and wide selection of options.

Despite this, the Saturn's much smaller library of football games (Sega's only answer to Sony's NFL GameDay was the critically panned NFL '97) left critics with few reservations about declaring the Saturn version of Madden NFL '98 the best football game on the system.

Electronic Arts chief operating officer John Riccitiello argued that while this was an impressive achievement for Sony, it was not a major defeat for EA Sports: "Do I wish we had sold another 100,000 copies of Madden on PlayStation so we would have sold more in the quarter than [Sony] did?

But I am happy that even though we were outspent seven or eight to one on television, we sold within 15% in units and 10% of dollars to Sony.

A version for the Panasonic M2 was in the works, but never released due to the system's cancellation.

A version for the Game.com was also planned, with Tiger Electronics as the developer, though Tiger producer Allen Richardson admitted that the game would be difficult to do on the Game.com due to the 16 megabit size of the cartridges.

In the same issue in which they reviewed the Saturn version (and just a month after reviewing the PlayStation version), Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked the Saturn and PlayStation versions as the 19th best console video game of all time, saying that the AI was the best of any football game yet.