You may or may not have noticed this whilst reading 61 Frames Per Second, but we don’t talk about simulators that often. Personally, and you’ll most likely find this true of the rest of the team, I don’t play Gran Turismo or Microsoft Flight Simulator. If I’m playing a videogame, I want my cars going too fast and defying physics a la Burnout. If I’m playing a videogame, I want my airplane to be shooting many other planes while looking awesome and defying physics a la After Burner. The same goes for sports. Tecmo Bowl, NHLPA ’93, and Hot Shots Golf are fun because they don’t provide authentic football, hockey, and golf experiences. This is why I’ve always been somewhat mystified by the Madden franchise’s massive popularity; in its modern incarnations, it is a brutally realistic simulation of football. In order to play Madden well – not competition level, but actually using the game’s mechanics properly – you need to have both a deep understanding of the actual sport’s rules as well as the game’s incredibly complex controls. Football rules, sure, but how did a game so hard become so damn popular?
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