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Colin Moriarty refers to the NFL and American Football as the "greatest tactical RPG of all time", and I think he's probably right about it. It's quite a hard sport to get into it, but once you do, it's a lot of fun to play (as a video game at least) and fun to watch. The Madden games of today unfortunately suffer from FIFA syndrome though, where EA is just using them as a vehicle for people to micro-transact and spend money. The old games from this gen and the PS360 gen are really fun though. 

Madden 2002 #1 For a reason NA release: 18th November 2001 EU release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: EA Tiburon Publisher: EA Sports NGC Magazine Score: 75% Mods Used: None While Madden 2002 also came out on Nintendo 64, that was just the previous game with some stat changes. The GameCube got the full fledged sequel, which feels like a much different product, even starting off with personality with its own rap song. Knowing nothing about American Football, I was expecting to mess around with it a bit and then move on, but this one features a training mode. While the training mode doesn’t explain the complete basics (so I don’t fully understand when the ball passes to the other team, for example), it does explain each play in detail, with markers on the map, plays it out for you then gives you a bunch of tries to test it out. Due to this mode, I was finally able to figure out how American Football plays, how to look for passes and how to create gaps for running through. Although I did get told off for scoring a touchdown in one of the tutorials because I passed to someone that wasn’t the intended target, but luckily that doesn’t apply in proper matches. With the simple to use create-a-team, it was then time for the Welsh team Llaneron Sheep to try their hand at joining the NFL. Thanks to their training and some handy assist functions (branded under EAsy play), they were able to perform quite well. Gameplay felt very smooth and with the button prompts for passing giving you four players you can pass to, it felt like I was fully in control of the situation. For someone that doesn’t know much about the sport, Madden 2002 actually made me appreciate, and realise that it’s not a load of people flailing towards each other, but more like a turn-based tactic game where you have to plan your move while also anticipating what your opponent is going to do. I actually quite enjoyed it. Fun Remake or remaster? I’m not sure what the current games are like. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Madden NFL 2002.

You watched too much early Simpsons. It's ingrained in you. 

I quite like the art style of Marathon but that's about it. It being a game that players will need to pay for, having a battle pass and launching with only a few maps seem to be sticking points for a lot of gamers. I've no interest in buying it but I'm intrigued to see how well it will do.

I just watched through this documentary about Wrestlemania IX, which something I never thought they would do as it's not known as a particular great PPV but it was one of the first times they made Wrestlemania a true Spectacle with a redesigned set as well as it taking place in Las Vegas, and it turned out to be the first time they recorded footage backstage while the event was being set up and running. I absolutely loved it, as they had a lot of behind the scenes footage from a time when they absolutely never did that kind of thing, to protect the gimmicks of the characters, but you get to see them all hanging out, laughing and chatting with each other as well as crazy stuff like all the animals they had backstage for the various entrances as well as you get to see the wrestlers in modern day look back at the footage and reminisce and talk about what was happening at that time. It was very interesting to hear the stuff going on backstage at the time. For example, Lex Lugar says he thinks thinks Mr Perfect had "too much caffeine that day" (lol) as once he got in the ring he uncharacteristically had no idea what to do in the match and kept asking Lex "what are we doing". Undertaker talks about how difficult it was to wrestle Giant Gonzalaz and they even talk about Gonzalaz ring attire and what it was originally supposed to look like compared to how it looked once they made the suit. And of course the controversy over the ending of Bret being cheated out of the the title by Yokuzuna only for Hulk Hogan to get a match and win it minutes later. Even as a Hulk Hogan fan I wasn't 100% on board with that at the time. Its worth watching if you are nostalgic for that era. Sadly its not available to watch officially outside US, but its out there.