3/5 ★ – kariyanine's review of Madden NFL '94.

John Madden Football is one of the longest running, most storied franchises in all of gaming. A lot of its success stems from the 16-bit era where it established dominance in the American football marketplace as the best arcade-sim going. Madden NFL '94 is the first game in the franchise to sport the NFL license. But much like the original EA Sports NHL Hockey effort, Madden '94 wasn't perfect. In fact, despite the license, it was a step back in just about every important factor from its previous two iterations. First on the issue list is that there are no licensed players. The NFLPA had not signed on to the games yet and instead of Dan Marino calling the plays for the Miami Dolphins, we get generic numbered #13. On the surface this seems like a little thing, I mean, we all know #13 on the Dolphins was Marino and this QB is rated appropriately but it's not the same. And this bleeds in to a lot of the rest of the game. The presentation is mediocre, with a weird digitized model of Madden appearing before and after games as well as at halftime. He offers vague insights in to the team, like referring to Miami's strength at the quarterback position, but it's never more than just one or two lines that don't really help scout the teams. Add on to that the the fields are dull, with no decoration to make them stand out as your home or away field and you might as well just be playing football on a field anywhere. Compounding the presentation deficiencies, for whatever reason, passing is super inaccurate and inconsistent with accurate QBs like Marino, Elway, Montana, etc... missing wide open receivers by 10s of yards. And running is overly effective. The AI is super dumb and I had little trouble running a perfect season by just running the ball and draining the clock. It's a boring but effective tactic. Less boring is playing against other humans. Despite it's passing issues and overly strong running game, playing the game against another live person is a blast like each of the previous Madden's. The addition of the season mode, that can be played by multiple people, make this fun and serviceable. It is however the weakest in the series since the first John Madden Football. Played on: Genesis