The world's premier resource for SEGA's arcade and console hardware legacy!
As the head of the development team that made both Montana and the original Genesis version of John Madden Football, Knox was at the center of the internal controversy regarding both games, and he had some great information to share regarding how each was made. There’s even some previously unknown backstory to how the original Genesis Madden came about. It’s a must-read for any football fan, and you can get it all in our full interview.
When you think video game football, the first name to come to mind is Madden, and while it’s definitely the biggest name, its domination wasn’t always so clean cut. Almost a half a year before the console debut of EA’s never-ending franchise, another football series was born – by the hands of the same creators! Joe Montana Football was Sega’s first foray into the big leagues of digital football, and it almost died on the drawing board. In fact, there were at one time as many as three different teams working on it at one time, and it was Trip Hawkins’ company that finally saved the day.
In 1991, Sega shocked Genesis owners with Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football. Aside from changing the game’s vertical perspective to a horizontal one (an internal team had been working on one for the original, but it was scrapped in favor of EA’s vertical game), Sega also added play-by-play commentary. Though it might seem cheesy today, this was unheard for consoles at the time, and it marked an important step in bringing realism to sports games.