Madden 2005 looks great but just imagine all the features that could be incorporated in Madden 2006.(Source: EA Sports)

The 2005 release of Madden is the 15th edition in this long-running video game franchise's life and like a fine bottle of wine, Madden gets better with age; the video game version that is. The announcer version Madden is drifting further off tangent with each passing year whether it be pointing out how soiled a player's pants are from sweat to throwing in an even steadier stream of "Boom's" when he's at a loss to say anything else. Regardless it doesn't diminish from the quality of these games. The Collector's Edition of Madden 2005 has a few extra bells and whistles than the regular release, perhaps none better then a little trip down memory lane with three versions of various Madden iterations over the years with the Vintage Madden, Classic Madden and Retro Madden. Playing these older versions brings me back to a simpler time of video games and sports. This was back when the football player's were identified by only their numbers. Now you manage a player's morale and if they aren't happy with their playing time or opportunities then they'll let you know about it and demand a trade. Madden has really followed the evolution of sports to a tee but why stop there? Maybe Madden 2006 should give you the option to hire defence lawyers in the off-season or hire medical trainers that supply "Ricky Williams Juice" to help your players pass those pesky NFL drug tests. Following on this theme there are plenty of new features they could add to the off-season and more specifically draft selection portion of the game's Franchise mode.

The game's franchise mode has been bolstered by the additions of such things as: qualifying restricted free agents including the ability to sign away other team's restricted free agents provided you're willing to cough up the compensatory picks, designating a player with the "Franchise tag" and expanded draft features (ticker, draft day trades, grades). It's the draft where the game could have gotten a little more realistic. How great would it be to pick out suits for your draft picks? And no NFL draft is complete without the obligatory "Big Mama" who sobs uncontrollably after hearing that her baby boy has just been drafted. Of course after you've signed all your draft picks there needs to be a montage where your top draft pick pulls into camp in his new Escalade sitting on dubs with the rims that keep spinning after he's stopped.

A lot can also be incorporated in today's games from sports video games of the past. For instance Madden 92 ingeniously built in the feature of having an ambulance drive onto the playing field in order to attend to an injured player and urgency certainly took over the safety of the other players as the ambulance often ran over the other players in order to get to the injured one. Perhaps an ambulance is a little morbid but one of those carts with flatbed on the back would work. The earlier versions of Madden also had the ability to tackle players and injure them after the whistle. Of course you were assessed a 15-yard penalty but if meant taking out your opponent's top player then it seemed worth it.

	The ability to incite a bench clearing brawl made Bases Loaded an instant classic.

Really when you think back to the classic sports video games all of them had that same redeeming quality; the ability to seriously injure or incite a brawl. NHL 93's violence and ability to injure players was made famous in "Swingers" when Trent made Wayne Gretzky's head bleed with a big open ice hit. Blades of Steel superceded EA's NHL series and drew instant fame with its quick punch-up sequences; best of all, only the guy who lost the fight was assessed a penalty. My only knock on fighting in hockey games is how random fights occur. Ideally a fight should start for the same reasons the real ones do; a star player gets belted by the opposition and the team rallies around their star by settling the score with a quick dropping of the gloves. But arguably the best game for starting riots was Bases Loaded for Nintendo. There was a well-known feature in the game that if you beaned the opposition's star player three straight times, he would charge the mound and pound your starting pitcher relentlessly.

Madden has become a cultural phenomenon selling over 35 million copies in North America over the past 15 years. Heck, Madden's closest competition ESPN 2K5 released their game weeks ahead of Madden's release date and introduced the game at the unreal low price of $29.95, an obvious tip of the cap to Madden and their respect for them as the undisputed leader in the football games market. NFL players are often the first to get the game and play it endlessly on the road. They are also the first to let Madden and his staff know if they feel their video game persona has been created with too many shortcomings. The music business has latched onto the success of the franchise and started the collaborative effort of EA Trax, which exposes gamers to the latest in music and new artists. It's a huge breakthrough for an artist to get on the game's soundtrack because with the frequency in which gamers play, an artist will get more spins of their song on the video game then they ever would through the traditional channels of radio and music videos.

On a final note, it's fitting that EA chose Ray Lewis to grace the cover because with the revamped A.I. controlled defense it makes for a true challenge. Like the current state of the NFL it seems like the only way to be successful against these improved defenses is to rely on short passing influenced West Coast offenses. Gone are the days where you could lineup in 'Shotgun" formation on each play and bomb the ball downfield.