It's that time of year. Summer turns into fall, the leaves begin to change color, and the NFL season is upon us! If you're like me, you probably spent most of opening Sunday glued to your TV, while cheering or cursing away at your fantasy team's ups and downs. It's the beginning of a long few months for those of us; getting together for food and drinks while you watch your favorite teams pit against each other on the gridiron. Like the start of any other season, fans will come in with high hopes and sometimes unrealistic expectations, only to see those hopes of making the playoffs dwindle away week after week.

So if the peaks and valleys of the professional football season have taken years of your life like many diehards, chances are you've gotten your hand on a Madden game or two. Even the history of football video games has had these palpable moments that players loved and hated throughout. Back in 2014, the NCAA decided that they weren't going to let publisher EA use the likeness of college players in their games, essentially killing off the franchise. Beyond that, EA themselves own the exclusive rights to use the entirety of the NFL's assets, leaving out what could possibly be dozen of developers that have a great understanding for how the games can be improved exempt from the process.

Football games were at the forefront of a couple of important moments in history. Joe Montana was signed on to be the face of SEGA's Joe Montana football for the Genesis. John Madden is the name plastered on every annual release you see now. While the hits such as NCAA Football 2004 or this year's new story mode Madden NFL Longshot look like a hail Mary coming out of Aaron Rodgers' hand, football games have had their fair share of fumbles. These are the fifteen worst football games that have ever been released across all generations and platforms.

15 A Classic Console, But A Not-So-Classic Game

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Gameplay-wise, Madden 64 actually isn't a bad game. It was the developer's (EA Tiburon) initial transition to rendering a football game is a 3D environment, and mechanically the game is a definite step ahead from its predecessors. The issue that lies with Madden 64's downfall is the lack of the majority of licenses that people may take for granted when playing a modern day Madden. The only license that EA Tiburon was able to snatch up for the game was the ability to use player names in the game. Other than that, they could use neither official team names nor their respective jersey colors. When it came to team names, squads were labeled based on towns they reside in (the New England Patriots were named "Foxboro", as an example). Even though Madden 64 put the series on the right path for EA, it was tough at first when you can't put some of the most famous sporting franchises in the country, and even the world, into your product.

14 Nothing About This Screams Football

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Football has been considered at times a modern day gladiator arena. Eleven men on each side trying to beat each other down in order to give your team the best chance to come out with a win. But what happens when the football field meets the elements of an actual gladiator arena? The answer: nothing good. Besides the obvious objective to run the ball down the field in order to score points for your team, the playing field in Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl is littered with obscurities that have no place in this environment. Skeletons and trees that cause your player to fumble the ball, or the fact that you can hold onto a "concealed weapon" have no place on the gridiron (though what to call this playing field, I have no idea). If you're one of those who has mastered the elements of Jerry Glanville's PigSkin Footbrawl, and can run the scorecard with points, get ready for the introduction to the troll, which is the game's way of implementing a rubberband effect. The idea behind Footbrawl is troublesome, up to the point that the game begins to punish players who've mastered it.

13 A More Modern Try... But Still Bad

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There's an old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". That doesn't work with annualized sports game. The outside audience more often than not may label annual sports games as a simple roster update. There may be a new mode or two, a new perspective taken on online play, or new mechanical tweaks. There's not much time between releases to build these games from the ground up anymore, and that was apparent when Madden 11 came out over seven years ago. When Madden 11 launched, it had many of the common improvements: graphics, physics, and yes, newly updated rosters. The improvements in the core areas of gameplay unfortunately come at the expense of any changes in the game's Franchise and Be An NFL Superstar mode, which are that there are no changes. Lucky for EA, by this point that had the exclusive rights from the NFL, so if you wanted a new football game in 2010, this was your only option.

12 Australia Wasn't Allowed To Play This One

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Blitz: The League could be considered the extreme rules version of the Nintendo 64's Madden 64. The game's developer (Midway Games) no longer owned the license to use professional team and player likeness in their football games. How did they respond? By stripping away the traditional rulebook in favor of a street-style game in the professional setting to attract fans. Think WWE and ECW; simply take away the constrictions of a normal wrestling match, and see what happens. As was a similar issue with Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl, the game's rubber-band AI could wreak havoc on players in the latter stages of a game when they were in the lead. This essentially made the computer nearly impossible to handle. Also, if you were a fan of the series from Australia, then you were double disappointed, as the game was banned in that region of the world due to the depiction of steroids when handling player injuries.

11 There Will Be Casualties

via: kotaku.com

Think Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl, but with referees and undead players. Yes, Mutant Football League is yet another "out of the ordinary" adaptation in the football video game scene. Set in a post-apocalyptic time period, teams are portrayal by the many monsters and creatures we've become familiar with in "end of the world" depictions, be it demons or dragons to name a couple. The playing field is littered with mines and obstacles, but arguable the most absurd features is that each team is allowed one free "referee bribe" per half in which they call a dirty penalty on you. How do you combat that? Oh, just kill the referee, then the replacement ref can hit you with an addition penalty for "ref bashing". Not only that, aside from trying to outscore the opposition, you can win or lose a game by having all of your players on the field die, thus ending the game prematurely. If I'm going to want to play a football game, odds are I'd like to at least see it until the end. That doesn't appear to be the case here.

10 No Customization? That's A Problem

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The early 2000s were a strange time for developers to make games. The next generation of consoles were out in the wild, yet there was little the large install bases of the previous generation that needed to be accommodated for. This led to the visually superior versions of games sometimes having to cut corners by removing key features. This was the case with the PlayStation 2 version of NCAA Football 2002. This marked the last of three NCAA games that released exclusively on PlayStation consoles (succeeding games would released on Nintendo and Xbox consoles shortly after), and the first one on Sony's newest system. With the increased fidelity of the game however, came a few shortcomings. Stripped from last year's game, NCAA Football 2002 had to go without the ability to create your own leagues, tournaments, or schools. Nowadays, every sports game you see has some form of customization options for players, so for this popular feature to be absent is never a good sign for anybody.

9 Bad Marketing Leads To Trouble

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NFL Head Coach 09 may not necessarily ruin the sport of football, but it was an important part of a strange release schedule for the Madden franchise at the time. By this point, EA had the exclusive rights to use NFL assets in their games for a few years now, and took a gamble in 2006 with NFL Head Coach. For the upcoming sequel to the spin off series, NFL Head Coach 09 could only be purchased if people originally bought the 20th anniversary special edition of Madden NFL 09. Despite saying that they wouldn't be able to sell the add-on separately, citing the need to list the game at "full price", EA announced just weeks after its release that NFL Head Coach 09 would be available as a standalone game just a month after Madden NFL 2009 launched. By all accounts, the game isn't terrible, but the fact that EA lied and left a lot of fans burned by the series didn't sit well with them.

8 A Broken Game

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While Midway Game's Blitz games made a name for themselves in the PlayStation 1 days, the company decided to take a risk at an Arena Football game as well. Being that Arena Football is confined to a smaller field with less players on it an one time, players have more opportunities to show off their athletic skills, while having the crowd right up in the action to amplify the experience. But to take the idea of Arena Football and translate that into Kurt Warner's Arena Football Unleashed didn't do the trick for Midway Games. The confined football version of their previous Blitz 2000 game resulted in a load of poor AI computer responses, with players running in random directions and quarterbacks throwing the ball exclusively within a couple seconds of snapping the ball nearly every time. Plus, graphically the game actually looks worse than the preceding Blitz game, even though Arena Football Unleashed was released after it.

7 Can't We Just Focus On Football?

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It can be very touch and go when it comes to issues that NFL players have outside the game of football. You want to talk about what their situation may mean for their careers while trying to understand what it will mean for them as a person (jail time, suspensions, probations, etc.). With Blitz II: The League, the gloves were completely off in this issue of media sensitivity, alluding to past and not-so-far removed current issues at the time in the sport of football. Some of the issues that Blitz II: The League alludes to are the New England Patriots "Spygate" scandal, and even the inclusion of former Eagles quarterback Mike Vick's illegal dog fighting ring that led to his incarceration. There's a time and place to discuss issues in sports and the athletes who partake in them. Doing it as a parody in a video game is not one of them.

6 Why Aren't All Versions The Same?

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In the early year's of EA's exclusive rights of all NFL assets in their game, the company began to spread their wings a little bit too far. Releasing Madden NFL 2007 for consoles was a mainstay, but the inclusion of handheld and mobile platforms showed the inferiority of a football game on a smaller system. The game's Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS ports were considered "average" at best, while the 2D mobile versions of the game was a "let-down" according to IGN. Also with this being the first Madden game that was being built for both the current and last generation of consoles, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game didn't allow players to change their created characters' appearances or jersey numbers, along with a number of other features missing in the same generation releases of the game.

5 This Version Is No Bueno

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What do you get when Sony tries to promote there newest handheld with a flagship sports game? The answer is a corner-cut, feature lacking port. Madden NFL 2013's PlayStation Vita version was surely going to be a step down in graphical fidelity from the PS3 and Xbox 360 game releases. But the number of missing features within the game make it one of the worst adaptations of the franchise, such as no online for franchise mode. With the Vita being released earlier in the year, there was a clear emphasis to try and make the most of the systems motion controls and touch screen capabilities. As we've seen in the years following the Vita's launch, the gimmick of touch controls are tough to adapt for established franchises, and Madden NFL 13 was one of its first victims.

4 The Final Moments Of A Beloved Series

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What causes NCAA Football 2014 to make its way onto this list is that it marked what seems like the end of the days for college football video games. NCAA Football 2014 is the last entry in the franchise to release, due to the NCAA and EA not being able to come to an agreement on using the likeness of amateur football players for their marketing campaigns and debates on paying royalties. It marked the end of a twenty-year run of the Fall Saturday fiasco that was gamers being able to live through the chaos of playing as their favorite college football team, and it's one that still stings after nearly four years of absence.

3 Bringing In A Big Name Didn't Help

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Back when everyone and their mother could make a football game at their own discretion, ESPN NFL Primetime 2K2 was developed in the hopes that there would be yet another company that could contender with the likes of EA Tiburon. Konami tried as best they could, bringing in the ESPN license to try and make players feel like they were a part of a game being played on the big screen rather, with scoreboard and ticker layouts familiar to what you'd see any given Sunday. It's too bad though, because everything else about the game is abysmal. The game comes with only three game modes: exhibition, franchise, and practice mode. That's right, if you wanted to play a full season with your favorite NFL team, you'd have to deal with the ins and outs of managing draft picks, trades, and player scouting. The game's AI was rough at best as well. Tackles were too easy to make, and receivers' routes wouldn't cooperative with the quarterbacks throwing path if their routes were interrupted. Say what you want about the EA Madden series, but just remember that almost everything else that was released was, at best, mediocre.

2 A Misstep

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A lot of Backbreaker's contrasting features in respect to Madden are what made people take notice back in 2010, for both the right and wrong reasons. A lot of what makes (most) Madden NFL games great is the pre-snap play layout that lets you see what and where you're planning your players to go. It's that simple camera design that many people take for granted, letting you see the entirety of the playing field before you execute your next play. Backbreaker took a gamble in this department by bringing the camera in much closer to try and bring players into the action. The problem is that controlling the game becomes extremely cumbersome, and created difficulties for a lot of people. Oh, and if you're not a fan of P.O.D., get ready to be sick of hearing their song Boom during both kickoffs to start each half of every single game.

1 We Just Want Control

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I realize I may be beating a dead horse here, but to say that EA's exclusive NFL rights tarnished the rest of the playing field of developers' aspirations for a football game would be an understatement. What's worse is that when 2K Sports tried to revive their football series back in 2007, reviewers panned the game due to reasons related to the licensing restrictions. All-Pro Football 2008 has been touted as a pretty decent game by most, but the lack of any sort of franchise mode was a huge let down for fans. Games are all about control, whether we're talking about the plays that you get to choose when you're down by five with a minute left in the game, or what players you may want to add to your favorite team in franchise mode. EA took all the control away from everyone else, and they suffered because of it. 2k Sports All-Pro Football 2008 is just another one of those victims.