shpankey
not an idiot
Here is how I would list them.
01.) 1995 - this year is EA's greatest year IMO (by a small margin over 94). Leading the way they had the insanely awesome newly designed NBA Live 95 on the PC, which was the first sports game they ever went online with (though you had to organize it manually, but they had an EA database where you could leave your # and best time to call etc. for others to call you). We used to play against all kinds of people here in Tulsa and got quite a little group of hardcore players together who played each other regularly. Sadly, there was a flaw in the game that allowed any user to go into his control options and set his shooting to "CPU" which had the CPU release the ball for you with perfect timing, which in that year made you make almost everything. The bad part was is you could never tell by looking at the options if they had enabled it, which sometimes they would do in the last minute or whatever to help them win.
Anyhow, 1995 was incredible for me. Partly because that's the year I switched to the PC platform and was experiencing all the EA games that were available on it and was shocked at the huge upgrade the PC brought.
02.) 1994 - this was very close. I would put 94 ahead of 95 in pure gameplay. NHL 94 is considered to be the best ever by so many, and for good reason. The gameplay was simple yet had an amazing amount of timing and skill to it. Something new games can learn from. This is what us old timers refer to as "game play".
Following this was the absolutely breathtaking Madden 94, which had some of the fastest Madden gameplay ever. In fact it was the fastest ever. Also, the blocking you could do manually is still to this day the best in a Madden game ever. I remember taking Jay Novacek the TE for the Boys and blocking mother fuckers out of fucking bounds! :lol We loved to co-op in 94 for this reason... because the blocking was actually fun!
03.) 2000 - one of the best all around years. Granted, it didn't have one single title that made its own "best ever" but every single game they made was good and the consistency of this year has still yet to be matched, without a single title sucking.
04.) 2004 - this makes it with a bunch of solid titles, and single handedly Fight Night 2004 propels it onto the list, as it's the best boxing game ever.
05.) 1998 - this is the year that NHL 98 on the PC had the insanely awesome fighting engine. Also, I think it was this year that Baseball was good (Triple Play). One of the few years it was good. I remember when you hit a home run it was wicked how they paused and you watched the ball go out from basically the home plates perspective. It also made a loud BAM sound that scared the shit out of you. :lol
This was the year that Madden was down though and one of only 2 years in history where there was a better football game out. In this case it was Gameday 98 on the PC and the other only year was in 2001 when NFL 2k1 on the Dreamcast stomped on Madden 2001 (the only year it beat Madden mind you). How Sega fucked up both the amazing NFL and NBA 2k1 games down the line in later editions still blows my fricken mind. They really had something in 2k1.
01.) 1995 - this year is EA's greatest year IMO (by a small margin over 94). Leading the way they had the insanely awesome newly designed NBA Live 95 on the PC, which was the first sports game they ever went online with (though you had to organize it manually, but they had an EA database where you could leave your # and best time to call etc. for others to call you). We used to play against all kinds of people here in Tulsa and got quite a little group of hardcore players together who played each other regularly. Sadly, there was a flaw in the game that allowed any user to go into his control options and set his shooting to "CPU" which had the CPU release the ball for you with perfect timing, which in that year made you make almost everything. The bad part was is you could never tell by looking at the options if they had enabled it, which sometimes they would do in the last minute or whatever to help them win.
Anyhow, 1995 was incredible for me. Partly because that's the year I switched to the PC platform and was experiencing all the EA games that were available on it and was shocked at the huge upgrade the PC brought.
02.) 1994 - this was very close. I would put 94 ahead of 95 in pure gameplay. NHL 94 is considered to be the best ever by so many, and for good reason. The gameplay was simple yet had an amazing amount of timing and skill to it. Something new games can learn from. This is what us old timers refer to as "game play".
Following this was the absolutely breathtaking Madden 94, which had some of the fastest Madden gameplay ever. In fact it was the fastest ever. Also, the blocking you could do manually is still to this day the best in a Madden game ever. I remember taking Jay Novacek the TE for the Boys and blocking mother fuckers out of fucking bounds! :lol We loved to co-op in 94 for this reason... because the blocking was actually fun!
03.) 2000 - one of the best all around years. Granted, it didn't have one single title that made its own "best ever" but every single game they made was good and the consistency of this year has still yet to be matched, without a single title sucking.
04.) 2004 - this makes it with a bunch of solid titles, and single handedly Fight Night 2004 propels it onto the list, as it's the best boxing game ever.
05.) 1998 - this is the year that NHL 98 on the PC had the insanely awesome fighting engine. Also, I think it was this year that Baseball was good (Triple Play). One of the few years it was good. I remember when you hit a home run it was wicked how they paused and you watched the ball go out from basically the home plates perspective. It also made a loud BAM sound that scared the shit out of you. :lol
This was the year that Madden was down though and one of only 2 years in history where there was a better football game out. In this case it was Gameday 98 on the PC and the other only year was in 2001 when NFL 2k1 on the Dreamcast stomped on Madden 2001 (the only year it beat Madden mind you). How Sega fucked up both the amazing NFL and NBA 2k1 games down the line in later editions still blows my fricken mind. They really had something in 2k1.