Bruenor
May 2nd, 2005, 12:33 pm
From Midway's perspective, it wasn't EA that forced their hand, but the NFL.
"It's been a challenge to innovate on Blitz, and we've always wanted to...add more emotion, add some of the bigger hits, add some drama on field, add a lot to what Blitz is defined by," says Executive Producer Mike Bilder. "And the NFL continued to kind of clench the fist on us and restrict us from innovating -- even in areas that we had already done back in the original arcade [version]. There were moves and there were gameplay mechanics in the original Blitz '97 arcade that we wanted to go back to doing, and they wouldn't let us do them this time around."
Bilder notes that the EA deal was as much of a surprise to the development team at Midway Chicago as everyone else, saying "the office was jumping around" when the announcement came out. "We had already made the decision to drop the license, so it was a surprise to us," he continues. "We didn't know it was coming. Having worked with the NFL for awhile, there may have been signs of that, but nothing was ever said or stated or anything. For our positioning, we knew before we set out to make this game that we didn't want it to be licensed, so when it did happen we realized that it was a unique opportunity for us, because we could potentially be the only competition to the EA/NFL juggernaut of Madden."
http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3140033
"It's been a challenge to innovate on Blitz, and we've always wanted to...add more emotion, add some of the bigger hits, add some drama on field, add a lot to what Blitz is defined by," says Executive Producer Mike Bilder. "And the NFL continued to kind of clench the fist on us and restrict us from innovating -- even in areas that we had already done back in the original arcade [version]. There were moves and there were gameplay mechanics in the original Blitz '97 arcade that we wanted to go back to doing, and they wouldn't let us do them this time around."
Bilder notes that the EA deal was as much of a surprise to the development team at Midway Chicago as everyone else, saying "the office was jumping around" when the announcement came out. "We had already made the decision to drop the license, so it was a surprise to us," he continues. "We didn't know it was coming. Having worked with the NFL for awhile, there may have been signs of that, but nothing was ever said or stated or anything. For our positioning, we knew before we set out to make this game that we didn't want it to be licensed, so when it did happen we realized that it was a unique opportunity for us, because we could potentially be the only competition to the EA/NFL juggernaut of Madden."
http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3140033