I do not know about you, but I love college basketball’s March Madness, so why not relive those moments with March Madness 99? For anyone who has not heard of it, this is EA’s sequel to the very popular March Madness 98, which I own and love. The new one piles on the options: a three-point shoot-out, Season, Tourney and a Dynasty mode, plus a Momentum Meter that rises as you score or steal the ball, letting you pull off tougher shots when you are hot. The stats run deep too, with a top 25 and RPI rankings.
Dynasty is the best thing here. You play a whole season plus the tournament, then your players graduate and grow in their stats, and you draft new kids to your program. The one catch is that a bad team struggles to recruit, since most prospects will decline, though you can always just create your own players. Better still, there is no end date: you can run a Dynasty forever. The game is also nearly impossible to master, in the sense that no matter how long you play you will still lose matches, which keeps it honest. The downsides? The load times are long thanks to all those stats, and a single Dynasty save eats 16 blocks of memory.
The controls are great and easy to pick up, helped by analog support, and multiplayer is simple and refreshingly clear about which player you are controlling, even if your characters occasionally look like they are floating. The graphics are strong, with nicely done arenas and players, marred only by the odd jumpy or bouncing screen movement. The sound is college band music and a DJ mix, which is great at first but wears thin the longer you play.
March Madness 99 is a great game with great gameplay and graphics, and the endless Dynasty mode means it never gets boring. For college hoops fans, it is a must-buy.
A PlayStation and the disc, plus a memory card with room (Dynasty saves use 16 blocks).
