Introduction

Publisher: Microsoft
NFL Fever 2000 official page: http://www.microsoft.com/sports/fever2000/
Expected Release: August 1999

Summer Time Blues

Well here we are languishing in the midst of another long hot summer. In terms of sports in America, summer is a real dry season. Once the pro basketball season is over, what's there to watch on TV? Baseball? Scratch, spit, stare, foul tip, repeat. Nope that's not for me. Major League Soccer? Sorry, 0-0 ties decided by penalty kicks are not my bag. WNBA? I don't mean to offend any lady athletes who might be reading this (some of the ladies playing at UC Berkeley's rec facility can shoot the lights out), but the fact remains; who the heck can get excited about watching basketball with no highlight reel dunks? There aren't even any in-your-face, air mail special, blocked shots in the WNBA. These are reasons why I put Utah Jazz games in the same category as WNBA games: snore fests that should be regulated by the government as barbiturates.

Darnell Walker gets torched

Take that, Touchdown Tommy

I digress - the point is that it takes pro football training camp to finally alleviate summer's dearth of exciting spectator sports. Yes that's right, American football: bone crunching hits, crowd-pleasing bombs, and hard nosed running. To get your juices flowing for this, Microsoft will soon be shipping their new football title, NFL Fever 2000. NFL Fever is endorsed by the NFL and its players, so you can look forward to real stars and their relative stats in this game.

Get rid of the ball!

Welcome to the NFL, Akili!

MS takes on EA

Now that's quite a fight. Exactly who is David and who is Goliath in this equation? Maybe it's more like a clash of the titans. No one doubts EA's complete and abject dominance in the sports market. Anyone who has taken them head on has been crushed foolishly. Witness the debacle that was the last installment of Sierra's once proud Front Page Football series. Now the Microsoft empire is set to take on the reigning kings of the digital sports world. Do the boys from Redmond have what it takes?