Pre-owned Madden football games are everywhere.  When you have a series that has been churning out a title every year for twenty years, there are a lot of discarded games to be peddled at flea markets or garage sales.  With a massive supply built across almost every console for gaming generations now, the previous editions of Madden football have an almost nonexistent resell value.  Outside of this mass production, there is one title that is not common and is one of a number of sports titles that hold value for collectors.  John Madden Football Championship Edition was a rental store exclusive released in 1992 for the Sega Genesis and it is the Holy Grail of Madden Football games.




John Madden Football Championship Edition has the same game engine and cover design as John Madden Football '93.  The big difference here is the gold color on the cover art, as opposed to the standard blue of the '93 version. The gold really jumps out next to other games and I really like the choice given the exclusivity of only being a rental game and the subject matter itself.  Championship Edition boasted an increased difficulty from the CPU and was comprised of 38 classic teams from 1966 to 1991.  The game also introduced the first All-Madden teams, with one made up of all-time players and the other of honored 1992 players.  You can play your standard exhibition games and also set up an all-time tournament, which pits 16 teams in a playoff bracket, similar to NHL Hockey or earlier Madden titles.


The earlier John Madden titles had a number of memorable staples in design and game play.  Before each play on offense you made choices like Hands, Normal, Big or Fast to dictate the package of players you'd run the play with.  Pretty cool, but they did away with this extra pre-snap step soon thereafter.  With passing, it's hard to forget passing windows, where you could see your A, B, and C options, and they would raise their hands like they were open, only for you to dart a pass in and have the CPU intercept it.  Thankfully, by Madden '95, this was long gone and we had the blueprint for what we still work with today, just with many more buttons and therefore more receiving options.  The playbook is bare bones compared to later 16-bit Madden games but, given the time period, one can hardly complain.  You also have the old in-game scoreboard, where you get score updates and highlights for other games going on.  Sure, they are completely random (Come on, the '85 Pats blowing out the '85 Bears?), but this was one of the first TV-style presentation examples in a sports game.  Sadly the infamous Madden ambulance does not make its way over from the original Madden games.


The biggest challenges in collecting a John Madden Football Championship Edition game are the condition of the cart and finding a complete copy.  You know how you just hate finding old Blockbuster stickers on the back of your games?  Almost every John Madden Football Championship Edition had stickers on it by default.  Because of this, your mileage is really going to vary copy-to-copy when it comes to condition.  Not surprisingly, there was little anticipated demand around the future rarity of the title back in the '90s.  When video stores pushed out their Genesis and Super Nintendo games to make way for PlayStation and Saturn titles, the Championship Edition was lumped in with the rest of the lot.  My copy still has a small sticker and bar-code under the front plastic that indicates the game once sold for $2.95!  A recent check of completed sales has Championship Edition coming in around $25 for a loose cart and anywhere from $75-$100 for a completed copy that has the instructions.


I have only seen John Madden Football Championship Edition in the wild once, and my purchase resulted from flipping through a large pile of Genesis carts at a flea market.  There was no gold spine to lead the way on this hunt, but I quickly recognized the label and since the game was lumped in with a number of other old sports games, the transaction was quick and reasonable at $2.  The seller didn't know what he had, which can be typical given the one-off nature of the game.  I did strike gold when I stumbled across a seller online that noted John Madden Football Championship Edition - Cart okay, Case in good shape - $7.  The game itself saw a nasty break-up with whatever sticker once occupied it, but the case is an 8.5 out of 10.  Sometimes you have to piece together a set from different sales so my flea market find of the cart was a nice swap.  Despite not being perfect or complete, John Madden Football Championship Edition stands out around its peers on my Sega Genesis shelf.  Next time you're out digging through old Genesis games at the swap meet, make sure you do a double-take if you see the gold John Madden title.  You've found the rarest and most valuable Madden game.

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