Yes, youths of the audience, the Madden franchise was once not the only officially-licensed NFL video game you could buy every year. There was the NFL2K series, which I did mention last year in the Week 9 thread when discussing the Sega Dreamcast. There were also the NFL GameDay titles on PlayStation systems as well.

But even before those, there was a mishmash of titles featuring athletes that did or did not have official NFL branding. Troy Aikman NFL Football was released in August 1994 for the Super NES, with the Genesis getting their port in October. And oddly enough, this was followed by a version for the Atari Jaguar that was released in February 1995.

The game itself was very much a Madden clone and, per memories of playing the SNES version at a friend’s house back in the day, was aggressively okay. Not great, but there were way worse football games. I mostly remember the announcer being obnoxiously loud. The announcer would yell “IT’S GOOOOOOD!” after an extra point. The fact I remember this over 30 years later says….something, I guess.

I posted the TV ad above and, given an extreme amount of context today, it’s not a great look! Troy Aikman suffered multiple concussions throughout his 12-year NFL career, and still doesn’t sound quite right at his job as the current color commentator for Monday Night Football.

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With six teams on their bye week, there are a shocking lack of games this time around. I am all for killing the Thursday game forever and ever on weeks like this! (Plus, frankly I don’t want to see this Vikings team play on Thursday nights. Or any night, honestly.)

Despite all of this, this is a place for you to post about Week 8 of the NFL season. So go do that. It’s much appreciated!