Madden Football 64 is a football video game. It was the first game of the Madden NFL series to be released for the Nintendo 64, as well as the first Madden game to be fully in 3D. Essentially an upgrade of Madden NFL 98 designed around the particular capabilities of the Nintendo 64, it replaced the 2D players with 3D models but lacked the full NFL licensing which was customary for the Madden series. While this lack of licensing significantly hurt critical response to the game, reviews were mostly positive, with elements such as the detailed player models and realistic gameplay garnering praise. The game has commentary by Pat Summerall and John Madden. License Because Acclaim Entertainment had acquired exclusive rights to the NFL license for Nintendo 64 games for the remainder of the 1997 football season, this edition of Madden does not use real NFL team names or logos. Instead, the teams use banners that consist of two bars with the team colors, and the team name on top of them in white, accompanied by players in their uniforms. The Pro Bowl is referred to as the "Madden Bowl", and the Super Bowl as the "EAS Championship". However, the game does have a license with the NFL Player's Association, so real player names are present in the game. This game is the last game in the Madden franchise that lacked a full NFL license. Teams are referred to by city only, usually the city in which the real life team's stadium is located. The New England Patriots are referred to as "Foxboro", the Tennessee Oilers as "Nashville", the Arizona Cardinals as "Phoenix", the Minnesota Vikings as "Minneapolis", the Tampa Bay Buccaneers simply as "Tampa", the Carolina Panthers as "Charlotte", and at the time, a historic team, the Los Angeles Rams referred to as "Anaheim". Team uniforms are altered; all uniforms have white pants, helmet colors are often altered to be different from jerseys (only the Denver Broncos's home jersey and helmet are the same color), and even some already different colors are changed – Foxboro's helmet in this game is red, and Charlotte's is Carolina blue, when in real life both were silver. Development Madden Football 64 had a short development cycle, since it was built as an upgrade of Madden NFL 98, retaining the essentials of that game's AI and features. Changes made from Madden 98 include the