VideogameVagabond.com

When Madden NFL 09 is release this week, so will the new metallic blue Sony PSP Slim model. Anyone who missed out on the metallic red version released with God of War earlier this year needs to jump all over this Madden 09 special-edition PSP Slim.

Although I’m happy with my silver PSP, I can honestly say that if the metallic red or metallic blue models had been available at the time I bought mine, I would have jumped all over the red model, my wife would have jumped all over the blue model, and we would have simply swapped the free games that came with them. (My wife went with basic black when we upgraded her to a new PSP recently.)

Custom PSP colors are a lot of fun, and finally they’re seeing release outside of Japan; the stimulus to sales has to be worth it. It’s way more fun than buying a car cover.

How they managed it this close to release, I’ll never know, but EA Sports promises that although Brett Farve will be in green and gold on the cover, he’ll be a Jet in the game, which ships this week. In fact, in my neck of the woods, EA Sports is sponsoring an all-day Madden tournament leading up to a midnight release party for Madden 09 at the Mall of America.

Rather than worry about bathroom lighting and other household concerns, that used to be the kind of party I’d be all up for. Since getting married, however, I can now see it’s a little much just for a chance to buy a game that’ll be there later on, too.

Still, Madden is a great game again now that they wasted about four years getting the 360/PS3 versions up to speed with the previous-gen versions. Now that the features are equal, the game’s worth buying again, but you can bet EA Sports dragged its heels that long only because their exclusive license for NFL games gave them the leeway to do so.

Madden fever’s back, but I’m not afflicted with it. Thank John!