Some of my earliest gaming memories are playing EA’s Madden NFL with my grandpa on the PlayStation 2. Through these video games in the early 2000s, I first grasped the ins and outs of real-life sports, preparing me for the schoolyard and pick-up games at the park a few years later. These games could be a little rough for newcomers, as they often demanded players to learn the nitty-gritty of the latest mechanic added any given year. But they were mostly fun, emulating what the pros must feel in the heat of competition.
In January 2004 however, EA Sports turned its most popular sports game on its head. Published under the EA Sports BIG label, NFL Street was all the fun of the Madden series, with streamlined rules, crunchier tackles, gravity-defying evades, and virtually no friction to get in the way of the fun. Like its other Street games, the first NFL Street was a critical success. How did it follow up on that success? Just short of a year later, NFL Street 2 was released — and it more than delivered.
