Thursday, July 09, 2009

NCAA: The Annual Hunt

I'm not buying NCAA this year. I paid EA $60 last year for a late alpha, so this year, I'll be trying the game out courtesy of Gamefly, and if I like it, I'll just be keeping the rental copy for a while.

I still have some small hope for "Road To Glory" mode, but I've been so underwhelmed by the feature list and the demo that I'm not expecting much.

There is one aspect of NCAA, though, that I'm really going to miss: the hunt.

If you're not a sports game fan, you may not be aware of this, but the effort to find a sports game for sale before its official release date consumes thousands of man hours. Sports gaming forums (most notably, Operation Sports) have epic, lengthy threads discussing where the game might be found early. It's incredibly fun to follow the OS thread as reports come in from all over the country.

J.T., an Austin-area DQ reader (and a very nice guy as well), has teamed up with me for the last few years in an attempt to find NCAA early. In two different years, we found the game the Saturday before the release date (J.T. drove to San Antonio, which is 100 miles away, to buy the game two years ago).

This year, though, I won't be in the hunt.

When the Madden release date gets closer, though, I'm in. For the first time with Madden, I'm all in.

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