Alternatively: Me, The College Years.
These were the PC versions, so before chucking the discs (and manuals), I tried to play them on my new (2011) PC.
Madden 2001
I was able to get the game to launch in Compatibility Mode for Windows 2000. The menus worked well enough, but the in-game rendering was entirely messed up. Players wouldn't show up at all, or everything would display in a weird pink/green/orange palette. Psychedelic, but utterly unplayable. Fail.
Madden 2002
Uniforms rendered without numbers on them, but the game was fairly playable this time. I managed to start an exhibition game against the Browns, and right after the first play -- a gain of one yard -- virtual John Madden declared: "Tim Couch is a very accurate quarterback." Certainly that's a bug. Fail.
Madden 2003
This actually worked: no graphics glitches. I played a bit of an exhibition game, then simulated the first season of a franchise. I was having fun! Then I tried to save and the game reported my available disk space as "-1 MB" and refused. I guess terabytes were out of the question in 2003. Still, I could have installed this on a smaller hard drive partition and it would have worked. Pass.
Madden 2004
This edition wanted me to updated my Macromedia Flash player, which was funny. The rendering of the uniform numbers was broken again, and suddenly franchise mode was overly complicated and annoying. After one season (which let me save this time), a mediocre offensive guard held out for a new contract. Basically, 2004 requires you to manage a bunch of small details that make it more realistic, but also less fun (in my subjective opinion). Anyway, graphics glitches. Fail.
The verdict is: old PC games might sort of work on Windows 7 and modern hardware, if you're lucky.
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