St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 22

CSATUffPAft AUGUST' 16, '2003 virtual Dlini as they are in the real mini. "People that were in my class were asking me, 'What do you think you're going to look like in the game? What do you think the team's rating will he said. How players are designed in the game can become a major point of pride. Hazelwood Central's Kerry-Davis is the top-rated player for the Dlini (a 90 out of 99), and although Jackson said if deserved, he wishes his own 79 rating had been a few points higher. One limitation on the game is a 55-man roster, which inevitably means that some players on each team won't make the virtual cut And one Ulini player, Jason Davis, was so upset by not seeing himself in the game that he took advantage of a create-a-player function to insert himself into the lineup.

tr -X NCAA Football, one of the top selling sports video games, is popular with players and fans alike By Glenn Kasses Of the Post-Dispatch Illinois safety Marc Jackson and his teammates get plenty of reps on the field. But recently, they have been more concerned with practicing on the virtual field of NCAA Football 2004. "The day that it came out, I had to take a day off from work just so I could get time on the game," Jackson said. "The local video game store opened up at about 10 o'clock and I think there was about IS or 20 of us outside waiting for the UPS man to get to the store with the game. If a big event" A video game produced by Electronic Arts, NCAA Football 2004 is the most popular college football simulation on the market and has become an obsession and a phenomenon for hundreds of thousands of players and video game fanatics.

Offered on three systems Sony's PlayStation 2, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Game Cube it allows users to play single exhibition games, seasons and even decades with the college team of their choosing. The game has become a hit in large part because of its dynasty mode, in which players go through an entire season, men go into an offseason mode that involves the recruiting of incoming freshmen and other roster adjustments. Last year's version of the game, NCAA Football 2003, sold about 1.3 million copies, making it the second-most popular sports video game on the market last year. And in NCAA 2004's first two weeks on the market, EA said it had sold about 550,000 copies. "The best-selling college game ever," said Peter Roithmayr, the vice president of marketing for Electronics Boutique, a national video game retailer.

"People are dying for it It far exceeded our expectations." While the game has become a phenomenon on college campuses and an addiction for many, it also has become in many ways the nation's first look at college football teams across the country. Released on July 16, the NCAA Football series allows users to see at least approximately what teams' strengths and weaknesses will be when the season begins. The reason behind it all is that- L- i yN j) b.M it-- mil -i mi in. Mfjtn tl fcKi- fc. torm and program the game, a process that takes almost the entire year.

Luhr and the rest of the staff, based in Orlando, take two to three months dedicated exclusively to coming up with new ideas for the next year's version. Programming the game takes about six months, and testers spend as much as 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for two months finding glitches and helping the programming staff fix them. "I'm sure we're the cause of a whole lot of divorces and a lot of breakups and dropouts," Luhr said. For Missouri's football team, $ittf (fi ft? hmmJ 9n "We have a term when you create somebody and they have the ability to make him better. We use the term, 'juice himself Jackson said.

"I've seen his game, and he juiced himself up pretty well." Even though every player can't make it into NCAA 2004, Luhr said the amount of detail that they can squeeze into the game is impressive. All 117 Division I-A teams are represented, each with its own playbooks and its own stadium done as precisely as possible. Plus, this year EA added 65 Division I-AA teams as well as 98 "classic" teams, some of which include players in leather helmets and long-sleeve jerseys from the 1920s. The challenge, Luhr said, is to add features without sacrificing the quality of the representation. "We'll get people sometimes bashing the game for the most minute detail that we missed," he said.

"(But) if someone from the University of Buffalo sends us an e-mail saying, "You've got our scoreboard wrong in the game. It needs to have this logo or the numbers need to be positioned like And he sends us a picture of that scoreboard. We're going to put it in because we want to be as realistic as possible. We don't care how big or small the school is." Luhr, who is already working on NCAA Football 2005, has plenty of ideas for what it will take to create a better game. "We'd like to have the Florida State Seminole on his horse throwing the flaming spear," he said "We'd like to have Tennessee running out onto the field and Clemson running down the hill and all these traditions that make college football unique." Reporter Glenn Kaeee E-mail: Phones 314-34O-820S H'tl'f? 8 1 EA SPORTS NCAA Football 2004 Includes SS-man rosters for every Division l-A team, such as Miami (left), and features games played in precise copies of stadiums, such as Los Angeles Coliseum (top).

NCAA 2004 has become a tool to help bring the team closer. Wide receivers Thomson Omboga and Sean Coffey said the team spends hours playing the game, especially over the summer, and the competition serves as a way to build bonds between teammates. "We play it because if something that we can do amongst the team that's not gambling or nothing illegal," Omboga said. "If a competitive thing to do off the field, get in a room and see who's the best on the team for bragging rights." Coffey said if not uncommon to find players up until 3 or 4 a.m. on summer weekends battling it out Or even more surprisingly, on autumn Saturday evenings right after the real games are played.

"We're usually tired and just don't really go anywhere," Coffey said. "So we just stay home and play the game." The obsession over the game has gotten to the point Illinois' Jackson said, where students around campus are almost as interested in the i 'f itttsH' "college football is the greatest sport in the world," said Jeff Luhr, the game's producer and a fan partial to Nebraska. "I think that we're focusing a lot with our product on the college atmosphere, the college gameplay, the dynasty mode, everything that makes college football so special and unique." Putting the game together, Luhr said, is no easy task. Electronic Arts puts out new versions of sports games annually. As soon as one year's work is completed, the next begins.

It takes about 30 art and development staff members to brains- at'? UtV.