NCAA March Madness 2004

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• Over 300 Division I schools and authentic college arenas -- complete with fight songs, mascots and crowd chants
• Browse through scouting reports for every team, delivered by announcers Dick Vitale and Brad Nessler
• New quick plays - take control of your offense with team-specific calls, turn up the heat with a full-court press -- even diving on loose balls
• New freestyle two-handed controls for sweet crossovers, triple threat moves, and post moves -- string moves together for incredible plays
• 30-Year Dynasty Mode lets you create a complete college dynasty - recruit high-school players, create a non-conference schedule, and work your way onto the EA Sports Top 25

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00009WAVC
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches ; 4.8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: November 17, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,922 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #74 in Video Games > PlayStation 2 > Sports

Product Description

Platform: PlayStation2

From the Manufacturer

NCAA March Madness 2004 storms the court with new schools, smoother control, and an incredibly deep Dynasty Mode. Battle through the EA SPORTS Maui Invitational pre-season tournament all the way to the BIG DANCE. The unique, fast-paced college game comes to life with players applying full-court pressure "D", diving on loose balls, and throwing it down big-time. NCAA March Madness 2004 delivers the strategy, emotion, and passion that is college basketball.

Product Description

All the thrills, excitement and pageantry of college basketball action -- and you're in charge of it! / Rated E: Everyone Create-A-School feature lets you design a school team from scratch -- see if you can make it to the Final Four Hoop it up for real in the thrilling Online Tournament

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good, but could be better, November 20, 2003

By 

James (Lexington, KY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: NCAA March Madness 2004 (Video Game)

Overall, this game is a huge improvement from last year's version. The game play is alot smoother, graphics are very clean and the new arenas are great!! Having said that there are some complaints that I have. I'm not sure if this is true for other schools, but I've been playing as Kentucky and their entire freshman class is missing from the game. The create-a-player or player editor is a pain because you have to exit after you save changes for a single player, so to name 12 guys on your team takes about 30 mins. The crowd chants are really cool and school specific and I like the idea that not every game is a sellout, but teams like the Dukes and UKs draw huge road crowds even if the team is ranked low. Basically, low ranking for either team involved means very small crowd for the game. The commentary is pretty smooth, but the sound quality can be scratchy sometimes. I like the dynasty mode, it's modeled after the football game, but the rankings are a little out of wack. If don't play the Maui Invitational, your team is dropped way out of the rankings just because a team like Iowa State is 8-0 and you haven't played yet. The scheduling another problem. You have to send out letters to schools to ask to play them, a really cool idea, but disappointing when the computer wouldn't let me play Louisville, my archrival. Overall, the game is fun to play and is much more of a sim than last year. There is still some room to grow, though.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gameplay is Great, other parts drag it down, May 8, 2004

By 

Brian P. Kelder "Brokenhearted Cub Fan" (Plymouth, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: NCAA March Madness 2004 (Video Game)

First the good. The gameplay for this game is just great. Although not as clean-running as NBA Live of the same year, it is a super game that captures the feeling of playing the college game. You can play any team, and the feeling is the same. Just a lot of fun to play. Good quickplay, and good coaching options too to tailor the games the way you want to play. Good customization.

Now the bad.
1) Load times are long. Not terribly so, but just enough to aggrivate you every time. Just a little longer than needs be.
2)Edit player. You have to exit out of the entire menu. To do every player would take more time than I have, or most humans have. I bought a memory card to have the names. Granted, EA cannot use the college names, but don't make it so hard to put them in!!!!
3) Coaching contracts are a joke. I made the final 4 three years in a row, and was fired. Turn them off, is my advice, then you can play as long as you want. If you are fired, you have to find another team to play with. I would prefer to keep my one college going, so that option should have been included.
4)Simulating games. Incredibly tedious. Get some speed!!!!!

Final analysis: Buy used, if you can. Hope to see improvement next year. I will use this for draft classes, but for basketball gameplay I use NBA LIve

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good game play, but too many other problems, April 5, 2004

By 

C. L. Stone (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: NCAA March Madness 2004 (Video Game)

Let me start with the positive: The gameplay is pretty good, which makes up for a lot. However, the problems are overwhelming. A list:

1) Like in NCAA Football, you get to pick your favorite team the first time you start up the game. Unlike NCAA Football, there is no way to save this setting, so the screen asking you to pick your favorite team pops up EVERY time you enter the game.

2) There is no auto-saving or auto-loading, so every time you enter the game, you have to load your settings, your user profile and your dynasty. And instead of asking you after every game you play if you would like to save everything, you have to go through and do it separately. Save user profile, save dynasty, save settings...it gets tedious.

3) Typing in names is nuts. Every time you type in a player's name and save it, it takes you all the way back out to the main roster menu and you have to start again. Click edit rosters, scroll through the hundreds of teams to find yours, then scroll through the players to get the one you want to edit. Just doing the 11 or 12 players on your team is frustrating.

4) You can't use this year's actual schedule. You either have to choose your out-of-conference opponents (and hope they will accept your challenge) or have your out-of-conference opponents randomly selected for you. Then the dates of the games are randomly selected, so even if you get all the teams on your team's schedule this season to accept your challenges, the order in which you play those games will be nothing like the actual order that your team played them.

5) When you put the ball out of bounds, the little EA Sports logo swipes across the screen to cut to the throw-in, and the opposing team throws it in way to fast, sometimes even before the EA logo is finished swiping. This means no time to set up your defense to try to steal the ball on the in-bounds pass. This is extremely frustrating when you are down by 4-8 points in the last couple minutes.

6) The biggest problem of them all. One of those HOW DO YOU MAKE THAT ERROR type mistakes... They set it up so the conference standings are set by teams' overall records instead of in-conference records. Absolutely ridiculous. When I saw this after playing one season on Dynasty mode, I wanted to throw the CD in the garbage. Unbelievable.

Honestly, the game play is great. Far better than 989's Final Four 2003, which I bought last year and was disappointed by. But it's like no one tested the menu functions or save functions or roster functions...and most of all, it seems like no one who knew thing one about college basketball even gave the game so much as a once-over before it was shipped. It's just not what you would expect from EA.

PLEASE EA, FIX THIS FOR NEXT YEAR!!!

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