…is the Cover of Madden NFL 2012.
You know the last time I bought a video game was not long after I turned 14? Way back in the spring of 1991, for the 8-bit Nintendo. I remember the game, too — Rad Racer II. I bought it used for $15, and the market for that game went through the floor because most people panned it compared to the first RR. By the time the fall of that year came and I started high school, I just got way too busy for the Nintendo I had, much less to learn the 16-bit Super Nintendo which came out that same fall, and had an implied extra dimension of game play. The next summer, I gave my 8-bit Nintendo and all my games away to the grandson of one my mother’s best friends.
Even though I don’t own a game console, and EA Sports doesn’t make the Madden NFL series for PC, I’m going to buy Madden ’12 for PS3 anyway, just as a matter of gratitude for them putting a white running back on the cover of this year’s version. The two finalists were Peyton Hillis and Michael Vick, and while the insider gossip said that Hillis would win easily, there was a fear that EA Sports would bow to PC racial pressure and put either Vick or someone else on the cover, instead of a white RB. To their credit, they didn’t, and they’re going to see my 60 clams for it. It’ll be a Christmas present for someone I know who has a PS3.
[...] Just like I bought Madden NFL ’12, even though I don’t have a video game system, don’t care about video games, only because they put a white running back on the cover, (I’ll find someone who would like it as a gift, surely), I’m going to buy some sort of Gibson guitar or instrument or product, even though I have no use for it, just for the politics of it all. [...]