Finest Hour: Electronic Arts

[dog$]

Your task is to choose one general era which best represents the apex of games for which Electronic Arts is responsible for providing.

1) Up to late 80's: Early PC / pre-console era.
2) Early 90's: Genesis 16bit era.
3) Late 90's: PS1 era.
4) Early 00's: PS2 era.
5) Present day: Everything from their first Xbox 360 game published.

While these groupings mostly only name consoles there is PC development throught this entire span in which to consider for your choice.

Personally I'm having a tough time deciding between 16-bit and current, and would like to see some arguments before making a decision myself.

[Yoshi]

Genesis Madden and NHL by a mile.

[Frogacuda]

Early-to-mid '90s. Runner up: Present day, just because this fall has been so good from them.

[James]

Too early to judge. If they keep on their present course then Present Day is an easy win, and the addition of Brutal Legend is giving me hope. But they've still got some work to do to overcome the 360's early days and the endless cloned sports games.

James

[bVork]

Early 90s, thanks to Origin Systems, Bullfrog, and Westwood - before EA decided to really screw up the studios.
The 80s were pretty awesome too, thanks to games like Bard's Tale, Project Firestart, Seven Cities of Gold, M.U.L.E., and Archon.

[Timber]

Genesis Madden and NHL by a mile.

This is the only correct answer.

[gameoverDude]

Genesis NHL (best with penalties turned off, so I'm not constantly getting busted for Cross-Checking and fighting - I had 71 minutes of penalty time in one game with 5 minute periods ), Battle Squadron, and Galahad all own.

A big "what were they thinking" on PS1 Viewpoint, however. What a horrible thing to turn an excellent Neo-Geo game into.

[Grave]

Early 90's, easy. Two words: Mutant League.

[NeoZeedeater]

This is hard because for so many of their games I automatically think of the developer so it's easy to forget that EA was the publisher. They have published awesome games their whole history even if some of those years they had some annoying business practices. I won't vote yet as I have to catch up with the current gen and play the full game of Mirror's Edge but I'm leaning towards early '90s (I assume System Shock 1 would count for this period since it's 1994 but pre-PS1; it holds a lot of sway for me).
I probably wouldn't vote '80s anymore even though Archon 1 ranks very high for me but I do think that era is going to get underrated by many people who started playing EA games with the Genesis.

[Frogacuda]

They published a ton of good games in the mid 90s, beyond just system shock. I included those in my vote.