The final inductee into the 2008 class of Operation Sports’ Hall of Fame is being honored for different reasons than the other games.

Tecmo Super Bowl, Mike Tyson’s Punchout and Cyber Bo Jackson are being inducteed for their one great moment in the sun.

There were other Tecmo Bowls, but none reached the caliber of Tecmo Super Bowl. There was another Punchout as well – and without Iron Mike it just wasn’t the same. And Bo appeared in other games, but was never the beast he was in Tecmo Super Bowl.

Madden, on the other hand, is really being recognized for its position in the sports gaming industry for the past 20 years. In a lot of ways the title is the bellwether for the industry as a whole, and any Hall of Fame class would be incomplete in my mind without the longest running and best selling sports franchise ever.

In a lot of ways Madden is receiving a lifetime achievement award. To be honest it’s hard to look at the catalogue of past editions of Madden and choose “The Best.” While you might be able to pick two or three versions of other long running series as the cream of the crop, Madden has had many memorable editions.

If you polled 20 different people about their favorite version of Madden, you are likely to get 10 different years over three or four different platforms mentioned.

(Sadly nobody will mention the 360 or PS3 versions of the game. Count this as my required ‘this award is given in spite of Madden’s recent offerings, not because of them. Moving on …)

Case in point, during the recent Operation Sports Best Sports Game tournament, seven different versions of Madden made the brackets. Another four or five versions were nominated and nixed by the OS Staff before the final 64 were picked.

And those seven editions were released on five different platforms (PS2, Xbox, PC, Genesis and Super Nintendo) over the course of three gaming generations.

Find me another sports gaming franchise that can boast that kind of success over the course of 20 years and I’ll give you the keys to Operation Sports.

The Madden craze each August is like no other in sports gaming. Video game stores across the country open at midnight to sell copies to lines of waiting fans – a special circumstance usually only reserved for games that don’t come out every year.

Grown men lie to their bosses, making excuses about why they’re unable to come to work. Other grown men travel hundreds of miles trying to hunt down a copy of the game that’s been inadvertently put on shelves early by an unknowing Target or Walmart employee.

And while these things happen for other games, it’s not nearly as wide spread.

In a lot of ways Madden and the sports gaming industry have walked hand-in-hand like high school sweethearts since the 1990s.

Madden first arrived just as the modern sports gaming era was starting to kick-off – with games like MLB Baseball and Tecmo Bowl becoming the first to feature licenses from professional sports leagues and feature real player likenesses.

It was there as now gaming giant Electronic Arts started to cut its teeth on sports games, and before anybody had ever heard of EA Sports. Madden was there in the 1990s as games pushed for more realism and began concentrating on the franchise aspect of games – thanks to games like Baseball Mogul and Front Page Sports Football.

It was at the forefront of perhaps sports gaming’s greatest generation on the PS2 – showcasing features and graphics that would have sent a 1989 teenage to the hospital from shock.

And in this latest generation, Madden was one of the showcase titles at launch for both the 360 and PS3.

The sheer number of different platforms Madden has been released on is also mind-boggling. According to Wikipedia, 17 different gaming systems have seen versions of Madden: Apple II, Macintosh, SNES, Sega Genesis, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo 64, Windows PC, DOS, PlayStation, Xbox, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Sega Saturn, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation Portable.

So congratulations to the Madden NFL series for its induction into the Operation Sports Hall of Fame. Hopefully they release a top notch Madden 2009 and not make me look like a fool for singing their praises this summer!