Tom Brady’s Video Game Career Dates Back To The 20th Century

Screenshot: MilesDawkins247

You can hear someone tell you Tom Brady’s age (45!) and it doesn’t really affect you, because the guy still looks fit and healthy. To fully grasp the length of Brady’s tenure on this Earth, you must therefore realize that the man appeared in a video game for the PlayStation. Like, the original PlayStation.

Brady, born in 1977, was drafted by the New England Patriots in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft – as the 199th pick – and spent his first season in the league as a fourth-string QB . He was so far down the NFL pecking order, in fact, that for his first appearance in Madden—Madden 01, which came out on PS1—he wasn’t even named, he was just on the depth chart of Patriots as “QB #12”.

A year later, after serving as a backup, he took over for the injured Drew Bledsoe, led the Patriots to a championship and the rest is history. Note that his rise to stardom happened so quickly that he didn’t even appear in most versions of Madden 02, the year he won the Super Bowl; in the PC, PS1, PS2 and N64 editions, the Patriots only had the three QBs above him in the depth chart from the previous season, meaning only the Xbox and GameCube versions – released months later , after the start of the 2001 season and Brady was the starting QB for the Patriots – had him in the game.

Brady is retiring as the statistical leader in nearly every category that matters to a QB, from passing yards to passing TD pass attempts, while leading the league in controversies over ball deflation, endorsements scam and the weird ways to kiss your child on the mouth.

To celebrate his career – or, for many of you, to celebrate his retirement announced today – I’ve put together this slideshow showing his video game career, from his PS1 debut to the NFL 2K series, Madden and a few other stops in between. It won’t be every game every year, it would be boring – and for recent Madden games incredibly repetitive – but it will still be a nice little walk down memory lane. Unless you remember playing one of those early games, in which case I’m sorry to remind you of your age.