Nintendo.com has posted an interview with Rob Moore, Directory of Technology for Tiburon, and Jason Barnes, Assistant Producer for Madden NFL 2002.

Jason Barnes: We want to take what we have for the PS2, and make the Nintendo GameCube version a little bit different if we can, like adding new features. We want people to know that we're making an effort specifically for the system. We've been working on the crowd stuff, like Rob said. It's really nice. And if a guy goes into the endzone after making a touchdown you'll see the start of the crowd in the front row explode up all the way through to the back. And you know that we've got the wave going [laughs]. Stuff like that.

Rob Moore: There's not a clip anywhere in the performance [of the GameCube]. It's very predictable, which is good. It gives you an idea about how far you can go with your game.

Nintendo Power: How did you guys approach the new Nintendo GameCube Controller, and what special things were you able to do with it?

Jason Barnes: Well, I think the Controller right now is somewhat of a challenge for us because we're limited by the fact that there aren't two shoulder buttons on each side We're using the Z button with L and R Buttons to take the place of the L2 and R2 Buttons on PS2. And as you know if you've played Madden on the Play Station 2, we're using all eight buttons on there. So we're using the shift feature right now but we might investigate other solutions which could improve that. We don't want to lose a function or a feature, but we might rearrange some functions or features so that maybe the straight arm doesn't require two buttons.

Nintendo Power: The C-Stick is new. Are you making use of that?

Jason Barnes: We're looking at that right now. We're thinking about using it as a pump-fake for the quarterback because the pump fake is very quick and you can get it over with really fast. It also works really well for user-controlled replays. I don't have a definite answer for you right now, but the C-Stick will probably be used for something. Maybe we could use it to pump up the crowd, or quiet the crowd if you're the quarterback. Some little function like that.

Nintendo Power: Obviously, Madden's commentary is one of the things which makes your football games stand out from the competition. With Nintendo GameCube's memory, do you have a lot more space to include voice-overs?

Rob Moore: Yes, there is a lot going on with the audio that's going to be different. There's a lot more capacity on the DVD, for one thing, so you can have a lot more audio available.

Nintendo Power: Let's talk about Game Boy Advance. I realize that you probably don't have any GBA/Nintendo GameCube interaction planned for this version, but are you thinking about ways to use Game Boy Advance in future versions of the game?

Rob Moore: We're investigating it. It's something that we're definitely interested in.

Read the entire interview at Nintendo's website for the full story!