Madden 08 was the big attraction of the Wii room at EA's pre-E3 press event last month, and for good reason. It's the company's biggest franchise, and the first major third party title to be online on Wii. On top of that, there was one mode in particular that got people as happy as I've ever seen them playing a serious Madden football game.

This year's Wii Madden has a new party mode which includes nearly two-dozen mini games and a trivia challenge. (These two modes were not playable.) It also includes a standard exhibition mode, but with one addition over its non-party equivalent, that being a telestrator. It's that thing that television people use to draw lines on top of replays to illustrate how a big play occurred.

The telestrator will only appear after an automatically-triggered replay, just like one that would normally show up during the course of a regular game after you nail a big play. As if getting burned wasn't bad enough, you can use the pointer function of the Wii remote to draw faces, invoke insulting phrases, or even do the Xs and Os thing on the screen while you meticulously explain to your buddies how they got served. There's a (generous) time limit as to how long you can do this, which can be shortened if your friends drum their controllers rapidly. Believe me, they will do it every time.

The telestrator is a simple addition to the game, but it increases the fun factor by a big number. EA is betting that it, as well as the Family Mode control scheme, will open up Madden football to a much more casual audience. The Family controls in Madden are the most basic of the three games that have incorporated it so far, with users playing without a nunchuk essentially only being able to pass and stiff-arm during offensive gameplay. As complicated as Madden can get, that's not really such a bad thing. And because there are so many football fans out there that don't play football games, it might just be the thing to get that expanded audience it is making an effort to go after.

There's also the matter of visual improvements over Madden 07. EA Canada took steps to brighten up the colors and contrast from last year to help compensate for the fact that things aren't in HD. (They are, however, in widescreen and 480p.) Player jerseys have also been rebuilt to make them look more realistic. Field texture has been improved, too. The grass is not rendered blade-by-blade, and it never will be, but there's some obvious depth to the turf this time around. I believe it's starting to look like something more than a last-gen game.

It's going to help that Madden will have features beyond that of a last-gen Nintendo game, too; Madden 08 is online, and it's not using Nintendo's archaic friend code system. You'll need an account over at EA's website to join in on the fun. That is something a lot of hardcore Madden people have been waiting for. Even for someone like me, who hasn't bought a Madden game since 2000, the addition of online is enough for me to jump back into the Madden Nation.