NCAA Basketball 09: March Madness Edition

NCAA Basketball 09 is the 2008 installment in the NCAA Basketball series. It was released on November 17, 2008 for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and Xbox 360. Miami Heat player Kevin Love (who was a UCLA forward at the time) is featured on the cover. A special edition called NCAA Basketball 09: March Madness Edition was released only for Xbox 360 on March 11, 2009.

Graphically, the March Madness Edition looks identical to NCAA Basketball 09. Player models are frail as ever and the crowd looks just as solid as before with different animations playing throughout. There are some new overlays that have to do with bracket updates as teams progress, but there's nothing in the way of new animation systems or effects.

The audio is driven by Dick Vitale, Brad Nessler and Erin Andrews (who really needs to have her own player model) who spout off insightful quips whenever possible. They're forced to be fairly nondescript thanks to the lack of player names, but they do the best they can given the limitations. Crowd noise pumps along with the action and you'll hear chants and cheers throughout. "Warm up the buses" gets extremely annoying after awhile but all in all the audio serves the sport well.

The game received "mixed or average reviews" on all platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

After seeing his likeness in this game, used without his permission, Ed O'Bannon agreed to be the lead plaintiff in O'Bannon v. NCAA.