For many gamers, the release of the latest Madden title has become an annual holiday. With the latest, Madden 17, having arrived on store shelves within the last couple of weeks, there’s no better time to look back on how this blockbuster series first got started.

Bethesda Softworks is generally credited with the creation of the first physics engine in gaming, which was used in the 1986 release, Gridiron!, a game for the Atari ST and Commodore 64/128. The game wasn’t much to look at graphically, but the physics were so impressive to the folks at Electronic Arts that they opted to hire Bethesda to help develop the very first John Madden Football, which released in 1988.

The series was called John Madden Football until 1993, when it changed to Madden NFL after EA finally got the rights to use NFL teams and players. And despite the fact that Madden himself retired in 2009, the series continues to carry his name.

EA was actually sued by Bethesda in 1987 for $7.3 million. Bethesda claimed that EA had halted the release of Gridiron! on other consoles (something EA had bought the rights to do) after choosing to incorporate several major elements of the game into John Madden Football.

They believed that EA had bought the Gridiron! rights simply to get their hands on the underlying code of the physics engine. The details of how the lawsuit played out have never actually been made public. Meanwhile, the Madden series continues to see annual releases and maintains its status as one of the bestselling sports series ever.