Madden NFL, a big game from EA Sports, filmed this year's ad at Halas Hall in Lake Forest, Ill., where Vaughn grew up and where the Chicago Bears practice.
The Bears play their games 40 miles south at Soldier Field in Chicago.
Vaughn is a huge fan of the Bears and of Madden.
To keep things in line, he only had to film for a day — but it was a long and busy day, he says.
The result is a four-minute trailer that will be posted on YouTube in full, and then broken into shorter ads for TV and streaming.
It's one of the best video game commercials since the "Genesis Does What Nintendon't" ad from 1990, Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. spot from 1999, or the whole movie *The Wizard* (1989) with Fred Savage. In this spot, Vaughn is in his usual great style, and Caleb Williams, the Bears quarterback and cover athlete for Madden NFL 27, is a great backup.
Vaughn said he liked the idea of being the GM, owner, player, and coach.
"Leaning into that felt fun, but it's not that far from how we approach it as gamers and sports fans," he said.
Vaughn can speak for a lot of people because he's had more late-night Madden games than most, whether back in the day or now in his kids’ treehouse.
This is his first official collab with EA, but he's acted like their best unofficial pitchman, maybe even better than Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins.
In *The Breakup* (2006), Vaughn trash-talked his 12-year-old online opponent in Madden NFL 06 before handing his business over in a couch competition with his ex's date.
A decade earlier, he beat his *Swingers* (1996) co-star, Sue (Patrick Van Horn), in NHLPA Hockey '93, which was made by EA.
"EA has always been nice to me," Vaughn said.
"It's part of the culture for us guys growing up. It's what we did. We'd get together and play these games, so they've always been cool with letting us use it in our stories."
The iconic *Swingers* scene, where Vaughn’s character made digital Wayne Gretzky’s head bleed, was real life imitating art.
"We'd get together after going out and order Pink Dot, then play in teams of two vs. two," Vaughn said.
"Whenever someone scored, you could control the instant replay, and we would do that, rewinding to the goal 20 times in a row. People would lose their minds, but a lot of that came from how we actually teased and played with each other."
Though the scoring wasn't Vaughn, the Gretzky cheap shot was all Vince.
Given the movie's low budget, it was Vaughn's trial and error that made Gretzky bleed and sent him to the hospital.
"In making Gretzky's head bleed, which was in the script, we were almost going to give up on it until I just put it on two-player mode, with Gretzky sitting there, and I just kept running him," Vaughn said.
"Thankfully, I hit him. And then, if you remember, they had the instant replay on the game, so we could back it up and film it. But it was 100% us playing."
Madden NFL 27 is set to release on August 13.
Gamers who buy special editions like the “Deluxe” or “MVP” bundles, or subscribe to EA Play Pro, can play one week early.
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