Electronic Arts is launching its most venerable video game franchise, “Madden Football,” onto the hottest new gaming platform going, Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

The game, whose origins date back 20 years, has been a cash cow for EA over the years, and the company is now seeking to extend that popularity into the fast-growing smartphone market. EA showed a demo of the game at Apple’s media event on Wednesday.

“We’re really happy with the quality of the game, making it fun and easy to pick up and play and we think we’ve created the most authentic and realistic football experience in the market today,” said Adam Sussman, vice president of worldwide publishing for EA Mobile.

“We were even able to get Brett Favre on the Vikings,” he added, showing that the video game giant is still nimble enough to stay current on the future Hall of Fame quarterback’s latest address.

Sussman said winnowing “Madden’s” considerable complexity and richness into a compelling smartphone game was something of a challenge. The game features 32 teams, 2,000 players and 300 different plays and has been under development for around 10 months. It utilizes the iPhone’s touchscreeen controls as well as its accelerometer (for example, you shake the device to run the hurry-up offense).

Additional goodies such as roster updates will be made available via in-app purchasing in a later update.

The game is launching Wednesday in the App Store at a special price of $7.99, before bumping up to $9.99 Thursday evening. EA says it is market share leader on the iPhone, as measured by revenue, with an average price of more than $4 for its games. It expects to launch 40 iPhone games this fiscal year.