With Madden NFL 2005, developer Exient takes over from Budcat in bringing the Madden football series to the Game Boy Advance, introducing a new graphics engine, redesigned menus and several game modes previously only seen in console versions of the franchise.

Standard play modes include exhibition games and a full season. New modes coming over from the consoles are Two Minute Drill, Practice, Situation, and the Madden Cards card collecting sub-game. Gone however is player creation with its associated mini-games.

The graphics engine is still sprite-based and takes after the early installments of the series on Genesis and SNES. The game includes the 32 teams of the 2004 NFL season, with updated rosters and stats. Season progress and team stats are saved to battery-backed RAM, there is commentary by John Madden and Al Michaels, and the game also offers a two-player option via link cable.