Collection essentials #106: Tecmo Super Bowl (NES)

Tecmo had previously released “Tecmo Bowl” nearly three years before this game, and while I don’t own it and don’t consider it essential, it was a very good football game for its time. But fans of that game had seen nothing yet. Tecmo Super Bowl provided a major upgrade, and is widely considered the best sports game on the NES, and some would even say one of the best sports video games of all time in general. The first noticeable difference is that Tecmo Super Bowl, unlike the original, got the license to use real NFL teams with their logos, and all the real players, which maybe sounds frivolous to a non-sports fan, but believe me when I say people who like sports enjoy controlling fantasy versions of their favorite teams and athletes much more than generic made-up counterparts!

When making a sports video game, there are different ways a developer can go about it. The most obvious path, perhaps, would be to try and make it as realistic and true to the real thing as possible. That’s often called a “simulation” or “sim” game. There’s also the option of making an “arcade” sports game. When making a video game to be played on an arcade cabinet in a public place for a quarter (or other sum) at a time, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to make a game super realistic, because it’s harder to get into, and that wouldn’t really be optimal for fun short bursts that an arcade gamer expects. Instead, an arcade-style sports game takes the basic concepts of the sport but trims them down to something less realistic, but more fast-paced, easier to understand and play, and with games that don’t take as long. Tecmo Super Bowl is somewhere in between, perhaps leading a little to the arcade spectrum, but finding a very happy balance.

In most football games released after this, you can choose from a wide variety of real plays from an NFL playbook. That’s not the case in Tecmo Super Bowl. Instead, you pick from eight plays, four running plays and four passing plays, and they are selected using different button combinations on the controller so that the other player can’t see what you selected (without looking at your hands). Whoever’s on defense also selects one of eight defensive plays, and each one corresponds with a certain offensive play, and the defense gets a huge advantage if they predict what the offense calls and chooses accordingly. The action takes place viewing the field from a side view rather than the perspective of the offense’s direction as would become the norm later for football games. Gameplay is fairly simple, fast-paced, and fun. Complementing it is quality music and neat little cutscenes showing the result of a play up close with large sprites depicting the players. 

One way the game does go for simulation is with its season mode. Players can simulate an entire season of NFL games, playing whatever games on the schedule they like. The game keeps track of stats, too. Progress is saved using a battery back-up rather than passwords for convenience. Team rosters are from the 1990 season, and players have been programmed to perform at a level similar to how good they are in real life, so for example you’re likely to get a better performance out of a hall of famer like Dan Marino than some quarterback you’ve never heard of on a lousy team. Famously, Bo Jackson is the best player in this game, being obscenely fast. As a side note, dedicated fans still release a patch every year that updates the game’s teams and rosters to match the current NFL season. All this stuff was cutting edge for the NES at the time, and obviously it’s so normal for football games over 30 years later that it doesn’t seem so impressive anymore. But that doesn’t mean the game isn’t great or outdated on the whole, because the two-player mode is still highly enjoyable.

Sadly, I never (to my knowledge) played this game as a kid and have not spent a lot of time on it in general. I would have loved it back in the day. But it’s so good and iconic that it absolutely belongs in my collection. If you’re a sports and video game fan and have never played it, you’d better fix that. Come hang at my place and we’ll Bowl it up.

The game would also receive a remake a couple years later that is arguably even better, and that version surprisingly doesn’t seem to get as much attention as the NES original. But more on that another time.