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Giancarlo Varanini
Assistant Previews Editor
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Now Playing: Final Fantasy Tactics, Devil May Cry, Zoo Tycoon, Super Tecmo Bowl
Recent Favorites: NBA Street, Gran Turismo 3, Anarchy Online
All-Time Favorites: Too many games to list.
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Last week, I had the rare opportunity to pull some of my vintage games and systems out of storage and hook them up to my TV for an extended classic gaming session. After five minutes of staring at my Atari 2600 and its classy wood paneling design, I hooked it up to my TV, popped in an incredibly dusty Spider-Man cartridge, and turned the machine on--and while I could hear the familiar beeps of Spider-Man leaping from each side of the building, there was nothing but scrambled lines on my TV. The same situation occurred sometimes on previous TV sets, but remedies that worked in the past didn't work this time around, so I solemnly pushed the Atari 2600 to the side and brought out the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was thankfully up and running within a few minutes.
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It may be simplistic, but Tecmo Bowl is still a fun game. |
I looked around my collection for a little while, and since the NFL preseason had already started, I reached for one of the most entertaining football games ever created: Tecmo Bowl. What made Tecmo Bowl so great was that it was so easy to get into--each team only had a four plays, and the defense could only get a sack if it selected the exact same play to cover. The game was also a precursor to games like NFL Blitz, since players went flying into the air whenever they made contact with a superior player. All of the marquee players of the time like Walter Payton, Bo Jackson, Lawrence Taylor, and Mike Singletary had enhanced abilities as well, so you could always count on them to run a few hundred yards a game or get a few sacks. Even back then, Tecmo Bowl was considered fun if a little simplistic, but most of the problems Tecmo Bowl had were corrected by its sequel. Tecmo Super Bowl still stands as one of my favorite football games of all time because it introduced an incredible statistics-tracking system that recorded individual player statistics in several major categories. The gameplay from Tecmo Bowl had also received a series of enhancements, the most obvious of which was a wider selection of plays and much more realistic player behavior--though it kept the hits that threw players into the air, and the learning curve was still virtually nonexistent.
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Tecmo Super Bowl added new plays and refined the classic Tecmo Bowl gameplay. |
Most importantly, Tecmo Super Bowl--or at least the NES, Super NES, and Genesis versions--offered an experience that was noticeably different from other football games available. By comparison, whenever I'm playing one of the recent Madden games or a game from the NFL 2K series, I always get a little disappointed. While they have differences in the running and passing game, they largely deliver a similar experience despite these discrepancies. NFL Blitz offers a nice change of pace, but the completely arcadelike gameplay wears thin after a while and gives little reason to come back to the game after a few months--though the series has quite a large following that would say otherwise.
The crop of upcoming football games seems to be more of the same, which isn't necessarily bad since NFL 2K series has excellent gameplay--but I'm hoping for something a little different next season. After all, it's one thing to simulate football, but maybe it's another to make a truly great football game. Tecmo, are you listening?
