Tecmo Bowl History: A Retrospective Look in Time

February 1989. Paula Abdul dominates the charts with “Straight Up.” The San Francisco 49ers are enjoying their off-season after defeating the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII (23), for their third Super Bowl of the decade. The NBA All-Star Game is played in front of a large crowd of 44,735 people in the Houston Astrodome without Larry Bird or Magic Johnson. Arizona, Georgetown, Oklahoma, Missouri, Syracuse, North Carolina, and Illinois are battling for College Basketball supremacy. Even North Carolina State, led by the great coach named Jimmy Valvano, had a good team. Also, February 1989 was three months before I was born. However, Jason Bobbitt, a Raleigh native, who played on Tyler Perry’s Love Thy Neighbor as “Chef Mike” was born on Sunday, February 5 of that year.

But, that’s not the point. In February 1989, Tecmo wasted no time releasing Tecmo Bowl for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Originally released as an arcade game in 1987, Tecmo Bowl was greatly enhanced with outstanding gameplay and with a dozen cities of NFL teams (Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles (Raiders), Miami, Minnesota, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington), where you guide your team and try to defeat each team to win the Tecmo Bowl. It has the NFLPA license, where you can play as real NFL players at the time, such as Joe Montana (San Francisco), Jerry Rice (San Francisco), Walter Payton (Chicago), John Elway (Denver), Tony Dorsett (Denver), Eric Dickerson (Indianapolis – “Gold Seal” version only, since he was pulled from the later release, due to a lawsuit with the NFLPA), Dan Marino (Miami), Lawrence Taylor (New York), Bo Jackson (Los Angeles) and Mike Singletary (Chicago).

The original 1987 arcade release only featured two teams – The Bulldogs and Wildcats with no playbooks. In this game, each team has four playbooks (two running and two passing for most teams, while Miami and San Francisco only have one rushing play and three passing plays to display the strengths of Quarterbacks Dan Marino for the former and Joe Montana for the latter).

Tecmo Bowl was a rousing success. It easily eclipsed other football games before it, especially for the Nintendo Entertainment System (which also had 10-Yard Fight – the 1984 arcade hit and John Elway’s Quarterback) and other subsequent releases for the system, such as LJN’s NFL Football and Nintendo’s own NES Play Action Football. Thanks to its simplistic gameplay, outstanding graphics (for the time), spectacular music and its fun factor, Tecmo Bowl remains a classic on the Original Nintendo Entertainment System and is easily the second-best football game on the system, next to Tecmo’s own 1991 Tecmo Super Bowl (which had all the then-28 NFL teams and over hundreds of real NFL Players).

It ranked #30 in Nintendo Power’s 100 Games of All-Time, during their 100th issue in September 1997. Many publications such as Time, GameSpot and IGN placed this outstanding game in one of the “Greatest Video Games of All-Time.” Thanks to its success, there was a Game Boy port released in August 1991 (four months before Tecmo Super Bowl was released) and saw various re-releases on Nintendo eShop’s Virtual Console series on the Wii, Wii U and 3DS – this time with the lack of NFL players and only identified by jersey number – Thanks EA for that despicable exclusive deal…SMH. It’s even included in the NES Classic Mini, which was released in 2016.

While Tecmo Super Bowl may be the better game, but it’s always nice to go back to the game that “started it all!” So, grab your NES, some friends with some snacks and drinks and get on some Tecmo Bowl!! Oh and also, when playing two players – never use Los Angeles nor San Francisco…haha…Jk