Tecmo Bowl available in Virtual Console today
 

In case, y'know, any Wii owners care.

I'll wait for Tecmo Super Bowl.

I wish Tecmo would add free agency and a draft to the game and give us a version with fake players and generic uniforms that can be edited.

You know, come to think of it, thats what I want Jim's next project to be. A Tecmo Super Bowl game with all the fixings.

Its too bad Ultimate Tecmo Super Bowl never panned out.

Does anyone else still remember the password from the first time they ever got to the Tecmo Bowl?

11AFFBA7, bitches!

Alright guys. Tecmo's time has come and gone. Y'all and Bill Simmon can STFU now about it ok?

Ok, after the last post, I think I'm going to stop drinking. Wife's home in less than 90 minutes, so gotta start cleaning up here.

You remember all those f'd up passwords? The 8's looked like B's, the 0's looked like O's, the 6's looked like G's, etc. The best was figuring out the password for something that displayed like: 60B8BG6.

Or maybe I had a shitty TV back then (13" from K-Mart, still have it).

it's honestly still the best football video game ever made. nothing has caputred some degree of realism but with a ton of fun and simplicity.

So think many others. I was just yanking your chain anyways.

I thought maybe. It's such a shame really though that nothing has been able to capture the fun like that game did, and the cinema cutaway scenes were totally brilliant. I just wonder if maybe realism can only go to point X before it starts sucking away the fun as it further increases.

I don't think it's the realism that 'sucks away the fun.'

I think it's the fact that complexity grows with that realism. Look at football. As the graphics have gotten better, the attention to detail has had to grow to maintain the suspension of disbelief. That means football players now have to be able to juke, stiffarm, spin, leap, etc.

And, of course, absent some kind of context-sensitive controls that allow you to accomplish those things with one button press, that means that controls get more complicated as technology progresses.

The realism contributes, because without that you don't have the pressure to add all sorts of bells and whistles to keep your audience enthralled, but I don't think it's the main cause.

My 7th grade science teacher once said that it isn't HIV that kills someone - it's the piggyback diseases that take advantage of the weakened immune system.

Same principle here, IMO. The realism isn't reducing the fun factor; what it's doing is opening the door for other elements to do that.

I also think that when a gamer is supposed to be more realistic, we have a tendency to not overlook the flaws as we would have in the more simple game.

Not all of them -- just the first time. After playing two-player for so long, a friend and I finally took the time to run the gauntlet. We played as Seattle, and ended up facing Cleveland in the Tecmo Bowl (seemed like 50% of the time it would be them). Seattle ruled -- you could block extra points and FGs better than New York, and they had the inexplicable purple jerseys. But anyway, after going through the one time, I used that password to play a lot, so I guess I remember it from that. But the rest? Not at all.

I still say Tecmo could have made millions by just re-releasing Tecmo each year with new rosters. Like you wouldn't pay $50 a year just to see what LT2 was like in Tecmo.

Now that EA has an exclusive contract, the dream is dead.

I re-iterate.. Generic editable rosters. I would pay even 100 dollars for a tecmo game with all the bells and whistles, because it really is still the best football game ever made. Think of the online coach-only leagues we could have..