Tecmo Bowl

Now if you know me, which none of you do, I hate sports games with a passion. I'll maybe play NBA Street, but that's even pushing it. So you may be thinking, "Why the hell is this guy writing a review on Tecmo Bowl if he hates sports games?" Shut up and let me finish. I usually hate sports games, but this is a sports games that I'd be excited to play.

If you don't remember Tecmo Bowl, which many people don't because I get a lot of "Huh?"s when I ask people if they remember Tecmo Bowl, it was basically one of the first football games made.

This game provides all the fun parts of football without the complexity, basically you don't really have to worry about plays too much because the AI just chooses a counterplay at random and has no recognition of patterns whatsoever. I won a game using the same play over and over again. Remember, this is an NES game it shouldn't have amazing AI.

In this game you choose your team and then you play football and there's nothing else. While the graphics aren't great, they do well.

The controls are really easy to follow so you're 7 year old cousin can easily play it with you without screaming and throwing your controller. When you're on offense, you throw or run the ball and basically you just have to run down the field.

*NEAT TRICK*: If you run diagonally the defenders can't hit you. Very few times do they actually get you when you run diagonally.

The thing I don't like about this game is that the game has little cutscenes. Let me give you an example: Let's say you throw the ball to an open receiver and the ball is going to him, a little cutscene will happen where it'll show the player trying to get to the ball and it'll look really cool, but instead the player misses the ball and some defender who ran at 80 MPH down the field will intercept it. Yes, if you have the field open and you're running to the end zone, a defender actually takes steroids on the field and runs ridiculously fast to catch you. The reason I don't like the cutscene aspect of the game is because it gets your hopes up and most of the time, your hopes are shot down by a freakin' cutscene that made you BELIEVE you'd intercept the ball, but instead they catch it and take steroids to the end zone.

Along with the cutscenes, players pull impossible jumps jumping as high as 10 feet into the air to catch a hail-mary pass and they catch it perfectly and land without any problems and run again without any problems. I played this game with my cousin and the same thing happened over and over again. We'd get a 3rd down and we'd try a pass play and we'd have a receiver open and some guy would jump 10 feet in the air and catch the ball and then the process repeated.

Overall I still consider this game one of the best football games ever, even though it has slight problems. I forgive them because it's an NES game and for a game that's as old as it is to be so great, takes some skill.

I give this game 3 stars, if you don't like it come chase me I'll be the guy running diagonally away from a mob.

3 star(s) out of 5

Discuss More NES Games More Other Games