Tecmo Super Bowl

"The best football game on the system"

In 1991, Tecmo released Tecmo Super Bowl, their follow-up to the hugely popular Tecmo Bowl. Tecmo Bowl was such a huge hit because it featured actual players from the NFL and actual teams. This was a big improvement over other football games like 10-Yard Fight and John Elway's Quarterback, where everything was pretty much anonymous. Tecmo Bowl had some shortcomings, namely only twelve teams, four plays in the playbooks, and nine players on each side.


Gameplay: 9.5
Tecmo Super Bowl eliminates all of these shortcomings. It features all 28 teams (that's how many there were at the time) with dozens of players on each team. Each player is also rated in several categories, like running speed, blocking power, maximum speed, and more. Their ratings go up and down based upon their physical condition which improves or degrades during games, based on how much a player gets tackled and things like that. This allowed for much greater realism because players would perform like their real-life counterparts. Fans were in heaven.

Another great new feature was the full season mode. This let you play through the actual 1991 NFL season with any team (or several teams). You could set each team to one of four modes: manual (you control them), coach (you just call the plays), computer (the computer controls them) or skip (when two skipped teams play, the game plays automatically and you're just given the score and stats). So you can play as your favorite team, watch two computer-controlled teams duke it out, or simply just sit back and call plays and make substitutions. If you don't want to play a full season, you can just play a single game or a Pro Bowl game with the all-stars from each conference.

However, the full season features accurate standings and stat keeping. For the first time on the NES, the game would keep track of your stats over a whole season. And not just for your team, for EVERY player on EVERY team. This is nothing new these days, but it was an amazing breakthrough back then. There were even league leader pages that kept track of the leaders in dozens of offensive and defensive categories, so you can see how your favorite players are doing. The standings feature the six divisions in the NFL, point differentials, and an accurate playoff format with three divsion leaders and three wild-card teams from each conference making the playoffs.

During actual games themselves, there was the full eleven players on each side. Surprisingly, the NES doesn't slow down with all those sprites on the screen, so the gameplay is fast and fluid. Each team had eight plays, four run and four pass. If you call a running play, you automatically hand the ball off to the back and then you control him. You can stiff-arm defenders, but that's your only move. If it's a passing play then you control the quarterback and a little marker appears over the selected receiver. Pressing the A button cycles through the receivers so you should look for the open man and then pass with the B button. Unlike the first Tecmo Bowl, defenders flow towards the receiver when the ball is passed, so a guy who's initially open may not be by the time the ball gets there. On defense, you have to guess which play the offense is running. If you're correct, you stuff the play for a big loss. Otherwise, you can select which player to control before the snap, and then during the play you can dive for the ball carrier or wrestle him to the ground. You unfortunately can't switch players during the play, so you have to hope that your computer-controlled teammates are doing their jobs.

Some minor flaws pop up in the gameplay, such as you can't call a touchback on a kickoff, on punts it's automatically a touchback if it goes into the end zone, and you can't switch players like I mentioned above. This keeps it from getting a perfect score but it's still excellent gameplay, the best on the NES.

Graphics: 7.5
With 22 players bouncing around, you'd expect some slowdown from the NES, but amazingly there is none to be found. However, there is some flicker, but not enough to truly detract from the gameplay. The players are pretty small and look similar, but this is no big deal. They're actually the right skin color too.

Tecmo introduced the concept of cinema scenes in games like Ninja Gaiden and that's seen here too. For example, when a player jumps to catch a pass, the game may switch to a cinema scene showing him jumping to catch it, or it's the defender, deflecting or intercepting the pass. These scenes also happen on extra points, field goals, and touchdown celebrations, and it really helps keep you in the game. There's also a nifty halftime celebration.

Sound: 7.5
The background music is nothing too memorable, but it's your standard Tecmo songs with thumping drums and NES-quality guitars. You'll hear the players smash against each other every play, the sound of balls being caught and an alarm warning type sound whenever there's a fumble or interception. The quarterback also shouts out ''Ready! Down! Hut Hut Hut!'' for his cadence, which is pretty cool because there's not much voice on the NES.

Control: 9.0
The control is, for the most part, spot-on. Players who are fast move quickly while players who aren't are sluggish. The cycling through receivers is quick, and this is before the days of icon passing so this is about as good a system as there is for the NES. Diving can sometimes be inaccurate though, so a lot of times you're betting off chasing down the receiver and wrestling him down. The power-bar system for punts and kicks works fine, although you need to be careful if you try a full-power kick, because if you mess up you might get a zero-power kick. It might have been better had they made the power bar go all the way up and then come all the way back down.

Challenge: 9.0
You may notice that as you progress during the season the game starts getting harder. This is because the computer actually starts recognizing your patterns and adjusts accordingly. This allows for the playoffs to be challenging, even with a great team, and extremely difficult with a mediocre team.

Replay Value: 10.0
This is a game you can play for years, despite the fact that the rosters are outdated. The gameplay is so good and challenging that it's hard to get bored with this game. The two-player mode rocks as well and guarantees some good times.

Overall: 10.0
Tecmo Super Bowl is the finest football game for the NES, and definitely better than some 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit ones. It's a classic whose gameplay remains fun even today. The stat keeping, full season, and playoffs are always fresh, too. If you're a football fan, you've gotta own this game.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/04/00, Updated 05/04/00