"Fun little diversion better suited for the arcades."

The reason Tecmo Bowl is better served in arcades is because the NES version is literally half a game. This isn't to say it's a bad game per se, but half a game is no exaggeration here.

Tecmo Bowl is an old, primitive football game with acceptable realism for a game made in 1989. The on-field sprites are very well-done and varied for their time, and it has enough basics down to resemble an actual game. There is a clock, 4 quarters, kickoffs and so forth. There are even some stats on screen for each player you have selected, and varied playbooks for each team. Before each play, for plays are on screen. Both the offense and defense pick one from the group, and if the defense guesses the offense's play correctly they blitz for an assured loss of yards.

It all adds up to a decent timesink for a few minutes, but is not a serious game. All good things are balanced out by weird oversights and flat-out stupid features. The most obvious is how only half the teams from the 1989 NFL season are actually in the game, and the "season" is little more than picking one team and running the gauntlet of increasingly difficult AI against all the other teams. It's a decent idea in theory, but it doesn't work. If you're a fan of the Buccaneers or the Patriots or the Eagles, sucks to be you. They're not in the game.

The other major issue is how easy it is to throw interceptions in this game. If anyone is anywhere close to the target receiver, it's almost a guaranteed pick. This adds a flavor of arcade randomness to the game, but is bad for console gaming. It's not unheard of for each team to have ten or more interceptions if both teams are passing enough. The correct course of action from here is obviously to run nearly every play, which eliminates a couple teams from serious use because their running plays are garbage -- See also: Reverses.

This sounds like a bad strategy, but it exploits other things wrong with the game. You will never ever fumble, get injured or get tired. Ever. Essentially, this means you should only ever pick the Raiders and run the ball with Bo Jackson on every play. He isn't nicknamed "Tecmo Bo" for nothing.

Overall it's a fun game for about five minutes, but once you go through once or twice with a couple different teams it's not worth going back to. Decent effort for an arcade game, but the NES is not an arcade system.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/12/09

Game Release: Tecmo Bowl (US, February 1989)