Game #64 of my challenge

Now that I'm back on where I was at, we now move on to a good sports game. But This time, we are playing football.

I won't spend much time on the plot of this game since..... it's a sports game. Be the best team and win the super bowl. That's about it.

The music however, should not be allowed to be this good for a NES game. The title screen song is such a good song. During the gameplay, there's some tiny song bits that plays depending on what's happening during the game. This add some enjoyment during the gameplay.

The visual is good for what it needs to be during gameplay. Tiny players running around on the field is enough to understand what's going on. One thing that I though what nice was the transition screen. They were detailed pictures with a little bit of movement in them. They look really good for an early NES game.

The controls are good (except for the pass section). They were able to add so many options on one button depending on the situation. This helps for a controller that only have A or B on it. The kickoff is a simpler golf gauge that you need to hit at the right time. Running with the ball is good and you can mash the A button to get out of a tackle. For a pass, the controls are not instinctive. To select who you want to throw the ball, you need to tap A to switch and once you selected your player, Tap on B to pass. The selection player thing is not the best in my opinion.

For the gameplay, depending if you are on Offence or Defense, you will have 4 different plays that you can select from. However, there are only 4 plays for the whole game. It's understandable for the era since it would have been hard to program so many players on the field for the type of play you selected. On offence, selecting a run play was really easy to get the first play usually (or even a touchdown). On defense, I don't if it was programmed like that or simply luck, but when I was selecting a run defense tactics, the opposite team will take a run play and same thing goes for a pass defense tactic. This make the game was easier to win.

I still really enjoyed my time playing this game. Right now, it's my second favorite sports game on the console and it impressed me on how they managed to create a football game on the NES.

I was never the biggest sports fan, at least in terms of actually watching it on TV. The only "sports" I watch are pro wrestling and Battlebots. That being said, sports tend to make for good games!

I think Tecmo Bowl is a pretty good attempt at bringing handegg to video games on an 8-bit console with only two real buttons. Only four plays is kinda hilarious though, aren't playbooks like ginormously huge irl? Imagine if the NFL teams of today only had four plays, the Patriots wouldn't even need to cheat to figure out their opposition.

Unfortunately I only have the CPU to play against, who's pretty easy to bamboozle it feels like out of the 20 minutes I played or maybe I accidentally picked the team with Bo Jackson on it who's apparently some kind of god among men. I would totally enjoy playing this with someone human though! I enjoy the Ninja Gaiden-esque little cutscenes when you score a TD or when the refs measure to see if you got a first down, little things like that add so much.

Good game, just not quite as much nostalgia attached to it due to my dad being the one playing this on the NES back then. I can see why he loved it enough to deny me playing RC Pro-am or Duck Hunt.

Given my lack of enthusiasm for sports and sports games this was a little more fun than I expected, but I still wasn’t that big on it. It’s got some interesting strategy but I don’t know, maybe I would like this more if I could open up a manual and read it to figure out what’s going on? Still, while I can’t really see myself going back to this and i got kind of frustrated I was genuinely kind of surprised.

Although where the heck is Pittsburgh? I feel like I should be mildly offended by its absence!