I’d like to take the time to introduce a new feature here at MEGATONik, our Weekly Retro Review. This series of retro reviews should run every week, and we will cover games on many retro consoles, including the Atari 2800, NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis, etc etc. To begin, let me reintroduce possibly one of the greatest sports games to ever grace the 16-bit generation, Tecmo Super Bowl. The game was released on the SNES in 1991, following the great success of its predecessor, Tecmo Bowl, on the NES. Unfortunately, the series withered away and eventually died after was released for the PlayStation, which received very little praise from the press. Recently, however, fans of the series, meaning us withered up SNES dead-heads, have been calling out to Tecmo to put their endless sequels to Ninja Gaiden on hold and revive the game on a next-generation console.

Intrigued? Want to go back to the good old days of sitting on the couch with a friend, playing video games until your mind rotted and your eyes fell out? Then pitch the ball to Okoye and hit the jump for my retro review of Tecmo Super Bowl.

You play as an NFL team who has made it to the Super Bowl. It’s your chance to either win it and go to Disney World, or fail and get taunted by your glasses-bound, acned friend who lisps when he says words that end in “s”.

Gameplay is the area in which Tecmo Super Bowl really pulls away from other football games. The gameplay is simple, yet it allows for tons of fun to be had, at least for the winning team, and subsequently tons of curses to be thrown around. After choosing sides and returning the kickoff, the game gives you eight plays to pick from, four passing plays and four running plays. (There is also a play that you can choose by hitting the X button that launches the running back over the line of scrimmage, which can be used to pick up a precious one or two yards.) As the player with the ball chooses his play, the defending player also chooses one of those plays, to guard against whichever play the offense picked. If the defense picks the same play as the offense, a blitz will ensue and, more than likely, the offense’s quarterback will be sacked. The buttons are simple, hit A as the QB to hike the ball, pick which receiver to throw to and hit B to throw it, and the way in which the game operates regarding running with the ball is one of the best systems ever. It’s difficult to explain just how well the running system in Tecmo Super Bowl works; you’ll just have to try it out for yourself. Oh and for added fun, pick the Kansas City Chiefs as your team and play against the Indianapolis Colts. Be sure to hand it off to Okoye every time; there’s only one defender on the entire Colts defence that can tackle him.

Look at those pixels! That pink endzone touches me in a way that only a pink endzone could. You could say that I’ve been shooting to hit the pink endzone for quite a few years now, and have in numerous cases. All sexual innuendo aside, Tecmo Super Bowl is somewhat lacking, even based on the standards of the time. Think of it as the Wii to Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog’s Xbox 360. Alright, maybe that analogy doesn’t quite suit the situation, but we can all agree that while the graphics are by no means revolutionary, but fit the general style that Tecmo was going for.

Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! The sound effects in Tecmo Super Bowl are the same as all sports games of that era, cheesy as hell. The sound, also cheesy as hell, is nothing epic, but cannot be written off as “lame” either.

Once you get the hang of it, which should only be a few plays in, you’ll play Tecmo Super Bowl until your eyes bleed. More realistically, however, you’ll play until thumbs ache from jamming the once pristine buttons of the SNES controller. With the ability to play a full season, the game will keep you interested for a while, and will remain one of those chosen few SNES games that you keep returning to in years past.

4.5/5