Retro Game Review: Tecmo Bowl

Even though Tecmo Bowl for the Nintendo Game Boy was small, it was still better than no Tecmo Bowl at all!

Platform: Nintendo Game Boy
Released: 1991
Developer: Tecmo, of course!

Background: Duh, na, na, na, na, na, na... dum, dum...Duh, na, na, na, na, na, na... it's Tecmo Bowl! Yes, fans, it's that game we all wasted many a summer afternoons playing one another, hating your best buddy because he picked L.A. and ran all over you with Bo Jackson. Your only solace was you had the Giants and blocked every kick with Lawrence Taylor. In 1991, Tecmo released this classic in portable form for the Nintendo Game Boy. The game was essentially the exact same game as the NES version released a few years earlier with a few tweaks, the most obvious being the monochrome screen, the score and clock being located under the player names instead of in between and some sound issues, which I'll go through later. Licensing allowed Tecmo to use actual player names but team nicknames were forbidden (Punter Sean Landeta, who officially retired this year, was the last player from the original TB still playing in the NFL). The game features 12 teams based on those which made the playoffs when the original NES version was developed. Each team had four plays to choose from, and defense was played by guessing which play the offense picked. In TB, you played each of the other teams once apiece to earn the title and become TB champion. This game didn't have a save feature, so you had to write down a password after defeating each opponent.

Note: I played this game on my Nintendo GameCube through the Game Boy Player, which automatically adds color to the game. One team is always white, and the other is always red, no matter who you are or who you're playing. However, I'm grading visuals on what the game looked like on an original Game Boy, circa 1991, like in the screenshot above.

Graphics: 3/5
Compared to other football games for the GB I've reviewed (see Jackson, Bo), the graphics are above average, at least. The ball itself is still larger than life, but you can actually tell they are people playing football. Even if it's 9-on-9, it still looks good.

Sound: 1.5/5
This is where the Game Boy version slips away from its NES counterpart. The GB version keeps the same music throughout the game from the title screen on (including during plays). However, hardware restrictions (I suppose) forced Tecmo to remove all the voices from the game. So no hearing "Hut!" 100 times, no "Touchdown!" and no "It's good!" Instead, the voices are substituted with sound "blips" that take a little away but not enough to throw this game in the trash.

Controls: 4/5
Tecmo Bowl certainly isn't known for its complex control scheme. If you can press the D-pad up and down diagonally, you can pretty much run the ball without any trouble. Passing is nothing more than choosing your receiver with one button while pushing the other to throw. How hard is that?

Gameplay: 4/5
Other than the voices being nonexistent, my only gameplay complaint is that the players on the screen flicker insanely when everyone is on the screen doing something at once. And it's not the same during every play, either, which can be even more annoying. But based on what football video games were like back in 1991, I can give it a pass for this. Otherwise, it's nearly flawless fun, especially with two players.

Overall: 3.125/5
Before Tecmo Bowl, football video games were, in two words, pretty bad. After Tecmo Bowl, they grew into complex affairs that casual gamers can be turned off by. And while I sometimes like to delve into the more complex Madden franchise, there are other times a good pick-up game of Tecmo Bowl is all I really need to get my fix. If you find a GB or NES copy of Tecmo Bowl anywhere, pick it up and play it!