The #1 Most Influential Console Sports Game of All Time
Tecmo Super Bowl
1991
Tecmo
Nintendo NES

To me, this one is a no-brainer.

Its funny that I received so many responses from our forum members about the original Tecmo Bowl's spot at #10.  Not to take anything away from the classic 1987 release of the NFLPA licensed game, because it was a fantastic game of arcade football.  However, if you put Tecmo Bowl (1987) up against Tecmo Super Bowl (1991), the differences are night and day in terms of features.  Whereas Tecmo Bowl (1987) pioneered the use of an NFLPA license in a fun, arcade game that modeled 12 teams, Tecmo Super Bowl (1991) went light-years beyond that with unprecedented and ,at that time,  completely unexpected features and depth.  To be fair, any game released even 5 to 6 years AFTER the legendary Tecmo Super Bowl, generally had yet to adopt its incredible array of features.

Heck, even now, many sports games released in 2007 and 2008 don't have every feature that 1991's Tecmo Super Bowl had.

Tecmo Super Bowl was one of those games where you generally remember where you were when you first experienced it.  I remember in 1991, as a freshman at Edinboro University of PA, I had just purchased a used Sega Genesis for the sole purpose of playing the original EA NHL game, and I also picked up a used copy of John Madden Football (no year title in that one.)  After playing both of those games, I was pretty sold on the fact that it didn't get much better than that.  However, my friend Mike D., who was going to Pitt, gave me a call on the phone.

Mike D:  "Hey man, did you buy Tecmo Super Bowl yet?"
Me:  "No, that's an NES game.  I still have an NES, but I've kinda moved on from 8-bit.  Have you tried Madden Football yet for Genesis?"
Mike D: "Yeah,  now shut up and listen to me…go to Babbages and pick up Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES.  You'll thank me."
Me: "Come on, you think its better than the stuff on 16 bit? Get real."
Mike D: "Would I lead you wrong.  Hang up.  Go get it.

So, I rounded up some of the guys from my dorm (especially the one who had a car his freshman year…) and we took off for Babbages to get the new Tecmo game for NES.  After playing the game, an immediate long-distance phone-call was placed from my dorm to that of Craig Gonzalez (Bangpow) telling him to pick up the game too, but he already had heard the buzz and picked it up too.  Tecmo barely marketed the product from what I recall, but word of mouth for this product simply spread like wildfire.

Needless to say, there were many skipped classes in the weeks following our first Tecmo Super Bowl experience.  Experiencing Tecmo Super Bowl is just one of those times in gaming when you just go "Wow… this is simply amazing.." and you simply can't stop playing.   We were absolutely shocked that a game that came out so late in the "twilight years" of the NES 8-bit platform could impress us, let alone be considered the best sports video game we had ever played.

But why, might you as, was it so great?

First of all, the original Tecmo Bowl gave a very playable "base" from which to build Tecmo Super Bowl.  The well-animated 8-bit graphics managed to be very attractive despite using limited sprites.  Those 8-bit graphics were so detailed that, in fact, the game depicted both Caucasian and African American athlete's skin colors on the player models.  (It would take EA and other sports game manufacturers about 5 more years to get skin colors in football video games.)  For an 8-bit NES release, Tecmo's player graphics held up very well.  As for the gameplay, the extremely playable football engine used in the original Tecmo Bowl had been enhanced, and now included 11 players per side, unlike the 1987 game, which only had 9 players on screen.  Also, each team had 8 plays instead of the 4 plays from its predecessor.  Defense was still about guessing which of the 8 plays the offense would call, allowing for a super blitz when guessed correctly.  Beyond that, defense was also about picking which player you wanted to use before the play- because you couldn't switch defenders during the play.  That made avoiding blockers key, as well as personally trying to cover the player you thought the offense would throw to or run with.  The concept worked amazingly well, despite how used to "changing defenders" we are with football games today.   It was very addictive, very playable football.

Also, Tecmo Super Bowl was the first console football game to have both the NFL and NFLPA license in one game- which was pretty big- considering it would still be another 4 years before EA themselves would use both licenses together for Madden NFL '95.

Okay- now if Tecmo Super Bowl stopped right there with the features, you'd have a pretty darn good game of football.  However, they didn't stop there… not by a long shot.

The amazing thing about TSB was that it delivered on so many features we weren't even thinking about or were asking for.  Heck, at the time, many of us didn't even KNOW to ask for these things, simply because they had never been done before.  Here's a laundry list of features pioneered in 1991's  Tecmo Super Bowl..

Full 1991 NFL Season Schedule with playoffs and Super Bowl-  this was unheard of at that time for football games.  Every other game would just let you start in a tournament.  Even Madden wouldn't have full NFL season play for 2 more years.

Player Injuries-  players would get hurt during games, sometimes for multiple weeks.  You'd be elated when you fired up a season game only to see the cut scene of your star player running out of the hospital.  Sure, Madden had injuries at the time, but they could only span the game that you were playing when the player got hurt.  I'm talking multi-week injuries here. 

Exhaustive battery backed season stats:  This was a first for football games.  League leaders, team leaders, offensive and defensive stat rankings, QB ratings, individual player stats, all saved to memory and sort-able through a fantastic interface that holds up even to this day. It would be several years before the competition would catch up with this. 

Hot & Cold streaks: Individual player ability ratings cycled several points up and down throughout the season under the "player conditions" status readout, from "excellent", to "good", to "average", to "bad".  "Excellent" would mean a hot streak where the player could play extremely well,  "bad" meant their play would be slumping and a cold streak that could span multiple games, etc.  This wasn't altogether new, but it was rare.  I'm only aware of the 2^nd version of Bases Loaded by Jaleco having something similar with its "biorhythms ratings" which would account for hot/cold streaks.  However, even today, most of the sports games don't account for anything on the level of slumps or streaks with rating changes the way TSB did.

The ability to declare multiple human controlled teams in a season:  You could join the full 1991 schedule with as many of the 28 teams as you had friends willing to play their games.   This was a first, and something STILL begged for in many of today's sports games (particularly online, with online franchise).  In short, the MAN controlled teams ran their schedule, and the computer controlled teams simmed their games except when up against a MAN controlled opponent.  TSB also had a very slick interface for adjusting these settings in-season. 

Individual offensive player substitutions-  Tecmo was the first licensed game to allow you to swap offensive players from the bench.  This was unheard of in football gaming on consoles at that time.  So if you are up 3 TDs in the 4^th quarter and you are using the Lions, you would consider putting Barry Sanders on the bench so as not to risk injury… (or you could roll the dice and try to pad some rushing stats and tick-off your friend..).   The feature was great, and added depth, strategy, and realism to the game. 

Presentation through animated cut scenes-  Tecmo pioneered this.  There were cut scenes depicting many things that happened during the game and throughout the season, such as big interceptions, TD celebrations, injuries, making the playoffs, winning your division, coming back from an injury, and winning the Super Bowl.  In the case of "mid-play cut-scenes" – such as for interceptions- they happened so fast (when your player was in position for a pick, a 1 second cut scene showing either an INT or an INT drop) that it was never a nuisance and only added to the feel of the game.  Most of these scenes made sure to use the players name to highlight the star players making big plays.  It really spawned the early genesis of what 2K would later pioneer in terms of some of its presentation in NFL 2K5, and EA in many of its games as well.

Editable offensive playbook-  You could set your 8 available offensive plays by picking from about one hundred different offensive plays.  Again, It would be 4 to 5 years before customizable playbooks would show up in other sports video game products.

Needless to say, We NEVER expected this kind of depth from a sports game in 1991.  This was revolutionary stuff.  But it there was so much even beyond that.  One of the things that made Tecmo Super Bowl great is that the 1991-92 season that it modeled was particularly "star-heavy" in the NFL.  I can think of few other years where so many NFL stars had "career overlap" with one another in terms of being on active rosters in the same year.  This was highlighted even more by TSB having both the league and NFLPA license.   Think about these stars modeled in the game.

Dan Marino, Mark Duper, Mark Clayton, Barry Sanders, Warren Moon, John Elway, Jerry Rice, Joe Montana (aka QB 9ERS), Roger Craig, Ronnie Lott, Lawrence Taylor, Phil Simms, Mark Bavaro, Carl Banks, OJ Anderson, Bo Jackson, Marcus Allen, Tim Brown, Howie Long, Matt Millen, Deion Sanders, Andre Rison, Art Monk, Randall Cunningham (aka QB Eagles), Reggie White, Sterling Sharpe, Bernie Kosar, Eric Metcalf, Boomer Esiason, Ickey Woods, Mike Singletary, Jim Kelly (aka QB Bills), Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, James Lofton, Andre Reed, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Christian Okoye, Derrick Thomas, Rod Woodson, Greg Lloyd, Steve Largent, Darrell Green…and many many more.

In short, a game with the license and the tools to focus on the stars of the NFL, sure had one hell of a lot of stars to highlight.  And that is exactly what Tecmo Super Bowl did like no other console football game.  In many cases, find myself remembering these players more because of using them in TSB than I do from actually watching many of them play.  Also, the 1991-92 season just happened to feature a very diverse set of NFL teams, particularly regarding how they played the game.  TSB modeled the power running teams, such as the Steelers, Bears, and Chiefs.  It modeled the Run N' Shoot teams like the Oilers, Falcons, and the "Silver Stretch" Lions.  It modeled the multiple read passing teams such as the Skins, 49ers, Dolphins.  It modeled the Bills and the "K-Gun" with its shotgun heavy formations. It modeled the wild multi-threat Eagles offense, as well as a rookie laden Cowboys team headed by a very young Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith.  You name it…Tecmo had it.  And they couldn't have picked a better NFL year to do it.

TSB was simply an awesome game that set a standard for a total package that wouldn't be touched for many years, and arguably hasn't been eclipsed to this day by more current football releases.  The game was simply that unexpected, that deep, and that influential to those of us who had the privilege of playing it when it came out.  The game even holds up extremely well 17 years later. It had something to appeal to any fan of football. 17 years later, makers of sports games still manage to deliver some, but rarely all, of the features that Tecmo pioneered back in 1991 (like hot/cold streaks, multiple human controlled franchise teams in the same season).  And that's the sign of a true classic. 

Tecmo Super Bowl was simply the most influential sports video game of all time in the estimation of Consolesports.net

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