Video game number one hundred and eighteen: Tecmo Bowl Throwback

Video game review number one hundred and eighteen in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is"Tecmo Bowl: Throwback".

Tecmo Bowl is one of those universal experiences that most every gamer my age I know shared in the 1980's, except for me. This was an arcade game first, and then eventually an NES game...and for some reason (don't ask why, because I have no idea)....I never really played it.

I very well might have played the occasional game of Tecmo Bowl at a friend's house, but even though I owned over 400 video games back in the day, this wasn't one of them. In fact, other than the Atari 2600 classic, I don't think I actually bought a football game until the John Madden series on the Sega Genesis was released. The 1992 version of that game remains my favorite football game of all time, and I've bought many sequels since then.

I'm saying all of this because much like my review of Battlefield: 1943, I think it's very important to mention that I wasn't a fan of this game in the 1980's, so that probably explains why I'm not a fan of it now.

If you grew up on Tecmo Bowl, you're probably super stoked about this. The original game, with 3D updated graphics (and you can toggle the modes at will with your Right Bumper?). Awesome. If you're like me...and you didn't grow up on this game, you're probably just wondering why the field is horizontal, instead of vertical.

The controls are nice and easy (A and B buttons do pretty much everything), but the gameplay isn't as interesting as other sports games I remember from the NES. Blades of Steel. Double Dribble. Bases Loaded. Even Track and Field. All of these are better games (in my mind) than Tecmo Bowl. Had I been into this back then, those rankings might change, but because I wasn't...they won't.

Overall Score? 5/10. As far as Arcade games go, this is an average update to an old classic, and I'll give it credit for that. The teams don't sport the real NFL names the way they did in the 1980's, but I was able to pick my San Francisco team and dominate the way I expected I should...so that was cool.

Achievements? Here are a few that I got. The rest of them are pretty easy too