Those Tecmo Super Bowl sleepovers...awake 'till daybreak

Tecmo and Mike Tyson PunchOut was a hugh part of growing up.

Tecmo Super Bowl was a game changer. As a kid, I played this game religiously.

Tecmo Super Bowl is by far the best sports game on the NES and a legend of all time.

I remember QB Eagles, that dude was a beast. He almost made it to the Super Bowl when he was QB Vikings.

When I first got Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES I just couldn't believe how good it was. We had full season tournaments in my dorm room where everyone was assigned a team and we played out one season per semester. The game was a quantum leap forward in sports gaming at the time.

Did anyone else ever use a nose tackle to sack the Quarterback as fast as possible for Tecmo Super Bowl? Easiest sack ever!

Tecmo super bowl III is one of my all time favorite games and I still play it all the time. Rebuilding a team through free agency and trading keeps it fresh and exciting

Tecmo Superbowl for the nes is my all-time favorite game.

Wish I could get as hyped about something as a boomer like I did the first time I played Tecmo Super Bowl. Seeing my Tampa Bay Bucs with actual logo, colors and players blew my mind. 12 years old and sneaking up late to pick off passes with Wayne Haddix and sling touchdowns with Vinny Testaverde. Nostalgic bliss.

I got this for Christmas in 1991, pure videogame bliss!

If you’re a Niners fan you did have to smile, by far the best team in Tecmo Super Bowl ... Nice job on the video !

Tecmo Super Bowl may be the greatest NES game of all time. Definitely the best football game on NES. Tecmo Baseball was also really good, but doesn't really get much love. I remember when we'd love playing Tecmo Bowl, and then, when Super came out, it was SOOOO much more amazing.

Tecmo Super Bowl isn't just the best sports game on NES, it's the best game.

TecmoBowl was some of the best football you could play on console...I remember being hyped when ur RB or QB finally came back from injury during a season!!! And the editor in 3 was awesome... creating myself as a rb and dragging everyone on the field was awesome 😎

Can we get a 2022 Tecmo bowl with NFL rights with a mixture of tb throwback graphics and a feel of retro bowl gameplay shit would be awesome tecmo!!

Great video, I have fond memories of Tecmo Super Bowl, mostly the SNES version and TSB III.

Incredible research! Really going above and beyond getting all the magazine mentions, subbed instantly when I saw that

14:00...the Marcus Allen ad shot was just a preview. They always intended on using an actor and having them wear the uniform of whoever ultimately won the Super Bowl just like the NES version, which of course, turned out to be Dallas.

OMG, my childhood, love Tecmo Bowl games, much need video! back to the future.

I still play Tecmo Superbowl on NES.

Thanks for making this video its been long overdue!! The fact theres still Tecmo Bowl tourneys going on speaks volumes to this games longevity Personally I’ve always loved Tecmo III the most, it has the best gameplay, create a player and free agency, once we win a few Superbowls Legendary players were available as free agents. Loved how power backs dragged tacklers and could break free (Ironhead Heyward anyone) Barry Sanders with his spins, jukes, hurdles.. a pain to catch let alone tackle to say the least, even on plays we picked that would be an all out blitz!! TSB on Genesis&Snes to me Segas was better it felt much more challenging, snes was too easy Yes im fully aware of how tough the AI gets in postseason haha Thats when we have to be at our best! How many have also cringed when we didnt pick the Wr reverse play, knowing it was huge gain or TD everytime?!?

There are no exact words to say how much I loved Tecmo Super Bowl when it came out.......full seasons, real teams, real players, full playoffs, stats for days, playbooks......it was like we'd died and gone to football heaven. I remember summers where I'd just set the game to simulate all 17 weeks, come back to my room 30 min later and pick team to run the playoffs with.....good times

Love the Tecmo Super Bowls and creating guys on the SNES. we would create one Defensive guy and one Offensive guy when we played.

I loved Tecmo Super Bowl (SNES) due to it announcing the in-game achievements (100 rushing yards, 150 receiving yards, 300 passing yards)

I still play my copy of Tecmo Super Bowl on the NES, that was given to me by my uncle. I recently got into emulation and started playing the other versions from the SNES. Thanks for such an amazing video I really appreciated the time and love you poured into the video.

Thanks, that was fantastic! Tecmo Super Bowl is still my favorite Christmas present of all time! I still have it but not the system.

This was very well put together, bravo sir!

This was a really great video! I didn't grow up with the series, and only seriously starting getting into sports games in the late 90s when my favorite NY teams (Mets, Giants, Knicks, Rangers) were either still good or were starting to get good. Within the last year I began to feel a desire to get back into sports games, so I starting picking up titles that I missed the first time around. Seeing a number of Tecmo Super Bowl videos on KZfaq convinced me to give that series a shot, and I'm so glad that I did. It almost makes me wish I could go back in time and somehow convince my younger self to get these games, because I would've had the time of my life with them. Besides that, I have to say again that this is a great video, and the attention that you put into it would've gotten me hooked on Tecmo even if I had never tried the games before.

The Tecmo series was awesome. I remember getting the Tecmo Super Bowl 🏈 and being so stoked about season long stats, player injuries, and other cool little extras. When Tecmo released Tecmo Super NBA 🏀Basketball🏀 I bought it instantly and I wasn't disappointed at all! I remember wishing, hoping that Tecmo would do a MLB Baseball game. Tecmo was ahead of the curve on these games! And I loved them all!

My brotha this is a good video! Keep up the awesome work!

Wow! Very good video! Huge Tecmo Bowl fan. New Subscriber

Thanks for this retrospective. Really takes me back.

Hundreds and hundreds of hours of my life playing this series. Thank you for the trip down memory lane.

Thanks for doing this. I really enjoyed it. I'm a fellow 49ers fan, and it was definitely an awesome time in the 90's when they were so good in addition to playing this game.

It warms my heart endlessly that this video (and the comments below it) consistently and correctly call the game "Tecmo Super Bowl" and not "Super Tecmo Bowl". Thank you and nice work 👍

Great comprehensive look at the series. I played TB and TSB religiously on NES (and enjoyed TSB on SNES and Genesis). However I do not have fond memories of TSB II and TSB III, but your coverage has made me want to go back and give them another look. (I do remember buying the PlayStation 1 version and hated it as well. 😂) Thanks for the trip down memory lane with your well-made video. Terrific job!

Another great feature about Tecmo Super Bowl III is the ability to call Time Out immediately after the play is over by hitting the start button.

I really enjoyed this. Brought back many great memories. Thank you.

I thought I knew everything about Tecmo Bowl. Thanks for the education. Never knew about the Gameboy, Part 2! That Blew my mind and The DS version. Never saw the Arcade cabinet growing up or just didn't notice it. Thanks again

I remember reading shortly after it was released that Sega Genesis version of Tecmo Super Bowl also only had 15,000 copies made. I had (and still have, though I haven't played them for many years) NES Tecmo Bowl, NES Tecmo Super Bowl, and the Sega Genesis Tecmo Super Bowl II. (I was very lucky to get TSB II; I remember seeing two copies at a local KayBee Toys in I think summer 1995, and my brother and I bought those last two copies. I think that was the only time I saw them new in the store. I was also fortunate to get NES TSB a few months before most people; my mother saw it at a local department store about 2-3 days after Christmas in December 1991 when I was working during my college semester break and picked it up for me. Most people weren't able to buy copies of the game until spring 1992.) My younger brothers had the Sega Genesis Tecmo Super Bowl and Sega Genesis Tecmo Super Bowl III, so I played those games a little bit too. I personally liked TSB II better than TSB III because the latter played a little too slippery and didn't have as good of control as TSB II. Both TSB II and TSB III did play significantly slower than NES TSB, but TSB II was still a lot of fun. I also preferred the NES Tecmo Super Bowl over the original Sega Genesis Tecmo Super Bowl; I felt the NES version played a little better. IMO, and I think most people's opinions, Tecmo Bowl was definitely the best football game on the NES before Tecmo Super Bowl was released. (Of course, Tecmo Super Bowl quickly blew Tecmo Bowl out of the water after it was released; it was a dramatically better game.) Most other football games on the NES, like NFL Football by LJN, John Elway's Quarterback, and the early 10 Yard Fight, were trash. The only other reasonably good NES football game besides the two Tecmo games IMO was NES Play Action Football, which wasn't as good or fun as Tecmo Bowl but was a solid, worthwhile game.

Outstanding video bubba. You really brought me back. I'm 42 years old. I remember playing Temco Bowl all weekend Have a blessed 2024

Deion Sanders is my favorite athlete of all time and loved playing with him on these classics. KR,PR and CB. Awww what great memories

Love this I played the heck out of this back in the day and still play it on occasion to this day!

3:10...you're exactly right. They hadn't finalized the NFLPA license agreement. And if you look in the screenshot of the game, the workaround had been to use the real players first names (i.e. 16-Joe for Montana on San Francisco) as opposed to their last name. So on scores, it would literally just be the first name. The delay was because a few players, most notably Eric Dickerson, were upset at their lack of compensation for their likeness being used. That's why the initial Tecmo Bowl games with him included were initially semi-rare. He was replaced by Albert Bentley in the game as a result, and didn't appear in Tecmo Super Bowl despite still being on the Indianapolis Colts at the time. It is interesting that he wasn't made to be RB Colts like Jim Kelly, Bernie Kosar, and Randall Cunningham, who famously became QB Bills, Browns, and Eagles when they opted out of the NFLPA agreement.

One interesting feature i didn't see discussed about the DS game was the fact you could use the stylus to throw to a receiver instead of cycling through. This feature was almost game-breaking.

Awesome video well done I remember staying up all night playing this game.

ahh yes, the punt it into the endzone for a safety.... Lol

Yea man that was alot of fun running through a 17 week season with my buddy. Great memories.

Terrific video! We all know the original TSB is legendary ( and should be higher on lists), but I have a tremendous amount of love for III as well. Between the CAP you can improve by playing well, and the historic players you can unlock and sign in FA, I've logged many hours playing it. Subbed and will check out more of your vids from the past. ✌

What an awesome retrospective! I’ve never played Tecmo football games but the Tecmo brand is strong and well known. I’ll check out some of the games.

This retrospective was pretty cool. I've always loved Tecmo Bowl but there was several of these that I didn't even know were made. !GG sir, GG. 🏈

Great video, glad I found this. I'm also glad you covered the ill-fated Wii reboot that never was. I worked on that game. I was the original designer, when we were all still in the primary office in Missouri, and then later I worked remotely as an animator for the Austin studio that developed it (I was still in the Missouri office). I was so excited because I was a big sports video game fan, really the only one at my studio, and I really loved the old Tecmo Bowl franchise. I was thrilled when I got a first glimpse of our first playable build. It was rough, but it was fun. With more polish I thought it could be a really awesome game. However, when the next build came out that we were going to show to the publishers, while it was improved graphically with new models and animations, the game play had fallen behind and it was extremely laggy. It's what happened in most of our projects at that studio---we pushed to get more features in at the expense of gameplay because the publishers generally wanted it. Well, Tecmo was way more savvy than the other publishers we'd worked with, and I'm guessing they saw that new version and saw the decline in quality, and wanted out. I don't know the whole story, but something happened between the leadership of our studio and the Tecmo brass, and shortly after that they cut the schedule down, tried to salvage some of the work we put in, and rebranded it as Family Fun Football. None of my animations made it in the game, and hardly any of my design was used. The game was a flop, and my big moment as a game developer -- working on an iconic franchise -- was once again dashed. Incidentally, it was a cautionary tale against remote work, or at least remote work done poorly. Had I been there and seen more of the daily development, I could have sounded the alarm. Not that it would have made much difference.

Well done. You clearly put a lot of admirable effort into this.

I played most of the Tecmo Nintendo and some of the Sega versions as I got older games and spent many years of my life playing these games. Thank you to my parents and uncles. One of the greatest sports franchises of all time.

Thanks for making this outstanding in depth review video!!! NES Tecmo Super Bowl was all I played when I got it for Christmas in 1992. I played this after school, stayed up late Friday nights trying different teams to play against the game, so I knew who would be the best to play against my friends. I grew up in Dallas, so my friends wanted to be the Cowboys all the time, because they were winning games and went on to win the Super Bowl that season '92 and '93. But they could never beat me, because the top teams in my opinion were the 49ers because Montana was money all the time with Rice, Taylor or Jones. The Lions because Barry Sanders was unstoppable. The Bears because Neal Anderson and Brad Muster just bulldozed over tacklers and their defense was great, but Harbaugh was horrible. The Raiders because Allen and Bo Jackson were the best RB tandem and Greg Townsend and Howie Long were the best DE tandem. And the Dolphins because Marino was accurate, Offerdahl and Louis Oliver were tackling machines. No to brag but no kid on my neighborhood block could beat me.

Loved those cut scenes. The deep ball toss was like some crazy anime shit

something no one mentions is how smooth, fluid, and dare i write, realistic the running animation looks in the 89' game and the 91' sequel.

The PS1 game was right up there with Baseball Stars 2 as one of the biggest disappointments that I ever purchased at full price upon release!! Like you said, they killed the series with that release.

Before we were gaming to Goldeneye, we were all addicted to Tecmo Bowl. I still have all my copies of the games and even the NES Classic. Even my daughter enjoys playing them!

loved Super Tecmo bowl as a kid; rented that all the time.

The fact that the receivers could catch the ball on the run without having to stop as they did in the first one was the best feature for Me.

Awesome video man, thanks!

Awesoome Video I am also a huge fan of the tecmo bowl series! The greatest football game ever made! Keep up the good work.

Tecmo Super Bowl on the NES has the record for how many times I rented a game. I should've bought it, for how much I spent on rentals for it. I managed to buy Tecmo Super Bowl II - SE and I made the mistake of selling it after college. I didn't realize how rare or limited it was.

Can't wait to play through these 👍

I just started playing this series again after 25 years. Wow I'm old. But I haven't enjoyed a Madden since Madden 12 and I loved NFL 2K5. After watching this I was moved to hook up the old Genesis. Works like a charm. More fun than I've had in years. I enjoy NBA live 95 as well.

would always take the kick off and punts and down them on the 1 yard line. this way we could do 99 yard passes and runs. and i have every one of those nintendo powers too.

I love Tecmo Super Bowl. As a kid, I didn’t know it was the second game. I went to a friends house to stay the night once, and he had Tecmo Bowl. Felt like a step back, haha.

I still remember playing Tecmo Super Bowl at my grandma's house. She lived near the eagles stadium only few blocks away and when it was nice out with the windows open I could hear the crowd when something good happened.

@ 10:26- Barry Sanders 16/430yrds😆 Barry had himself a game!!!

The one I spent the most time on was the DS version. I edited all the teams and players and uniforms to match the years I played. I remember liking the second NES release until I realized no matter what you did you top player would always get injured at some point. I would reset the game when that happened and made it through 1 season as the Lions with Barry Sanders at 16-0. I never played it on the PSX or the Digital version. I would love a Tecmo compilation on the Switch as that system seems to have the most releases of retro games to date in physical form. Great video glad it was suggested.

Great great great Video. For me tecmo it Is also one of the best memories of childhood and adolescence i Still play today of course with the 49 ers

I remember my uncle's family coming down to our house during the Christmas holidays and my cousin had Tecmo Super Bowl. He played it all the time as a member of the Giants. It was the 1990 roster but had the 1991 season. Either way, it blew my mind seeing the real players and how competitive the game was. All I knew was my brother and I begged my parents for one and we got it a few months later. We played it religiously . I know Madden gets all the attention, but THIS is where kids got their first exposure to playing football games.

It’s not fair how fast our childhood went by. The 80’s and 90’s were truly magical times and I wish I’d have known then that it was going to be my peak time of happiness because I would have tried to take in the moments more. I am blessed to have babies of my own now and I love them unconditionally, but I would be a liar if I told you I don’t often think back to being a kid with a longing nostalgia.

man this takes me back!

So many memories and sleepless nights...

The Tecmo Bowl series rocks and really need to be brought back with the full NFL licenses, some thing E.A. needs to share and also the 2 point conversions came into play back in 94, i remember when they added them.

That was awesome took me back to my childhood but you never mention how the ball was thrown right tru the defensive CBs when you have them covered love the content

Tecmo Super Bowl (NES) remains my favorite football game to this day. When you hear that playoff music you know shit's about to get intense.

Awesome vid!

Awesome guitar solos in the soundtrack

Tecmo Super Bowl 2 SE, I remember sitting there for I bet an hour or so trying to get Emmit Smith on the 49ers. I finally did it, that season was just fun!

Yeah I clearly remember Dickerson being in my game. I also remember my friend did not have him. Thx for clearing that up.

Tecmo Super Bowl (NES) is the greatest sports game ever made. It was the first sports game to track stats. The rosters really made the game.

Love the video. I'm seeing this for the first time and also loving the fact that you're a 49er fan. Thank you! Just want to say that the video was great but I don't know if you know that about repeating as super bowl champions. There was a mode where if you select the 3 years in a row schedule, the challenge was the win. The super bowl three straight years in a row. I was almost able to do it but I was one game away from the super bowl and I lost so I kind of did with the San Francisco 49ers did when they lost to the Giants who ended up playing the bills in the super bowl of that year. I believe in tecmo super bowl. 2. If you do when three straight super bowls in a row, I think they have the slots available for Carolina and Jacksonville because there're two empty slots and I believe if you win the super bowl you might unlock both of those teams, but I've never heard or seen anybody doing that.

Going from 10 yard fight ti Tecmo Bowl was amazing, in school yard this was the best sports game ever!!

I stop playing after super tecmobowl 2 for snes. I didn't even know they had a part3 or a game for ps1. Great video great memories

SNES TSB is still the best football game of all-time IMO. The flickering on the NES is the reason I have it below the SNES version.

I played the HELL out of Tecmo Bowl, but I NEVER knew there was a version with Payton and Steve Largent and Eric Dickerson. Crazy!

Tecmo Super Bowl was incredible. Truly ahead of its time.

Each NES console release had tremendous replay value, but TSB and TSB 3 were off the charts. They did a great job making quality upgrades with each release.

Man I remember it like yesterday. I would rent Tecmo Super Bowl for the nes and my friends would have a sleep over and play an entire season. Good memories.

My friend had purchased other Tecmo games, and one of them came with a poster for upcoming games in development. At the time, Tecmo Bowl was called Gridiron Fight.

Before all this, about all we had was those NFL pencils to play with. I remember trading those viciously. 😂

Great research

Good video bro

Awesome video. Never knew there were multiple tecmo bowl football games. This was interesting. I missed out on alot. I guess I got lost when genesis came out with Joe Montana football 😂😂😂

Thanks for the great video.I lost a tooth once because I beat someone playing this game.He was nicknamed tooth fiery and we still all played together after the fight...just kidding but seriously there were intense moments and fights over those early Tecmo games.Good ole days

4:23 music and qb vocals brought me back in time