Play Tecmo Bowl For NES Online

Tecmo Bowl was first an arcade game developed and released in 1987 by Tecmo. While moderately successful in the arcades, the game became and remained widely popular and remembered when it was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988.

The NES version was considered by many to be the first American football game to feature real NFL teams and players. Although LJN’s NFL Football was the first, it didn’t turn out as successful as Tecmo Bowl did.

Due to this factor and while the arcade version was rarely found, the NES version eclipsed its arcade counterpart in popularity.

The NES version was ported to mobile phones in 2004 and the North American Wii Virtual Console on March 12, 2007. The arcade version for the Virtual Console came out in North America on August 3, 2009 on in Japan on September 29, 2009.

Tecmo Bowl contains twelve teams, each equipped with four plays. Most teams have two running plays and two passing plays. The exceptions are San Francisco and Miami, who have three passing plays and one running play.

Tecmo was not able to get the NFL’s consent to use real team names. As a result, the teams in the game are identified solely by their home city or state. However, each roster mimics that of the NFL team based out of the same city or state. Tecmo Bowl only used players from twelve of the best and most popular teams.

The teams mimicked in the game are the Indianapolis Colts, the Miami Dolphins, the Cleveland Browns, the Denver Broncos, the Seattle Seahawks, the Los Angeles Raiders, the Washington Redskins, the San Francisco 49ers, the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants, the Chicago Bears, and the Minnesota Vikings.

Each team had a different level of effectiveness based on its personnel and play selection. Chicago (with Walter Payton and Mike Singletary) and San Francisco (Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott) were two of the top teams because they had top talent on both offense and defense. Los Angeles had the fastest offensive player in the game (Bo Jackson) but only one running play which utilized him (Marcus Allen was used in second running play). New York had a middling offense but the fastest defender in the game, Lawrence Taylor. Minnesota is among the worst teams in the game with the unfortunate combination of average talent and a terrible playbook which includes an extremely ineffective wide receiver reverse run.

No players featured in the original Tecmo Bowl are still active in the NFL after the retirement of punter Sean Landeta on March 6, 2008. The last player to leave the NFL who was active at the time of the game’s release, yet played for a team not included in the game was kicker Morten Andersen, who retired not long after on December 8, 2008.

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