Tecmo Bowl Video game and its history

Jeremy McFarlin of the Football is Family Podcast on the Sports History Network joined us in the Pigpen to tell about one of his favorite activities as a youngster in the late 1980's, the Tecmo Bowl video game. This game meant a lot to J-Mac and we are So fortunate and blessed that he shared his story with us.

We all had those memorable games growing up that brought us closer to the game of football. For those of us that hit their teen years in the late 1980's and early 1990's like Jeremy McFarlin, the host of the Football is Family Podcast, your go to game was probably of the video game variety. Most likely that game of choice was Tecmo Bowl.

According to Wikipedia; Tecmo Bowl is an American football video game developed and released by Tecmo. Originally released as a coin operated arcade game in 1987. The game was known for its two screen viewing are which allowed up to four players to compete in a match between two fictitious teams. A cartridge version for the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1989 and was the first console game to include real National Football League players, via a license from the NFL Players Association.  As Jeremy points out though, this original Tecmo Bowl may have had player names but did not have a deal worked out with the NFL to use team names. In fact thre were only 12 city names that a player had to choose from such as Denver, Chicago, Dallas etc... A Game Boy version developed by Sculptured Software followed in 1991. The NES version of the game was extremely popular, spawning various sequels, starting with 1991's Tecmo Super Bowl.

Nintendo and Tecmo did their due diligence for the next version of the software when they added the NFL liscensing and expanded the number of teams to 28 along with the title game being legally called the Super Bowl. Other details such as adding actual statistics of players into the software made for an improved experience for the gamer. Our expert guest Mr. McFarlin tells us that this December 1991 version offered expanded rosters, new and larger playbooks, and statistical tracking including NFL records. However some players were not members of the NFLPA's marketing contract. Stars like Jim Kelly, Randall Cunningham, and Bernie Kosar are represented by generic names of QB Bills, QB Eagles, and QB Browns, respectively due to not signing on in the liscensing. 

Jeremy says this was a big and welcome improved version of an already awesome game.

Acording to our guest, Jeremy, Bo Jackson was the premier player in the Tecmo Bowl game. He was a beast to tackle as shown in this vid.

Here is a video of Jeremy's favorite Tecmo Super Bowl halftime show the Mighty Bombjacks: