Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff

Who doesn't have a story about Tecmo Bowl? I used to play non-stop in the early 90's when I was in the Army, stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. At any given time there would be 5-10 of us with a season going on. It was fantastic. Games lasted around, what?...5 minutes? We could blow through an entire season in one weeks worth of lunch breaks.

I used to play with the Eagles, Scramblin' Randall Cunningham ran the show. He was so fast that even if you called the play (remember how your defense would just toss the o-line aside?), he could still backpedal fast enough to get a throw off. I never ran the ball, I'd just scramble for ten yards with Randall if no one was open. It was actually this game that got me into football in the first place. Does that happen normally? A sports game turn someone into a fan of that sport?

I remember one season I had a game against another guy who was playing with the Bears. I was going the "normal" way, which is to mean in a single player game you were always going left to right. If you got matched up against a human opponent, you might have to go right to left and it was a little disorienting to play that way. Anyway, I was pretty dominant and I had the "normal" way advantage, so I figured I had it tied up before the kickoff. He crushed me. He'd learned that I never run so he just defended the pass and never let Randall get the yards I was accustom to getting. That was probably the first bruise to my gaming ego. It was devastating at the time. I don't recall playing the game much after that.

I can't wait for this game to drop, I wish it was next week. I wish it was about a month ago, actually. I have at least one friend at work who has a DS and I've pretty much demanded that he start bringing it to work when the game comes out. I have this notion in my head that the guys I hang out with at work are going to latch onto this. We all universally love football, we play in a fantasy football league together, and most of us have played the original game and are somewhat active gamers now (though just the one has a portable system aside from myself). My dream is that my lunches will be filled with 5-10 games of Tecmo Bowl download play games for months to come. My hopes will likely never be realized because most of these guys will probably not think it's cool to be seen playing a DS in public. To them I say, well...not a one of us is cool anyone, so fuck 'em.