Back when I was in high school during the mid-1990s, one of my hobbies during my spare time was playing Nintendo.  Although few years (decades?) have passed since then, it was the popular video game system of my era.  My favorite games to play during that time included Super Mario Bros, Tetris, and Tecmo Super Bowl.

During the fall of 2021, I learned of a site where we can go back and play some of these Nintendo games from that era.  Ever since then, every so often, I have taken the opportunity to get re-acquainted with some of these games.  Although I was not able to find Super Mario Bros on this site, I did find Tetris and Tecmo Super Bowl, as well as some of my other favorites, including Pac-Man, Frogger, Baseball Stars, and Pong – the 1972 arcade game that was one of the first of its kind.  In case you’re interested in checking this out or even playing some of these games yourself, I’ll provide the link to the site at the bottom of this post.

For now, in honor of today’s start of the 2022 NFL season, I thought it I would take this opportunity to provide a recap of my experience with Tecmo Super Bowl.  (I also plan to post a recap of my experience with some of these other Nintendo games in a future post.)  Tecmo Super Bowl was a game that was originally launched on Nintendo in 1991, and features NFL gameplay using actual 1991 NFL rosters.  After having played this game in the 90s, taking a break from it for more than 20 years, and re-discovering it last year, I’d like to document my some of my more recent gameplay accomplishments here.

This recap is going to document my attempt at five different challenges that I gave myself over the course of a few months:

Challenge #1.  Can I win the Super Bowl with the 1991 Indianapolis Colts?

In real life, the Indianapolis Colts were the worst team in the NFL in 1991. Their record that year was 1-15, with their one-point win over the Jets saving them from becoming the first team ever to go 0-16.  This game reflects their ineptitude pretty accurately, as the Colts seem to be the most difficult team to have any success with.  As someone who grew up a Colts fan in Indiana during this time, I remember getting teased in middle school for rooting for a losing team, even though they were our home-state team.  So, while I naturally want to play as my favorite team in Tecmo Super Bowl, it adds an extra challenge.

When I re-discovered this game last fall, I decided to play as the Colts, go through a full season (a little bit at a time over the course of a few days), and see how well I could do.  I went 9-7 and made the playoffs, then lost in the first round.  That just wasn’t going to cut it for me.  Maybe I was a little rusty after not playing this game in over 20 years.  Maybe I should try an easier challenge, like winning the Super Bowl with a better team first, then try again as the Colts later.

Challenge #2.  Can I win the Super Bowl with any team of my choosing?

For this challenge, I decided to save a bunch of time by having the game simulate the regular season first, which takes about ten minutes.  Then I just picked whichever playoff team I thought gave me the best chance to win three playoff games.  If you have only one hour to spend playing this, you can get this done in one sitting.  I limited myself to one attempt per day on this challenge.  Eventually, using this method of simulating a regular season so that I only had to play three games instead of 19 or 20, I managed to win a Super Bowl as the Buffalo Bills. Some might call that a cheap way to accomplish this goal. I’d call it efficient.

After winning a Super Bowl this way with a couple of the other good teams, I went back to playing as the Colts in full-season mode to try to accomplish my original challenge.  This time, I did worse, going 9-7 again, but missing the playoffs entirely.  I’d have to come back again and complete this challenge later.

Challenge #3.  Can I play an entire season and win the Super Bowl with any team of my choosing, going undefeated in the process?

If you want to make things easier on yourself in Tecmo Super Bowl and pick a good team, you might want to play as the San Francisco 49ers.  Led by Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, they were one of the NFL’s best teams in the early 90s.  I decided to try a full season again, and to do so as the 49ers.  In doing so, I also wanted to see if I could go undefeated.  Success!  I went 16-0 in the regular season and won all three playoff games to finish with a perfect 19-0 record.  Take that, 1972 Miami Dolphins!

After going undefeated as the 49ers, I later went back to playing another season as the Colts. This time, although I could get back to the playoffs, I still couldn’t reach the Super Bowl with the NFL’s worst team.  I decided to try another challenge and come back to this one later.

Challenge #4.  How many rushing yards can I get in one game with Bo Jackson?

Bo Jackson was synonymous with Tecmo Super Bowl.  Although he was a star running back for the L.A. Raiders, the game’s creators made him way better in the game than he was in real life, as they made him the fastest player in the game.  This was even poked fun of in an episode of Family Guy:

I decided to play as the Raiders and see how well I could do if I simply gave the ball to Bo Jackson every single play.  After getting 600 rushing yards in one game, I decided to see if I could try for 700…then 800.  Eventually, I eclipsed the 900-yard mark for Bo Jackson in a single game, as shown below:

I’m sure the 1,000-yard mark is probably attainable by the great gamers out there, but I think 922 rushing yards and 12 touchdowns in one game for Bo Jackson is about the best I’m going to be able to do.  Still, I’d say that’s pretty good.  And completely unrealistic in real life.  I’m going to call this a win and say that my answer for this challenge is 922 rushing yards in a single game.

I had some unfinished business to take care of though…

Challenge #1 (re-visited).  Can I win the Super Bowl with the 1991 Indianapolis Colts???

Since the Colts haven’t given us a real-life Super Bowl win since 2007, I decided that giving the Colts another Super Bowl title, even a fake one from a video game set in 1991, was my next priority.  As such, I went back to attempt my original goal of winning the Super Bowl with the Colts.

This remained an especially challenging goal because the 1991 Colts were just terrible.  It took me a couple more attempts to accomplish this one.  Finally, after getting better at playing this game, I eventually managed to break through with a 12-4 record and a playoff run to take the Colts to the Super Bowl against the powerhouse 49ers.  After a tightly fought championship battle with heroics from Colts QB Jack Trudeau, a game-winning field goal from Dean Biasucci in the final seconds gave me a 17-14 win and brought the title home to Indianapolis.  So, Colts fans – you can rejoice and not worry about how 2022 team will do – we have already won the (Tecmo) Super Bowl this year!

With this victory, I had accomplished what I had set out to do on this game.  But there was one other challenge I wanted to try, just out of curiosity.

Challenge #5.  Can I win a game without playing any offense for the entire time?

Because my brain thinks of odd things like this, I wondered what would happen if, every time I got the ball, I either attempted a field goal on first down or punted on first down.  Could I still win if I did that for the entire game?  Not with the Colts, but with another team – one that actually had a good defense.  I decided that the best team to be for this experiment was the Chicago Bears and their great defense from 1991.  It took me a few tries, but I managed to win a game without running a single play on offense.  As it turns out, not only was I able to win, but I did so in convincing fashion.  Led by three safeties and seven goals (most of which came after my defense got a turnover), I managed 27 points against the Minnesota Vikings.  Check out the box score below which shows my 27-0 win, all without gaining a single yard the entire game.

All of this was accomplished at some point over the past ten months or so.  Oh, and I’ve also played some Tetris, Pac-Man, Frogger, Baseball Stars, and Pong.  I’ll have to post some accomplishments on those games later.

For those of you who have made it all the way to the end, thanks for reading!  Or perhaps you scrolled all the way down without reading, just so you would find the link to this site here at the bottom.  Either way, the site is https://www.free80sarcade.com

Yes, “80s Arcade” is the name of the site.  While it includes arcade games from the 80s, it also includes Nintendo games from the 90s, as well as several different gaming systems from that era.  So, if you remember the video games or arcade games from the 80s or 90s, this might be of interest to you.  Happy gaming!

(Just don’t spend all your time on there.  Make sure to go outside or read a book once in a while too.)

Link to Tecmo Super Bowl: https://www.free80sarcade.com/tecmosuperbowl.php#google_vignette