Each team has 11 defensive players who can be neither substituted nor injured. In Tecmo Super Bowl, each roster has 30 different players. In the original NES Tecmo Bowl, each team had at least 20 players on its roster (21 if the kick returner wasn't a starter), with nine players for offense, nine players for defense, a kicker and a punter. Subsequent games in the series would build on this foundation. Unlike the original Tecmo Bowl for the NES, which consisted of twelve teams, a truncated roster and limited play selection, Tecmo Super Bowl featured the complete league of (then) 28 teams, expanded rosters, expanded playbooks, statistics tracking (including NFL records) and many other improvements. The sequel, Tecmo Super Bowl, acquired an NFL license, making it the first NES game to feature real NFL teams and players. The original NES version of Tecmo Bowl was licensed by the National Football League Players Association, but was unable to obtain an NFL team license because another NES football game, NFL, had an exclusive licensing agreement with the NFL. The game was very successful in the final years of the NES and, although more than 20 years old, it has maintained an extensive cult following.Īfter the initial success of the NES version of Tecmo Bowl in 1989, Tecmo followed up with the release of Tecmo Super Bowl in 1991 in both North America and Japan. The original game utilized the 1991 NFL schedule only therefore, playing multiple seasons with alternate schedules was not possible. (Prior games used the real teams or the real players, but not both simultaneously.) Although the game was released in late 1991, all team rosters and player attributes were based on the prior 1990–91 NFL season, which meant that no rookies taken in the 1991 NFL Draft and no player team changes executed before the start of the 1991 season were added. Developed by Japanese video game company Tecmo, it was the first sports video game that had licensing privileges with both the National Football League and the National Football League Players Association, thus allowing the game to use both the names and attributes of real NFL teams and real NFL players. Tecmo Super Bowl (テクモスーパーボウル Tekumo Sūpā Bōru) is an American football video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that was released in 1991.

Original tecmo bowl game