The Love of Sports has a beat on the top 10 football video games of all time. No surprise that John Madden’s name came up multiple times.
2. Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl
Released in 1989, Tecmo Bowl included the NFLPA license, which gave fans across the globe a chance to play with the likes of Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Marcus Allen and Walter Payton, to name but a few. And as limited as play selection and graphics were at the time, has anyone forgotten that muzzled voice shouting “Down!” and then proceeding to say “Hut!” over and over until the ball was finally snapped? That was followed by Tecmo Super Bowl in 1991. There’s no doubting how technologically advanced the sequel was in comparison to its predecessor or anything else released at the time. It featured league play that included a standard regular and postseason, as well as practically perfect NFL rosters and player ratings that were actual quite realistic. Simply put, while Madden takes the No. 1 spot for being so dominant for so many years, I can’t help but remember Tecmo Super Bowl for being the single most memorable sports game ever. To this day, almost 20 years later, legions of fans maintain updated versions of this game for online league play, which pretty much says it all. If nothing else, Tecmo Bowl certainly made legends out of Bo Jackson, Christian “The Nigerian Nightmare” Okoye, Randall Cunningham, Lawrence Taylor and Ronnie Lott, amongst others.
Some days I wish I could go back to a time when all that was important in my life was winning a Tecmo Bowl Championship. That music still gets me fired up.
