Tecmo Super Bowl II: Special Edition (SNES, 1994)

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Herschie
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Joined: April 7th, 2015, 11:44 pm

Tecmo Super Bowl II: Special Edition (SNES, 1994)

Postby Herschie » June 15th, 2017, 11:22 pm

You know, as much as I love me some 1989 in baseball, I love the 1994 season in football. Both my Bears and Patriots made the playoffs. In fact, my father took me to my first Bears game on Christmas Eve that season, where Drew Bledsoe and the Patriots went to Soldier Field. Then there were other storylines like the Monday Night thriller with John Elway and Joe Montana (Then with the Chiefs). Steve Young grabbing his first ring as starting quarterback. Pete Stoyanavich pushing that field goal wide right that cost Miami the playoff game against the Chargers. I mean, it was really a neat football season to watch.

It also had a bumper crop of excellent football games, one of them Tecmo Super Bowl II on SNES. When I first put this in, I was treated to a hip-hop tune jamming through my surround sound system. We all know how cutting-edge the SNES was in sound, and this is another game that you are best off utilizing a nice stereo for. So you have fun setting up your game with all the NFL teams, and the ability to choose difficulty and weather. The options are quite nice.

Then you get into the gameplay where things have changed a bit since the previous Tecmo games. Now you have 16 plays to choose from on offense, and even 4 different formations on defense (Goal-line, either a 4-3 or 3-4, nickel, and dime). These do impact the play, and expect to get run all day on against guys like Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders if you constantly choose nickel. The speed and rating boost for the defense is still there if you correctly guess the offensive play. Also it's neat seeing the runningback drag defenders for a few yards after contact. Other than this, it's basically the same Tecmo football game that we all knew and loved before it went down the crapper on PS1.

And the graphics are great. I honestly expected for my mom to shout "GET HIM!" as Edgar Bennett of the Packers broke a big one on me. When I was a kid, she'd scream at the TV quite often as the Bears got worse and worse. And she still does to this day. But this is about as real as it's going to get in 1994 believe it or not.

So you know how MLB The Show this year had Retro Mode? It's be nice if Madden incorporated a Tecmo Mode to this years' installment.

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Retro STrife
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Joined: August 3rd, 2015, 7:40 pm

Re: Tecmo Super Bowl II: Special Edition (SNES, 1994)

Postby Retro STrife » June 16th, 2017, 9:33 am

Huge Tecmo Super Bowl fan, as the NES version of TSB is in my personal top 3 favorite games ever. Because of that, I've tried to pick up the various other editions of TSB over the years, even the newer reboot attempts. To my knowledge, TSB II is the rarest and most expensive of the TSB games (the SNES version goes for around $40). I think sales were impacted a lot because it was sandwiched between releases of the 16-bit TSB and TSB III. Because of the price, I delayed buying TSB II for years, and just picked it up a couple months ago. I went with the Genesis version, since it seems about on par with the SNES version, but much cheaper (I think I paid $20 for my copy).

As for the game... well, I've only played it once so far, so I won't judge it too much. But at its core, it's classic TSB and was fun to play. Still, nothing tops the NES version in my book...while simpler, there's just something about the feel and spirit of it that I like better than the later games. Even among the 16-bit versions, I prefer the first TSB (over TSB II and III), because it most closely plays like the NES version. But I enjoy all of them, nonetheless.

As for the teams in the games... I don't recall the 1994 season that vividly due to my age then, but I'm a Cowboys fan, so naturally that was a good era. While the 16-bit TSB games did a better job of balancing the teams and players, I prefer the super teams and players in the NES version...just makes it more fun.


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