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"PRG0 cart, with black Nintendo seal"
PRG0 version, the initial one with the round black Nintendo seal. (A later stealth revision that same year, '89, also happened to be the same year Nintendo changed to a white oval seal, so you can tell the later version, which replaced Eric Dickerson as Indianapolis RB "DICKER" after his lawyers protested that he hadn't signed his name and likeness rights away to the NFLPA, by its white oval Nintendo seal on the cart label).
Game didn't have NFL team name rights though so the mere twelve teams are just the city names, with replacement logos. Somehow this didn't bother me or I just didn't notice as a kid, after all it had SEATTLE and SAN FRANCISCO and NEW YORK (Giants, with ridiculously good LB TAYLOR) and LOS ANGELES (Raiders, with pretty much unstoppable RB JACKSON). : D |
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| | | The black Nintendo seal version seemed to account for maybe 20% of the eBay listings I happened to see when hunting for it--so not particularly rare. Sellers weren't pointing it out at all.
(Castlevania--see entry 1571--is another NES game with a revision shown by the changing Nintendo seal; in CV's case, PRG1 / REV A fixed a hang bug, so the later version--white oblong seal https://paleface.net/cgi-bin/gdb/n.pl?i=1571_16_cart_prg1.jpg --is the one I was after, rather than the earlier, round black seal.) |
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"The twelve teams, from the demo scroll"
Playing the original, PRG0 version of Tecmo Bowl for NES, dumped and running in Mesen!
The original, PRG0 version of Tecmo Bowl for NES has the older, circular black Nintendo seal on cart label; it was replaced that same year by PRG1 aka "REV A" with the updated white oval Nintendo seal--Indianapolis star running back Eric Dickerson had himself replaced over a licensing dispute with the NFLPA.
So here I'm trying to play as his Indy. : D Was getting crushed trying my silly run defense blitzing as outside lineman that worked well as LA in the SNES Super Tecmo Bowl (1993) PS3 remake "Tecmo Bowl Throwback." Finally found lower LB 50 BICKETT (thought he was a CB since he's placed on the lowest wing position!) with his "SACKS 12" stat (later Tecmo football games DON'T show the most important player stat--sacks for defenders, rush yards for running backs, receptions for receivers, etc--under the current player's name; but it was quite handy here for IDing the top player!); Bickett can cover a large swath of the field, turned my defense around; at first I was blitzing with him, but at best that leaves at least one receiver wide open and at worse left us super-vulnerable to long runs, so I switched to dropping back in coverage where I could prevent huge yardage plays and and also get interceptions.
Couldn't always break things open with Dickerson (maybe starting to mash A continually helped in not getting grabbed in the first place, though?) so resorted to passing now and then, threw a pick-6, eventually got a bit better at it; one pass has Dickerson as an outlet option! Sweet. In this game, passes seem to go either totally wild--especially if you're moving while throwing?--or right to the receiver; in later games, they can just get dropped, or miss by a bit or something, which seems pretty frustrating : P--whereas here they're almost always caught by SOMEONE on one of the teams. ; )
No 2-point conversion! This game came out in '89, and the NFL didn't adopt the 2-point conversion--from college football--until '94; Tecmo Super Bowl II: Special Edition and Tecmo Super Bowl III: Final Edition (SNES, Gen) have 2-point conversions; I don't like the increased complexity of the later games though, and maybe it's nice to be less corporate here without the NFL team license, so you've just got 12 city-named teams with weird logos (Cleveland snakes! Pink Seattle!). ; D And the tiny little tunes in this game are pretty much all AMAZING. Anyway I nearly had a miracle comeback from horrible defensive play--thought I had it, in fact, but my math was off by one, that's how smart I am. ^ _^
My eyeballs appreciate that this game doesn't have (sub-screen) flashing FX on kicking extra points, etc--NES Tecmo Super Bowl has those. Also the players here are much bigger on-screen, and much less flickery--even if there are only 9 of them on field per team, vs 11 in the later games.
Playing on the arcade stick felt a little loose and eventually started irritating my right shoulder--maybe from all that A button mashing. ; D It's definitely one of those games where it feels made for keeping the thumb ready over B while hitting A with mid-thumb. But I hadn't been able to get my DS4 working wirelessly in Mesen; later I installed DS4Windows, that got it working! I'll go pad next time; that has the nostalgia vibes for me anyway from probably largely imagined memories of trying to play back in the day ^_ ^; I mean, my family had the game--probably the Dickerson-free revision with the white Nintendo seal, since we got an NES relatively late--but I don't think I actually spent a TON of time playing it back then. The music definitely stuck in my head though so maybe I watched/listened to my brother playing it a lot.
Might be too easy now that I've found Bickett? But if memory serves, the attraction was in just how lopsided a score you could run up. ; ) Seems to be the case in the later games as well. |
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| | | Mesen Windows shortcut command line:
C:\downloaded\mesen\Mesen.exe "C:\downloaded\mesen\roms\Tecmo Bowl (USA).zip" --preferences.gameSelectionScreenMode=Disabled --nes.ntscOverscan.left=8 --nes.ntscOverscan.right=8 --nes.ntscOverscan.top=16 --nes.ntscOverscan.bottom=16 --doNotSaveSettings |
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More strategy than I'd anticipated! Had to switch to weaker DB to get past Montana/Rice SF; it seemed to throw Montana for a loop. ^ _^ Whew! Fun times. |
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