Tecmo Bowl is objectively the greatest nine-man football video game of all time. Released for Nintendo in 1989, Tecmo Bowl was the first video game to feature the real names of NFL players, even though it left an end and a back off the field on every play. I spent several middle and high school summers playing far too much Tecmo Bowl and far too much of its successor, Tecmo Super Bowl (1991), to the detriment of my preparations for playing actual football in the fall.
Several weeks ago, I purchased a Hyperkin Retron 3, a light-weight red box that allows you to play Nintendo, Super-Nintendo, and Sega Genesis games all on one device. Apparently, it’s been on the market for a couple of years, but until I saw it at a Walgreens on a rainbow sherbet run, I had no idea it existed. The $39.99 device made its way to the register with me along with a $2.39 pint of lime, orange, and raspberry palate cleanser.
If you decide to buy this magic, multi-platform game box, you will soon realize that it requires additional investments. The wireless game controllers that come with the device are utterly useless. You will need to go on Amazon and buy some dedicated controllers for whichever of the three game systems you plan to use. I was interested primarily in taking a crack at my dusty old Nintendo games, so I just bought a couple of the old grey and white controllers from the world’s soon-to-be sole retailer.
What does all this have to do with SMU football? Since I am now covering the Mustangs for this esteemed website, I figured I would look around the rosters of the 12 teams featured in Tecmo Bowl for SMU alumni and see how well they performed in the game. The three former Mustangs I found in Tecmo Bowl were running back Eric Dickerson of the “Indiana Colts,” as they were referred to in the game, 49ers nose tackle Michael Carter, and Chicago Bears wide receiver Ron Morris. Although there were only three former SMU players included in Tecmo Bowl, Dickerson, Carter, and Morris did University Park proud last Saturday morning with my two hands on the controls.
Tecmo Bowl uses the 1988 rosters of the 12 NFL teams it features. There were a number of other former SMU standouts in the league at the time, including the Chargers’ defensive lineman Joe Phillips and Patriots running back Craig James, but their teams were not featured in the game.
By far, the most high profile Mustang in Tecmo Bowl is “Indiana Colts” running back Eric Dickerson, the ringleader of the famed “Pony Express” and a two-time All-American at SMU. In an 11-year NFL career highlighted by stints with the Los Angeles Rams and Indianapolis Colts, Eric Dickerson won the NFL rushing title on four occasions, broke O.J. Simpson’s single-season rushing record, and earned a bust in Canton, Ohio at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Dickerson’s actual dominance was mirrored by his dominance in Tecmo Bowl, where he ranks in the second tier of the game’s running backs along with fellow legends Walter Payton and Herschel Walker. As noted elsewhere, Bo Jackson is sui generis in both Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl.
Every team in Tecmo Bowl has an offense that consists of two passing plays and two running plays. Rather than selecting a particular defensive scheme, the player on defense guesses which play the offense is going to select. If the defense guesses correctly, then all 11 of its players funnel through the offensive line and demolish either the quarterback or the running back before the play can get going.
Apparently, the computer’s defense knew of my plan to test out Dickerson’s wares last Saturday morning. On virtually every play, the computer guessed that I was going to be running a sweep to the left with Dickerson. After getting the Hall of Famer’s head smashed in on two consecutive sweeps to the left, I selected a sweep to the right, the Colts’ other running play. With half-way decent blocking, Dickerson picked up 10-to-15 yard chunks on almost every play, displaying his typical combination of speed and power on the Tecmo gridiron. Tecmo Bowl did not include fumbling, so Dickerson’s primary weakness as a running back was a non-factor in the game. I ran over dozens of linebackers and defensive backs with Dickerson without fear of putting the ball on the turf in a crucial situation.
Tecmo Bowl does not feature statistics. Its successor game, Tecmo Super Bowl, was the first officially licensed Nintendo football game to do so. I would guess that Dickerson put up at least 200 rushing yards for me and another 100 receiving yards from the dump-off pass included in the Colts’ playbook, a playbook that quite accurately mirrored that of former SMU head coach Ron Meyer, who was coaching the Colts at the time the game was produced. Dickerson scored five touchdowns in a rout of the Miami Dolphins or the Seattle Seahawks. I forget whom I played since about seven of the teams have similar-looking aqua jerseys.
Eric Dickerson is not the only SMU standout who dominates in Tecmo Bowl. San Francisco 49ers nose tackle Michael Carter, who, like Dickerson, played for SMU’s 1981 and 1982 Southwestern Conference championship teams, overwhelms his Tecmo opponents to an even greater extent that Dickerson. This should be no surprise.
Carter had a remarkable career as both an amateur and a professional athlete. In the NFL, he earned All-Pro honors on three occasions and won three Super Bowl rings with the Bill Walsh-George Seifert 49ers. While in high school, Carter broke the national high school shot put record. While at SMU, he was a member of the 1983 NCAA Men’s Outdoor Track and Field Championship team. In 1984, Carter earned a silver medal in the shot put at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
I played two quarters as the San Francisco 49ers against one of the game’s aqua shirt wearing teams. At halftime, San Francisco had built up a 42-0 lead based entirely on the efforts of Carter. Whenever the Niners got the ball, I punted immediately to maximize the amount of time that Carter had to run roughshod over our overwhelmed aqua-clad adversaries. In Tecmo Bowl, Carter combines the strength of an American Gladiator with the quickness of Lawrence Taylor and the hands of Jerry Rice.
On any passing play, Carter can veer to the left or right of the center and sack the quarterback before he has time to find a receiver. On any running play, he can drink the milkshake of the league’s fastest and most powerful backs five yards behind the line of scrimmage. If so inclined, Carter can drop back from his nose tackle position, cover the opposition’s top receiver one-on-one, and intercept almost every pass thrown in his direction. According to my Burger King napkin, Carter compiled 14 sacks, 19 tackles for a loss, and eight interceptions in one half of play. Apparently, the game’s Japanese designers regarded Carter as the league’s supreme defensive force, a statement that wasn’t that far flung in the late 1980s.
The third standout in the SMU Tecmo Bowl triumvirate is Chicago Bears wide receiver Ron Morris. Morris, a second-round selection in 1987, played six seasons in Chicago. His promising career was shortened by knee injuries. Morris’ promise as an NFL player is immortalized in Tecmo Bowl, where he teams up with wide receiver Willie Gault and tight end Cap Bozo to form one of the most electrifying receiving corps in the game. Neither Bozo or Morris had long NFL careers, but, in Tecmo Bowl, they provide an excellent offensive supporting cast for the Bears’ stars Payton, Gault, and Jim McMahon. In Tecmo Bowl, Morris is a tough-to-tackle possession receiver who lacks breakaway speed, but catches everything thrown his way—a Fred Biletnikoff to Gault’s Cliff Branch.
As I did the research for this article on my pretend Nintendo, I realized that there is not a team in the AAC that can match the history of SMU football. If you put all of the teams in the AAC together, they wouldn’t have a 1-2-3 punch in Tecmo Bowl like that of Southern Methodist University.
Tecmo Bowl is a usable artifact from the Mustangs’ past glory. It is physical proof that the Mustangs achieved greatness in the relatively recent past. With Chad Morris at the helm, SMU aims to reach these heights again in the near future.
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