Oh no, it’s time for another sports game! It’s not an RPG this time though, just PURE AMERICAN FOOTBALL in Tecmo Super Bowl テクモスーパーボウル (TCF-4U) on Famicom, released in 1991.
Tecmo Super Bowl – Famicom
It has some nice graphics in the intro, and I really kind of liked the music in game, the little that I got to hear of it.. because every time something happened on the field (which I felt I had no control over what so ever) the freaking song started over again! The stupid screen popping up every 10 seconds asking me for a strategy is SO ANNOYING! I would call this a strategy/sport-simulator game, no action at all, I got control of the ball (or whatever you call it in American football) once, and no matter where I tried running the opposing team caught up and threw themselves on top of me, suffocating whatever nice feelings I ever might have felt towards this game >_< booooo
At least no Japanese language is necessary to play this, only an incredible infatuation with sport-strategy ;P
I have quite a lot of Famicom games, over 900 unique ones, and when I sometimes search for information about some lesser known titles on the internet it usually won’t give a lot of rewarding results. So I thought I’d start a series where I do short first impressions of all of my Famicom games so people get a feeling of what type of game it is, if it requires Japanese knowledge to play or not, and what the gameplay looks like :) Since I have so many, this will be a long term project XD But hopefully since the reviews will be short I’ll have time to squeeze some in now and then :) So here’s the first in the series of Famicom Impression! :D
So first up is Captain Tsubasa キャプテン翼 (TCF-TP)! Released by Tecmo in 1988. Just looking at the cart I was pretty sure it was a regular sports game, soccer to be exact, but it’s not really.. It’s about playing soccer, and you play soccer, but not like regular sports games where you control the character. This is RPG SOCCER!!! O_o Two of my LEAST favourite genres put together! Ouch…
Captain Tsubasa – Famicom
Instead of steering your character and pushing A or B to dribble or shoot you get menus to choose various actions from. Now if you’re not that familiar with the Japanese language this might prove to be difficult XD I have some basic knowledge since I’ve studied it for 4 years, so I remember how to read Katakana and Hiragana, but I’ve completely forgotten all the Kanjis. Thankfully most 8-bit game menus mainly contain Hiragana or Katakana, but then there’s the issue of also knowing what it means XD I managed to figure this much out:
シュート
= Shoot
パス
= Pass
パスカット
= Pass cut
マク
= Mark
キャッチ
= Catch
うごかない
= I have no idea
The only live action you get is when you receive the ball, then you get to run towards the goal, at first I wasn’t even sure which way I was supposed to score XD Another issue with that part is that you also don’t see anything on the map of the field except yourself, so how the hell do I know if I’m not running straight into opposite players?!
The game seemed quite unfair in general.. or maybe I just sucked at it.. but it seemed like the opposite team catched every single ball I shot or tried to pass, while they managed to pass and score without any resistance >_<
Here’s a video of my first and most likely only attempt at playing this game:
This really was the worst of two worlds for me.. sports and RPG elements >_< bleh… I don’t recommend it.. unless you’re a hardcore soccer fan who fancies RPG’s and happen to be fluent in Japanese!! Then you might actually enjoy this ^_^
Retro Video Gaming 