Tecmo Super Sundays is Cancelled

No football today... I'm watching baseball!

Aren't you?

(And holy crap, I need to buy this game. I haven't only played Tecmo Baseball for the NES, and it was awful.)

Tecmo Super Sundays: Week 4

I don't have an HDTV. I'm usually someone that makes fun of the need for new technology, but I've reached a point where it's not as easy to enjoy watching sports on a standard definition television. It also doesn't help that you have to have HD to know what the score is of a baseball game on FOX unless you wait for the commercials. If I had an HDTV, I would be sooooo into NFL Football, but right now I'm sooooo not.

Tecmo Player Rating: 307 (64th percentile)

Image: http://www.spartyandfriends.com/2010/02/05/picking-the-super-bowl-the-tecmo-way/

Billy Joe (aka B.J. in Tecmo) Tolliver, aka the Boy With the Golden Arm has the top passing speed in the game, tied with Dan Marino, but isn't really good at anything else and only has one competent wide receiver.

Games to watch this week:

Seattle @ St. Louis. I could see the loser of this game going on to another lousy season, while the (surprising) winner could take control of this really weak division.

Washington @ Philadelphia. McNabb's return to Philly. I guess I'm supposed to care about this game.

(I have a ridiculous amount of junk wax era football cards. If you're interested in helping me reduce my collection and obtaining some cards from the Tecmo era, please drop me a line.)

Tecmo Super Sundays: Week 3

With Dennis Dixon going down to a knee injury last week, I am once again without a team to root for. The Eagles buried themselves even further in my doghouse by naming Michael Vick the starter for the indefinite future while threatening to run Kevin Kolb out of town. Kolb, incidentally, was the only reason the Eagles felt trading Donovan McNabb was a smart idea... the morons.

Tecmo Player Rating: 295 (90th percentile)

Image: http://8bitx.com/gameblog/

The late, great Jerome Brown was my go-to guy on defense for my go-to team. He died in a senseless tragedy during the prime of his career, but that didn't stop me from busting out the occasional "you just got sacked... from beyond the grave!" comments during particularly heated games. I'm a relentless pash rusher (which leaves me open to being burned in the secondary), and Brown happens to line up at the linebacker spot that I prefer to rush from. He's actually a defensive tackle, but whatever.

Game to watch this week:

Dallas @ Houston. Here's to hoping that Dallas goes 0-3 on the season. This should be tremendously hilarious.

(I have a ridiculous amount of junk wax era football cards. If you're interested in helping me reduce my collection and obtaining some cards from the Tecmo era, please drop me a line.)

Tecmo Super Sundays: Week 2

RAWR! I can tackle TWO Lions at once! I might even bring my teammate along for the ride!

L.T. (the true L.T., not that one that used to play for San Diego) is by far the best defensive player in all of Tecmo Super Bowl. If conditions are right, he's actually capable of tackling the holder on kicks (and supposedly punts if the legends are true.) He was pretty impressive in real life, too, but that's not nearly as important as Tecmo. Just, uh, keep him away from your teenage daughters these days.

Tecmo Player Rating: 356 (99th percentile)

Image: http://www.thedailycontributor.com/top-10-ways-to-settle-an-argument

Games to watch this week:

Pittsburgh @ Tennessee. Dennis Dixon takes his 1-0 record on the road to face the former Oilers.

Seattle @ Denver. Seattle dominated the hated 49ers last week in one of the biggest surprises of Week 1. Will I care about the Seahawks at all this season?

New Orleans @ San Francisco. LeGarrette Blount may get on the field for the first time in his pro career. Is San Francisco really that bad or was Seattle that good?

(I have a ridiculous amount of junk wax era football cards. If you're interested in helping me reduce my collection and obtaining some cards from the Tecmo era, please drop me a line.)

Tecmo Super Sundays: Week 1

Okay, I'll admit it: I like football. I may even like NFL football. I'm convinced, however, that professional football was never greater than it was in 1991, during the heyday of Tecmo Super Bowl. This weekly feature will feature, weekly (weakly?), an NFL player of Tecmo lore as well as my feeble attempts to stay interested in present day activities now that I don't really have a team to follow.

Tecmo Player Rating: 295 (88th percentile)

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a Tecmo screen cap of Willie, so you'll have to settle for his starring role on the '85 Bears. He's #83 in your program.

Willie... or won't he?

Game to watch this week: Atlanta @ Pittsburgh. Ex-Duck Dennis Dixon takes the helm of a team I usually don't care for, giving me a reason to root for someone at least until that creep Roethlisberger is allowed back on the field.

(I have a ridiculous amount of junk wax era football cards. If you're interested in helping me reduce my collection and obtaining some cards from the Tecmo era, please drop me a line.)

Who is John Fourcade?

I've been in the middle of a highly competitive Tecmo Super Bowl season along with a few friends lately. Tomorrow will be the third and final session, where someone will walk away with a virtual 1991 Super Bowl ring while the rest will be lamenting their defense's ability to properly time and execute a dive tackle. My original intent all along was to do a post about all of the real life versions (on football cards, of course) of the principal players, but as is often the case I got rather lazy. There was one name, however, that stood out and that name is John Fourcade. I won't claim to have a great enough memory now to remember who the majority of the players were from the 1990 NFL season, but I found it surprising that the team that I drew out of a hat (the Saints) had a backup quarterback that I'd never heard of. Naturally, I dug up my overflowing box of crappy early '90s football cards and found this little gem.

First of all, just take in this picture for a minute. What was Pacific thinking? Not willing to conform to one of the two logical choices for back of card orientation, someone broke out of the box (probably the same someone who chose this color scheme) and decided that there was no need to use convention. "Let's like... rotate it man... it could be all... y'know... diagonal!" If no amount of drug intake influenced this, I think I would be a bit disturbed.

Anyway, back to Mr. Fourcade. I was just killing some time the other night reading about replacement players during the 1987 NFL strike. It turns out that Fourcade was one of those players. I found this pretty fascinating in contrast to the way picket line crossers were treated in the MLB, who to this day still aren't allowed admission to the Players Association or any of its benefits including inclusion in video games. Fourcade played at pretty much every level of professional football in his career, but saw the end of his NFL days by 1991. He's been less frustrating than Steve Walsh in our Tecmo season, however.

I'm Done With the Eagles (and the NFL by Proxy)

I realized at the beginning of the last NFL season that my interest in the sport had waned considerably over the years. I kept looking for things to keep my interest and had even entertained the idea of occasionally writing something NFL-related for this blog. Eventually, I found my interest disappearing altogether with the Philadelphia Eagles disappointing start to their season, culminating with the 13-13 tie with the horrendous Bengals in Week 11. Eventually their play improved enough to get the team in the playoffs where they were surprisingly just a twist or turn away from making it to the Super Bowl.

This year, I began to ask myself the same questions as last. Why should I care about the NFL? What can I do to get more engaged in the games that my favorite team plays? Last season I even tinkered with a fantasy team, but it wasn't nearly as interesting to me as fantasy baseball is, since there seems to be less managing and more watching and finger-crossing.

But things had already started unraveling. The heart and soul of the Eagles, Brian Dawkins, was unceremoniously dumped. Backup running back Correll Buckhalter, who was a hard luck favorite of mine, joined the mass exodus which also included Lito Sheppard, Greg Lewis, LJ Smith and Tra Thomas. As much as I can admit that the team had probably overacheived in reaching the NFC Championship game, I don't really feel that the addition-by-subtraction plan was going to help the team a whole lot. The Dawkins thing really hit me the most, however, and it really made me question my allegiance to a team I've followed since fairly early on in Randall Cunningham's career.

And then, today, this happened. I'm done with this team.

At least I'll still have Tecmo Super Bowl.

[To be continued...]