Madden 10: Standing on the Shoulders of Tecmo Bowl

Madden Day is coming! Madden Day is coming! The release of the iconic EA Sports franchise Madden NFL 2010 (Madden 10) has become a national holiday to all testosterone-driven gamers. This Friday, August 14, will cause a mass exodus by said gamers from their workplaces (assuming they are gainfully employed) to flood the electronics departments of toy stores nationwide. I expect there to be more sick and personal days used this Friday as legions of Madden aficionados are overcome with Madden fever, whose only remedy is to play the latest version continuously for a minimum of eighteen hours until all the newest wrinkles of the game have been tested or mastered.

The Madden franchise is easily the best-selling sports franchise in video game history. The success of the franchise is due in large part to the realism of the game play as well as the three or four new features added to each subsequent title. My older brother and I would often joke, "This is it! There is NO way they can make this game better next year!" Yet, the following year the genius developers at EA Sports would rise to the challenge and prove us wrong.

So on the eve of the release of this video game juggernaut, I could not help but be overcome with a sense of nostalgia about the legendary predecessor to the Madden games. Once upon a time, before John MaddenJohn Madden was the absolute monarch over all things electronic football, there was Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl. So let's once again hop into the Way Back Machine so we can stroll down Memory Lane in order to reminisce about the gridiron greatness that is Tecmo Bowl.

Originally released in its arcade incarnation in 1987, Tecmo Bowl only featured two fictional teams, the Wildcats and Bulldogs. The 1989 release of Tecmo Bowl for the Nintendo Entertainment System only featured 12 teams because of the inability to secure NFL licensing rights. The graphics were primitive, the real team players and names were imitations, and the game play was limited; however, Tecmo Bowl was a revolutionary innovation at the time. By the time Tecmo Super Bowl rolled around in 1991, NFL licensing had been secured meaning that the real names of all players and all (then 28) NFL teams were featured on a Nintendo game for the first time in the history of the console. The '91 version of the platform also included the full 1991 regular season schedule, lengthened playbooks, varying weather conditions, the ability to get injured and make substitutions, the ability to compile and track statistics during the regular season, and more elaborate FMV's (full motion videos) for special events like touchdowns, kicking punts, and the halftime show. All these added bonuses plus the catchy soundtrack made the Tecmo franchise the preeminent football video of the early-90's, until Madden usurped that crown in the mid-90's never to relinquish it.

So, as you call out sick from work tomorrow while tearing the packaging of your brand new copy of Madden 10 for your Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii, don't neglect to pay homage to its Tecmo Bowl predecessor. Just as Julius ErvingJulius Erving paved the way for Michael JordanMichael Jordan who paved the way for Kobe BryantKobe Bryant and LeBron JamesLeBron James, the unrivaled success and popularity at the time of the Tecmo Bowl series made it possible for the Madden franchise to become the top-grossing sports video game franchise ever. So, as you're checking out the new mini-camp games, working on elaborate offensive schemes, and developing new, bizarre blitz packages available for Madden 10, remember this fact: Before there was Ronnie BrownRonnie Brown and "The Wildcat," there was Bo Jackson and "The Underwear Move."

Note: "The Underwear Move" was a name that I gave to the unstoppable zigzag running style that my friends and I used to dominate the game. Click this link for a demonstration.