A legion of editors have kept the nearly 22-year-old Tecmo Super Bowl relevant with mods that allow the game to be played with the modern NFL or college teams. Well, did you know the series also has a 7-on-7 arcade-style version, too? It's free.
"Street Tecmo" debuted quietly about a year ago on the TecmoBowl.org forums, but it really opens up with this year's version, released a couple weeks ago. In it, players may control a wide receiver before the snap—unprecedented in Tecmo Bowl history—and weave him all over the field in a custom pass play route, assuming the CPU-controlled quarterback has sense enough to throw it to him.
To get to those plays, you'll have to go through the game's playbook. Select either the third or fourth passing play in your book and then cycle through, looking for any play with "DIVA" (heh, heh) in the title. The receiver route designated M is the guy you can control.
Thing is, Street Tecmo runs a lot faster than its standard Tecmo Super Bowl cousin, so the quarterback has less time to throw and you have about enough time to make one cut before the ball needs to be in the air. The game also is played on a lot shorter field—about half the distance of the original. The playing surface looks like something out of Frogger.
Still, it's a nice feat of modding by buck and rewhawl, two TecmoBowl.org forum members going by the name Team Samurai. As mentioned above, the game features two teams of seven, draws from current rosters and has a lineup of 16 NFL teams.Last year's "Heroes" mode, in which old school Tecmo legends like QB Browns and Wayne Haddix, does not return however. You'll need a Nintendo emulator to run it. Download it here.
2013-14 NFL TSB Street Tecmo, ROM Here [TecmoBowl.org]
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