Nostalgia Friday: Introducing Coach Mike Singletary, the Tecmo Bowl God

When the Niners announced their new head coach, I was fully aware of whom the man was. I’m no dummy; I knew that Mike Singletary was one of the greatest undersized linebackers of all time. He was greater than Zach Thomas, Dat Nguyen, and countless others. Measuring only at 6 feet tall and 230 lbs, he still packed quite a wallop for those foolish to get in his way.

However, the real reason I knew of him wasn’t because of his illustrious playing career. It was actually because he was easily one of the most dominate forces of the greatest football game of the 8-bit era: Tecmo Bowl.

In today’s football game, you’ll rarely ever find “cheap” players. I’m talking about players who are so unbalanced in their game that simply having them on your team will likely cause you to blow out your opponent. Mike Vick from Madden ’04 is a classic example. The guy could run and pass, and don’t tell me that QB spy works on him because it doesn’t!

Back in the 80’s though, things were different. You see, Tecmo didn’t care about all this fancy shmancy stuff you call realism. No, instead they focused on creating a fun football game that can be played by everyone. You say Madden has realistic playbooks? I say Tecmo Bowl has the 4 only plays you’ll ever need in football, Pass1, Pass2, Run 1, Run 2. Why make it complicated? You say Madden has realistic player physics? Screw that. Give me a game where line backers can mow past linemen and cause them to go flying 50 ft in the air. That’s the football game I want.

Most of all though, Tecmo Bowl is chalked full with unbalanced players. You want the perfect passer? Just pick Miami and Dan Marino is your man. Joe Montana was also extremely over balanced. I remember I would drop back in the pocket 40 yards then out of no where just let the ball fly. Final play: touchdown via 90 yard pass. Hell yes.

Easily the most overbalanced player ever though was the legendary Bo Jackson. He was fast and way too powerful. If your running back was strong enough, whenever he got tackled, instead of actually getting tackled, there would be this little animation that cased the two players to look like they were in a slap fest. If you pushed A hard enough, you could send the defender flying. Bo Jackson never got tackled, and yes, he sent many defensive backs flying.

While Bo was the most overbalanced player in the game, there was one man who was extremely overbalanced on defense. Who? Why, Mike Singletary of course. He was fast, like running back fast. That made him great as a rusher and as a coverage guy. Also if you picked the right play to counter the offensive play, well let’s just say Mike would make the O-line look like bowling pins. It was kind of unfair because Mike was on defense and Walter Payton was on offense. Though Payton was like the poor man’s Bo Jackson, he was still pretty unbalanced. Thus, the Bears were pretty much unstoppable in Tecmo Bowl.


So now that you’ve learned about the sheer awesomeness of Mike Singletary in Tecmo Bowl, you know that he has the qualifications to be a great coach. Screw his record, screw his win losses, the only thing you need to judge his qualifications is that cool little NES cartridge. Word.