Tecmo Bowl
Publisher: Tecmo
Console: NES
Wii Points: 500 ($5.00 USD)
As I fired up Tecmo Bowl and played the greatest football game made outside of America, I had a revelation. No, not just that one of the members of the devteam would go on to make games featuring women with unrealistic breast sizes beating the crap out of each other. Rather, I kind of understood why one of the panelists at GDC last week listed Sensible Soccer as one of the ten games that should be preserved for posterity as part of the great canon of gaming. I think if he had been American rather than Italian he'd have chosen Tecmo Bowl. And since Sensible Soccer is coming to Xbox Live Arcade (probably only in Europe), why in the heck shouldn't we get Tecmo Bowl in some sort of downloadable fashion?
It's pretty much the same game that you remember from 1988. While Madden has evolved into something that people argue is either strategic and awesome or convoluted and inaccessible, Tecmo Bowl is simplified enough that anybody can play it. Some people might not agree, but I quite enjoy the sense of nostalgia it exudes. There's something gratifying about setting up a play, executing it, and not feeling a sense of frustration that non-Madden players get every August. If you were either teething or not alive when Tecmo Bowl came out, it's worth your while, if for nothing else, to see one of the great moments in which football games evolved.
I'd rather just give the game a high-five than a thumbs up, but that would go against the grain. So thumbs up.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Publisher: Nintendo
Console: Nintendo 64
Wii Points: 1000 ($10.00 USD)
As much as I would have liked to have downloaded Ocarina to feel the magic of many a Zelda fanboy's favorite title in the series, after eight (I kid you not) attempts to download the game, I gave up and decided to wait until the next installment of Download That! to see if I'd have any success with nabbing the N64 classic.
So instead of a review, a rant.
Nintendo devices and my apartment seem to hate each other -- the DS apparently loathes secure Internet connections, and the Wii Shop Channel error I got, research reveals, seems to have something to do with the wireless network signal being diminished by just about anything else that transmits a signal, including microwaves and cordless phones. I'm sure that Nintendo fanboys will tell me that everything from my router to my television to Lee Harvey Oswald is the culprit; in fact, anything other than the Wii's Wi-Fi. If that's so, I have to wonder why Xbox 360 and PS3 can pop online without a hitch. Ah, the perils of technology.
That's it for this first column. Check us out in two weeks' time, when we scope out new console games for download and give you the "yes" or "no" on whether it's worth your time and bandwidth!
[Download That! is written by Sterling McGarvey, whose apartment really, really dislikes Nintendo products.]
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