There has never been a better sports video game than Tecmo Super Bowl. Ever. Period. In fact, I'll go this far, if you are male and between the ages of 20-30 and cannot tell me who your favorite Tecmo Super Bowl player is within five seconds of being asked, there is a 100 percent chance you have wasted your entire life.
There are very few players in my life who the mere mention of their names bring back fond memories. So what if many of these memories occurred on a computerized field inside my television screen, instead of real life? Nick Lowery, Robb Thomas, Christian Okoye, Barry Word, and Steve DeBerg -- your pixilated alter egos all made me a better man. And even though I've never been to Kansas City and don't even know a real person from Kansas City, I love the 1992 Kansas City Chiefs with a passion. To some people this might seem weird, to me it makes perfect sense.
It's en vogue to criticize kids these days because they spend all day playing video games when they should be learning life lessons by reading the Koran or baking cookies for old people. I say, this criticism is pure balderdash. If I were ever given a course to teach in college, I'm convinced every life lesson could be culled from my Tecmo Super Bowl gaming experience. I would call this class, The Tao of Tecmo Super Bowl, and my students would emerge with a more refined and nuanced view of life. Plus their thumbs would be very strong and extremely dexterous.
This is because I firmly believe the majority of my moral code was hewed on the hardscrabble and pixilated universe of my old school Nintendo's football screen. Even today when my 20-something friends and I manage to gather in the same city within a 30-mile drive of an aged Tecmo Super Bowl game and an even more aged eight-bit Nintendo, we recapture the same eternal truths and reclaim the consistent mockery and trash-talk associated with the greatest sports videogame ever made. So without further ado, here are 46 life lessons taught to me by Tecmo Super Bowl.
At some point you may notice contradictory life instructions, at this time treat these contradictory precepts exactly as you treat the parts of the Bible that conflict, i.e.: a) pretend they don't exist, b) rigorously adhere to one option and ridicule the very idea that someone could believe in the other, c) say one thing and do another ... or both.
1. Some people are just flat out better than others at things. For example Lawrence Taylor is the Christ figure of Tecmo Super Bowl. LT is omniscient, all-knowing and everywhere at once, blitzing the quarterback until the QB flees into the end zone before LT turns and races into the nowhere of the screen only to reemerge at the other end zone in time to bat the pass away from an open wide receiver. It is no coincidence that both LT and He have two letters.
2. Words can hurt ... use them liberally.
3. When wide receivers miss passes, their fingers resemble cheerleaders in the throes of the always classic spirit fingers. So the sexes, while different, are equal.
4. Fumbles make a goofy sound when they escape from your player's hands. Be alert to all goofy sounds.
5. Greed is good. Feel free to run Christian Okoye until the Nigerian government criticizes you for your wanton lack of consideration for his health.
6. Occasionally players are going to charge into the stands and create a maelstrom of turmoil. This was why when the Indiana Pacers took on the Detroit Pistons fans I was unmoved. I'd seen it all before on a Tecmo Super Bowl out-pattern that ended in the fourth row.
7. Greed can be bad. Randall Cunningham and Jim Kelly are both idiots for refusing to license their likeness to Tecmo Super Bowl. Such a decision deprived these men from the eternal glory that could have been theirs for a mere pittance of a licensing sum.
8. Despite everything you've heard about life being composed of a myriad of options, there are really only eight. Four involve passing and four involve running. If one of these options is not good enough for you, then move to Russia and take up communal farming, you communist pig.
