The Collector’s Guide to Tecmo Bowl

September 5, 2012 at 9:33 pm | Posted in Features | 10 Comments
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Tecmo’s football franchise is a true flagship in the world of retro sports gaming.  Fueled by 8-bit success on the NES with the still very popular Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl, Tecmo expanded to the 16-bit era before one last hurrah on the PlayStation in 1996.  Spanning just seven years, the series that mastered two-button football gaming retired as sports gaming moved to 3D.  As with many vintage video games, there have been attempted reboots of Tecmo Bowl to stoke the nostalgic fire of gamers.  All told, if you are a fan of the series or looking to experience it for the first time, the Tecmo Bowl library is very manageable from a collecting standpoint. The big question as always is, what are these retro titles worth?  The Collector’s Guide to Tecmo Bowl sets out to cover the entire Tecmo Bowl cannon, from the late 1980s through the re-releases of late.
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Retro Sports Games Roundtable

May 14, 2012 at 11:30 pm | Posted in Podcasts | 1 Comment
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The Racketboy podcast has produced 36 retro gaming episodes, interviewing the likes of James Rolfe, Nathan Barnatt, Retroware TV’s Lance Cortez, and the Smithsonian’s “The Art of Video Games” curator, Chris Melissinos.  They’ve talked with folks from XSeed and traversed different conventions like Pax East and Too Many Games to interview game developers on upcoming titles.  I was flattered to have been asked to join the show to discuss some of my favorite and least favorite retro sports games of the 8 and 16-bit eras in their latest production.

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The Rarest and Most Valuable Sports Games

April 30, 2012 at 8:23 pm | Posted in Features | 2 Comments
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When one conjures up images of older sports games, they most likely think of a stack of sun-bleached PlayStation 2 games; victims of being sorted through and left to bake under the hot sun at a flea market or swap meet.  For years, the steady giants like Madden or FIFA have been mass produced across numerous gaming platforms, becoming nearly irrelevant just a year later when the next iteration is released.  Outside of a few classics that are still played (but worth hardly anything) through fan competitions or online leagues, the shelf life for sports games is incredibly short and the basic tenants of supply and demand dictate that many are worth just a fraction of their original retail price.

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The Ten Most Valuable NES Sports Games

March 2, 2012 at 12:36 am | Posted in Features | 12 Comments
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Video game collectors often overlook the sports game genre and it is easy to understand why.  First, as talked about in the Retro Sports Gamer World gospel, the number of retro sports collectors and gamers is a small percentage of hobbyists.  The ratio of memorable and replayable retro sports titles is considerably smaller than that of classic role-playing games or platformers.  While the laws of supply and demand can deflate the prices of even the most popular retro sports game titles, the sports gaming marketplace is not void of games that are rare and valuable.  The Nintendo Entertainment System is stocked with a large number of 8-bit sports games thanks to the success of the system and growth of the industry overall.  As you’re sorting through stacks of games at the next convention or flea market, here are the ten most valuable NES games to keep an eye out for.
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Opening Tip

October 18, 2011 at 12:16 am | Posted in Reflections | 3 Comments
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When I was eight years old, I would carefully set up my grandparents’ Atari 2600 so that both joysticks were within my tiny grasp. There was no such thing as a CPU opponent in those days. You played games like Baseball and Football with a friend, cousin or sibling. Being the oldest grandchild in the family, my options were pretty limited. With this the case, I did what any other resourceful sports-obsessed youth would do – I played against myself. Sitting Indian style, I would pitch with one controller, quickly grab the other to swing, and then immediately switch back and field. This display of advanced hand-eye coordination impressed my Dad and Uncles so much that no one would ever accept my offer to play (or perhaps they were adults that couldn’t be trivialized by such things).

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