Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff

by Tecmo Koei

Product Features

• Customize your team: Choose your team colors, emblems, player names, team cities and abilities.
• Wi-Fi and Wireless Multiplayer: Play against your friends across the country or across the room.
• Cut-scenes: All-new cut-scenes showing off the dramatic presentation of various plays
• Customizable Playbook: Choose four running and four passing plays to your liking
• Stylus Control: Feel the action as you use the stylus to control your player

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00198PO6W
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: November 11, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,235 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #4 in Video Games > Nintendo DS > Sports > Football

Product Description

Tecmo Bowl is back! The classic, over-the-top, all-American football game enables players of all levels to engage in a fun filled, fast paced, arcade style of football. Based on the most popular Tecmo Super Bowl, KICKOFF lets long time fans and newcomers feel right at home with the simple controls and fun, huge plays and exciting cut-scenes. The legacy returns!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fumbles at the goal line..., December 1, 2008

By 

maxmasa31 "maxmasa31" (Honolulu, HI United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff (Video Game)

Let me first say that if you're a newcomer to the Tecmo Bowl franchise, and you're looking for a football experience similar to Madden or NCAA, look elsewhere. This isn't for you. Tecmo Bowl Kickoff is a game that will pull at the heartstrings of gamers like myself--adults who grew up playing the original Tecmo Bowl or Super Tecmo Bowl on the NES or SNES, respectively.

For those gamers, I'm sure this game has been on your radar. So how does it stack up? Let me start off with the bad. This game is not NFL licensed, so forget about playing your favorite teams with all the marquee players. There are 32 teams in two conferences divided across four divisions, and you can customize names and uniform colors, so you can recreate your teams and rename the players to match, but that's a lot of work to do right off the bat.

Next off, and this one was a big no-no for me, you can't track your players' stats. You can't access your individual player's stats to see how many yards they've run, TDs they've thrown, or ANYTHING. The only way you'll see that is if you're in the top 20 in the league's ranking. The best you can do is you can track your overall team's basic numbers in a VERY confusing to read chart.

Finally, some of the menu/displays are just weird or don't even make sense. One instance is that there is no way to figure out if you're five yards or fifty from the goal if you're going for a field goal--it doesn't show--or if it does, it's hidden in a strange, confusing interface. Another example of strangeness is that in the defense leaderboard, it shows the teams with the most yards. WHAT? If you're the top defense, you should be the team who's give up the LEAST yards.

Even with all these negatives, for people like me, Tecmo Bowl is still a ton of fun to play. The zig-zag running technique still works. There are still the same four running and four passing plays. The cheesy cutscenes still flash across the screen. While you're playing this, you'll be brought back to those days after school, when you were firmly planted in front of your TV, cursing the impossible interceptions and smiling as you sack the QB for the tenth time in a game.

It maintains the original look and feel of its predecessors, but it unfortunately does not add anything, and in fact, loses some of what made the original games so much fun. If you enjoyed the original games for the simple gameplay, then you'll really be in heaven, but if you are like me, and loved all the stats, you'll be disappointed. Overall, a good effort, and it gets three stars just for the nostalgia, but fumbles the ball with the loss of the biggest and best features of the original.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Few Issues, November 27, 2008

By 

Erick G. Rojas (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff (Video Game)

i played tecmo super bowl back in the day like it was the only video game ever made.
so when i heard that tecmo bowl had come out on the DS i was ecstatic.

Its a fun game. . .but there are some issues that i would like to point out. . .
1) for some odd reason you cannot see ALL your individual season player stats. . . you can only see your overall team stats and your player stats if he is in the top 25 (or so) of the entire league. This is annoying because i used to get a kick out of just running through the season stats of all my players, even backups that ran the ball maybe a handful of times. this seems so simple but yet its missing. .
2) the cursor for passing the ball is very difficult to distinguish . . . on passing plays, all receivers have a tiny white cursor above their heads. . . when you pick a receiver to throw to this white cursor becomes slightly bigger but hardly enough to distinguish. this is annoying when trying to get out of the grasp of a linemen.
3) not really a big deal, but when they say they used tecmo super bowl as the template they were not kidding. . .gameplay is the same, like the annoying nose tackle diving sack. . . even the playbook has the exact same plays.
4) menus are confusing and take some time to get used to. Given they used the same format as tecmo super bowl i dont understand why they couldn't just have used the same or similar menus.

overall its a fun game though. . . i would give it a 6 out of 10.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All You Need to Know about Tecmo:Kickoff, January 23, 2009

By 

TecMO "TecMO" (Dallas) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff (Video Game)

The Good
* Basically the same as original Tecmo. Same plays, movements and eccentricities. Old Tecmo Junkies will feel right at home playing the new Tecmo.
* Good music.
* New Player "special abilities" is a nice touch
* Customization allows you to program all 32 NFL teams with actual players if you want
* While the screen is small you get used to it pretty easily.
* Wi-Fi lets you play Tecmo dudes all over the country.

The Bad
* Player customization is very clumsy. It is nearly impossible to recreate superstars like Ray Lewis or Demarcus Ware since the computer rations out points per player instead of allowing you to dispense the points how you see fit per team. That means you have 22 mediocre players instead of say 5 great players, 12 mediocre players and 5 lousy players. It's why when the computer plays each other during the season the games all seem to end 24-21.
* Speaking of the computer, the AI is awful. Traditionally the computer gets better as the season goes on. Instead you just keep thrashing the computer 40-0 week after week.
* Tecmo got rid of player conditions. That is a damn shame as that was one of the features that made season play so interesting and forced team owners to use substitutions.
* No endzone logos. Small thing but irritating to see nothing in the zone.
* The cursor for passing the ball is very difficult to distinguish . . . on passing plays, all receivers have a tiny white cursor above their heads. . . when you pick a receiver to throw to this white cursor becomes slightly bigger but hardly enough to distinguish. this is annoying when trying to get out of the grasp of a linemen.
* When rushing the QB, if your player jumps to block the pass, he remains suspended in air and cannot chase the play.
* No auto skip mode during the regular season, you have to see the stat page for every game played before you get to your game.

The Ugly
* Terrible icons for Team helmets. You think they could have included one miserable bird as an icon considering all the NFL teams that have bird mascots.
* Halftime stats page is atrocious. It is completely unreadable. Why didn't they just stick to the standard halftime stats page from past Tecmo bowls?
* Indeed, stats in general are poorly kept. Only the top 20 in each category are shown, including team ranks. The team defense is ranked in the reverse order so that the team who gives up the most yards is ranked first. Then for things such as most receptions, the heading is COMP which is the same used for QB Completions. Doesn't Tecmo have people testing these things before release?

Overall grade is a B-