I was so very excited to hear about the return of Tecmo Bowl, I figure the Team creating it would have the same passion that the orginal games seemed to have been made with.

Man was I wrong. This version "looks" great but is flawed in so many ways I can't even believe you released it!

• The menu right off the bad is clunky and boring.
  
• The music is dull and does not remind me of any of the orginal Tecmo songs, terrible remixes.
  
• The team editor is nice, but very poorly organized.
  
• No player pictures, not even random fun ones? Why would you leave that out?
  
• The statistic displays at half time and end game are just terrible.
  
• You can't check our stats during the game like you could in a previous version
  
• Checking your stats and the league leaders in season mode is also horrible - who designed that layout?
  
• You track sacks, but not tackles? Previous Tecmo games have tracked tackles...
  
• No end season MVP's or top players based on statistics. TSBIII had this feature and it was one of the ONLY reasons people played that version.
  
• League records don't exsist.
  
• There are so few logos, and they are all terrible. Why didn't you incorporate a draw option? This was something I really expected from you.
  
• While I love the animations as they are, I feel there should have been more.
  
• Defelected passes still cannot be picked up...why even bother putting the drop spot there if its no possible to grab it?
  
• Empty Endzones...I don't care all that much about this but why would you leave it so dull?
  
• The AI is still very weak, why was there no difficulty settings?
  

The "special" abilties remind me of TSBIII in a way, which is no way a bad thing. It really made things interesting...but there are way to few of them. It's nice that they are there but they don't happen often....in fact I have had the speed pass happen once in 30 games simply because I dominate the other team so badly the game never triggers them for me.

I am just...flustered I guess. I feel like this should have been the best Tecmo Bowl of all time...instead we have a slightly enhanced yet dumbed down version...I can't help but feel like you would have gotten better results if you had just combined all the best features from the previous games and shipped it that way.

Is there a way to contact the lead developer and ask what his/her thoughts were on this game? The presentation in game is nice, but everything else just feels empty and lacking. This really bothers me because one of the greatest football game series of all time just took a step backwards. It's a Tecmo Bowl game so of course I will play it...but honestly thats only because none of the other Tecmo Bowls are on the DS. I would choose Tecmo Super Bowl II from the SNES over this game any day, as would any Tecmo Bowl fan. Hell even TSB III would be choosen more than this version.

You make good points and I agree with it. But its definately not a failure.

I am having fun with it and yes some of bugs are head scratching but at the end of day I hope Tecmo learns from this and makes the Wii version even better!

I disagree, I don't think it is a total failure. The gameplay is exactly the same as Tecmo Super Bowl from 1991, but you can finally block punts. I loved the trades and free agency from TSB III but they can always put that in for a future release (I'm sure the game is subtitled "Kickoff" for a reason). There is room for improvement all over but the ability to customize all teams and to play against strangers online represent significant upgrades in my eyes.

i just purchased TSB III for SNES,and i looked everywhere and i dont know how to trade players or sign free agents. how do u go about doing that. does anybody know?

Hey guys, Tecmo just emailed me a while back, and here is the status for Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff for the Wii:

No plans at this time.