Today is Super Bowl 51, which means it’s also a great opportunity to bust out the weirdly-prophetic piece of video game history that is Tecmo Super Bowl.
Tecmo Super Bowl is 26 years old this year – December 13 if you want to mark your calendar – but fans have been keeping the game alive with roster updates year after year. And while it’s nice to see how the blockbuster Madden series thinks the Super Bowl will play out, it’s a lot more fun to run the simulations with Tecmo’s NES classic.
If you’re not up to speed, the New England Patriots, complete with Tom Brady, are squaring off against the Atlanta Falcons right about now. One of our sister sites in the US, Deadspin, updated all the rosters and found the Falcons belted the utter snot out of the Patriots, 77-38. That probably won’t happen in actual real life, but the part where Tom Brady and Danny Amendola both go down in the first quarter could totally happen.
The fans behind TecmoBowl.org ran their own simulation as well, and given that they’re the ones who have stuck by the game for a couple of decades (at least) I’m more inclined to bet based on their predictions. Their CPU simulation saw the Patriots come out on top 35-21, which seems a reasonable outcome given the real-life ability of the Falcons’ defence.
Given that this Super Bowl is basically a match between two teams who use their offence as their defence, it should be a treat to watch. Kick-off starts from 10:30 AM east coast time (9:30 AM for Queenslanders, 7:30 AM for those in Perth and 10:00 AM for Adelaide folk). Sportsbet also has the Patriots at $1.68 with $2.25 for the Falcons at the time of writing, while Ladbrokes has got the Patriots at $1.70 and the Falcons at $2.20. Not that any of that means Tecmo Super Bowl is likely to be on the money, but it’s fun to think about.
Comments
4 responses to “Today’s Super Bowl, As Predicted By Tecmo Super Bowl”
Go Falcons! End the Evil Empire for good!
“Go the *lift’s up beer mug* Atlanta Falcons“
Go Falcons!
Go Tom Brady (and those other guys wearing the same colour)