Tecmo Super Bowl is an American football video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that was released in December 1991. Developed by Tecmo, it is the first sports video game that was licensed by both the National Football League and the National Football League Players Association, thus allowing the game to use both the names and attributes of real NFL teams and real NFL players. Prior games use either the real teams, the real players, or fictional substitutes, but not real teams and real players together.
The game was a major success, resulting in several follow-ups for subsequent game consoles. The NES original has had an extensive cult following across the decades, with widely covered tournaments as the game modification community provides annual roster updates. It has been variously named as one of the best NES games, one of the best sports games, and one of the most influential video games of all time.
With Tecmo Bowl for NES in 1989, Tecmo had procured an official license from the National Football League Players Association, providing twelve teams and a truncated roster. The full NFL team license was unavailable because of the exclusive license held for another NES game, NFL. The success of Tecmo Bowl was followed by the release of Tecmo Super Bowl in 1991 in North America and Japan, for which Tecmo acquired both sets of the NFL/NFLPA licenses, making it the first and only NES game to feature both real NFL teams and players. Although the game was released in late 1991, all team rosters and player attributes are from the prior 1990–91 NFL season, so it contains no rookies taken in the 1991 NFL Draft and no player team changes executed before the start of the 1991 season.
Tecmo Super Bowl surpasses its predecessor with the complete 1991 league of 28 teams, expanded rosters, expanded playbooks, and statistical tracking including NFL records. Jim Kelly, Randall Cunningham, and Bernie Kosar are represented by generic names of QB Bills, QB Eagles, and QB Browns, respectively, because the players were not members of the NFLPA's marketing contract. This gameplay foundation would be expanded upon during the course of the series' run.
