Retro Bowl 25 Is The Ultimate Dad Game

Learn how the creators of a beloved soccer series ended up making one of the best American football games not called Madden.

Sep 10, 2024

I like to play a football game, but it is not Madden. It’s Retro Bowl, a modern take on the iconic Tecmo Bowl from the 80s. Like many others, I actually fell for its sequel, Tecmo Super Bowl, which came out in 1991. It’s one of the few games my dad tried.

An early memory of mine involves is sitting in a bedroom that I used to share with my younger brother, handing the controller back and forth with Dad. I’m not sure he touched another game until I was an adult, when he became bizarrely and hilariously infatuated with a basketball mini-game from Wii Sports Plus. I say all this because Retro Bowl is firmly in the Dad Zone. I mean, it’s a game you can play on the toilet.

Retro Bowl takes Tecmo Super Bowl, swaps out a controller for shockingly decent touch controls, and adds a spice of light team management. This is not a simulation game, mind you. It’s to give the player a little more to do between games. It’s a good balance.

Even better, coinciding with the start of the NFL season, we have Retro Bowl 25.

Unlike Retro Bowl, this one features real-life NFL players, teams, and logos. I actually stopped playing Retro Bowl a few weeks ago because I wanted to save my time and energy for bringing my new quarterback, Caleb Williams, to the playoffs in Retro Bowl 25. I regret to inform digital Caleb Williams that, uh, we lost the first game against the Saints, but we’re chalking that up to being a rookie and trying to move forward!

It’s also, unfortunately, only available on Apple Arcade at the moment, but 1) Apple Arcade is a great service for families and 2) Apple Arcade exclusives tend to head to other platforms eventually. In the meantime, the original Retro Bowl is still very good.

“I loved sports games as a kid and have spent my career making games inspired by the classics of the 8-bit and 16-bit era,” said Retro Bowl designer Simon Read in an interview. “I had played a little Tecmo Bowl over the years and knew it was a legendary game in the U.S., so I felt like I was making something for fans of that game.”

A screen shot from New Star Soccer 2003. Credit: Moby Games

Read’s history with developing sports games goes back several decades. He was a programmer on the New Star Soccer game from 2003, a soccer simulation game that was entirely text-based. Video games have come a long way, huh? The series really took off in 2012, when a much splashier version was developed for mobile phones.

“New Star Soccer is one of those games that makes you wonder how no one thought of it before now, because it's such a strong idea and so brilliantly executed” wrote Eurogamer in a review at the time. “It's better on the iPad, where you can be more precise with your actions, but it's hugely entertaining on iPhone or Android too. If you like football at all, New Star Soccer is a must-buy.”

New Star Games has made a lot of soccer games. They’ve made a cricket game. It does not logically follow that New Star Games would make an American football game.

“Originally I wanted to make a high school role-playing game where you managed the life of a student, dealing with relationships, school studies, your fitness and so on,” said Reid. “I designed a mini-game where you threw a football to a friend in the park which seemed like fun, so I put the guys in little uniforms and added defensive and offensive lines - the next thing I knew I was making a full-on football game.”

Read had played Tecmo Bowl because Tecmo Bowl was a sensation that transcended whether you’d grown up in the U.S. and been indoctrinated into rooting for a team that probably sucks and breaks your heart every Sunday. But playing Tecmo Bowl when you were a kid doesn’t mean you have a firm grasp of the sport, and as Read was putting together what would become Retro Bowl, he started studying game tape.

“Personally I had watched the occasional Super Bowl but only had a passing interest in American Football, so I was learning the nuances of the sport whilst simultaneously developing the game,” he said. “I would watch re-runs of NFL games on one screen whilst I was coding on another!”

Part of the problem, Read told me, was that in the past, you really had to seek out watching an NFL game in the UK. It’s not a hugely popular sport abroad, which means it’s not just randomly on TV like it is her. Heck, it was only in 2007 when the NFL started playing games in London, as part of a broader effort to help the sport, which is largely regionally popular in the United States, be more international.

“I think it's fair to say that for me and the guys that worked on Retro Bowl College and now NFL Retro Bowl '25, we weren't huge fans of the sport which is probably due to the lack of TV coverage in the UK over the years,” he said. “However, I am now an avid fan and go to the games in the UK every season.”

Sadly, being an “avid fan” does not mean “avid fan of the Chicago Bears.” Read adopted the Bengals. To be fair, Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase are extremely cool.

A huge obstacle for Read or anyone else, though, is when NFL games are played. He throws a Super Bowl party, and people do attend, but the game starts at midnight.

Read’s interest in American football has, so far, not extended to his kids. But the family does have Tottenham Hotspur season tickets. He attends with his three boys.

My relationship with sports has changed over the years. I've done my best to make my kids care about football in the sense that I do not want them to complain when it’s on because Dad (and sometimes Mom) want to watch, but mostly they know it's a chance to hang out with their friends all afternoon, while the parents hang out in a garage.

Unsurprisingly, several developers at New Star Games are parents, and I asked them to share stories about how their relationship with sports has changed, too. (For clarity, the developers asked to not list their full names and titles for privacy reasons.)

Here’s what they told me:

"Sports is the central hub in our family. All my kids have moved away or lived away for university, yet it is the common theme of Leeds United that sets dates in the calendar when we're all together. When they were younger they all played rugby league, pretty much every week for years. It meant not a weekend went by without seeing 2, 3 or even 4 matches live and plenty more on the TV." – Paul
"My youngest lad played for Ossett Town, so for a few years my weeks revolved around getting him to training or finding obscure places on Google maps, then driving him there and standing in the rain with the other parents while he played on some of the coldest and most windswept pitches in Yorkshire. Of course, I loved every minute of it :) He's off to university at the other end of the country now, so my chances to see him play sport are going to be limited, but he is currently top of our fantasy football league, so we've still got that!" – John
"My grown up kids have both been to live sports events with me and my son plays sports with his friends, mainly soccer and basketball. I really enjoy participating in running events, but as yet this is not something my kids want to get involved in. I love watching any live sport, so the Olympics were a real highlight in our household, we watched all kinds of things as a family and loved it. Things we wouldn't normally watch like badminton, volleyball or speed climbing. I would like to think my kids have an appreciation for enjoying athletes at the top of their game compete." – Mark

Earlier this year, I wrote about my daughter presenting me with a Christmas present: tickets to a Chicago Bears game. I figured they were hypothetical tickets, but no, it was for New Years Eve game. Knowing it would be cold, I gave her an out, but she refused. It ended up miserably cold and we eventually left when the Bears were up (and it was halftime), but since then, she has told me that she would do it again, because it made me happy. That’s a good kid! She only asked that it be warm next time.

Until then, I’ll be more than happy with Retro Bowl 25. So will my kid.

Retro Bowl 25 Is The Ultimate Dad Game

Learn how the creators of a beloved soccer series ended up making one of the best American football games not called Madden.

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