Idea Game Idea: Tecmo Bowl

MGSting

Member
The idea is essentially a non-simulation American football game, sort of arcade-like, with a side-view of the field. We already have games like this, Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES. However because of how horrid EA's Madden games have been in recent years, suppose we had a small team creating a game like Tecmo bowl without an NFL license (it might even be possible for one person to do it on GMS) to provide an alternate football experience reminiscent of the NES sports games. The gameplay will basically be football, each team has 4 run plays and 4 pass plays and the defense has to guess what play the offense called to counter. There could be a few arcade elements too like "on fire" from NBA Jam.

Now most of you are thinking, why not just play Tecmo Super Bowl or one of the mods out there? Well, the big "selling point" for this indie game would be total control in team customization. The game will start with 8 generic teams and the player can then use the team creation feature to create a maximum of lets say 300 teams. They can then go into season mode with 8, 12, 32 or even 100 teams if they're dedicated and create their own season rules and playoff formats. And this team creation suite will be very open, such as a pixel art thing that allows the player to create a logo and the uniforms from scratch in pixel.

One last thing I'd like to mention is that it would probably play best if it was 8 bit like the NES Tecmo bowl games. That would also make it easier to develop on GMS
 
I like the idea. One thing that has kept me from playing any of the Madden games of late is how lackluster the customization options are. I have zero experience in setting up any kind of system for player-created art so I couldn't tell you how easy or difficult that would be to set up (I've thought about it for a section of the game I'm working on now, but there are much larger things to handle first), but even a sufficiently robust set of preset logo options or images that can be combined into a logo would be nice. I see your biggest problem being setting up the sheer volume of customization options, but if you're willing to tackle (pun intended) that problem and the base gameplay is solid, I think you might find a market for this.
 

mar_cuz

Member
The idea is essentially a non-simulation American football game, sort of arcade-like, with a side-view of the field. We already have games like this, Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES. However because of how horrid EA's Madden games have been in recent years, suppose we had a small team creating a game like Tecmo bowl without an NFL license (it might even be possible for one person to do it on GMS) to provide an alternate football experience reminiscent of the NES sports games. The gameplay will basically be football, each team has 4 run plays and 4 pass plays and the defense has to guess what play the offense called to counter. There could be a few arcade elements too like "on fire" from NBA Jam.

Now most of you are thinking, why not just play Tecmo Super Bowl or one of the mods out there? Well, the big "selling point" for this indie game would be total control in team customization. The game will start with 8 generic teams and the player can then use the team creation feature to create a maximum of lets say 300 teams. They can then go into season mode with 8, 12, 32 or even 100 teams if they're dedicated and create their own season rules and playoff formats. And this team creation suite will be very open, such as a pixel art thing that allows the player to create a logo and the uniforms from scratch in pixel.

One last thing I'd like to mention is that it would probably play best if it was 8 bit like the NES Tecmo bowl games. That would also make it easier to develop on GMS
This game is being developed in GMS2:

 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Going for a fictional sport over football would have two benefits: you attact players that might not be interested in a tradional sports game but prefers something more party-game-oriented, and you can play fast-and-loose with physics and factual accuracy that sports game players would get sour over (but which are a pain to do).

For instance, something like Deathrow, where beating the other team up is about as important as scoring goals:

American "football" has as about much fighting as ball in it already, you might as well slap a system to let players customize their own guns onto the game as well to get even more chaos into your game and call it Shootball Super Bowl.

And why not also open up to non-human players to keep team composition even more interesting? Cyborgs that have superhuman attributes but are vulnerable to electricity and can have limbs permanently destroyed by damage (no repairs allowed during a match), T-rexes which are strong but can't actually pick up the ball since their arms are so small, plants that can't move at all but make for the perfect goalies...
 
Top