Of all the fan released content that I have seen in the past the update of the Tecmo Super Bowl to the current roster (as of 09/02/12 done in true stylings of the original)  is one of the most interesting. This fan service has been carried out by the good people over at TecmoBowl.org, bring this updated version of the highly acclaimed cult classic for free.

Tecmo Super Bowl when it was originally released for the NES in 1991 it was the first sports video game that had licensing privileges with both the league (NFL) and the player’s association (NFL: Players Association), this allowed the game to be the first to use both the real player names and team names simultaneously.

Tecmo Super Bowl has forever been a cult classic and this new update is a highly welcomed one being as it has been one of the most modified Nintendo games in existence, showing just how influential it has become. Currently Tecmo Super Bowl 2013 requires a Nintendo emulator to play however this edition comes with a whole host of updates including:

• 32 Teams
• Adjustable quarter length
• Half-time stats
• Enhanced passing accuracy and control
• Countless bug fixes from the 2012 version

The whole spirit behind these Tecmo Super Bowl releases are great and is rooted back in the golden age of gaming. If you would like to download Tecmo Super Bowl 2013 you can from the tecmobowl site over here, just in time to get into the spirit of this new football season.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Tecmo Super Bowl 2013′ Fan Updated Release Of This Cult Classic

Summer is clearly the season for NES Nostalgia, considering the re-surfacing of Helena the 3rd yesterday. We had a look Mega Man: Day In The Limelight 2 back when it was an unfinished Beta, but the ambitious Mega Man fangame is now complete and free for all. As the title suggests, it’s time for Mega Man himself to stand aside and let the other Robot Masters save the world for once.

Day In The Limelight 2 is an interesting remix of the classic Mega Man formula. The folks over at Fusion Fangaming (the crew responsible for the sprawling Mushroom Kingdom Fusion, among others) have reverse-engineered pretty much everything from the first few games in the classic Capcom franchise, stripping out all the sprites, movement physics and quirky little gameplay elements and glued them back together in entirely the wrong order. That’s the point, though, as it’s a playful reversal of the formula, and an enjoyable game in its own right.

The whole thing feels right – the sound, the music, the controls, the way the Robot Masters move – it all feels completely authentic, right down to that tiny shuffle-step that happens before you start to run. The one thing that really breaks from convention is the level design, which is a little more playful and creative in its nature. An attack on Gemini Man’s stage has you constantly hounded by mirror images of him, and it doesn’t help that the assigned hero of the day is Bubble Man, who waddles awkwardly across the land and doesn’t really shine until you dive into a pool of water.

Each level is cleverly built around the strengths and weaknesses of the character in play, too. Rather than structure the stages around the generalized and expanding skill-set of Mega Man himself, there’s a lot more focus here. The lumbering (I’m so sorry) Wood Man has a stage full of laser turrets which can be blocked with his trademark Leaf Shield, or even clogged with thrown leaves. It’s not nearly as glamorous as shooting stuff with lasers, but it’s more creative. It’s amusing to think that Mega Man himself would be stumped on any of the challenges requiring him to shoot diagonally or upwards.

Of course, being a Mega Man fan-game, this one is hard. It’s full-on NES difficulty as you remember it. Most obstacles can be conquered through a little patience and observation, but there’s not much chance of you breezing through any stage on your first run through. There are fortunately plenty of extra lives and generous checkpoints, but nothing is going to save a careless player from the Game Over screen if you keep missing a jump over a bottomless pit or a row of instantly lethal spikes. At least there’s a full save system underneath the early NES-era aesthetics.

You can grab MM: Day in The Limelight 2 from the Fusion Fangaming forum, as well as the first Day in The Limelight, which is still an entertaining piece of gaming in its own right. An interesting additional quirk is that, for the most part, DITL2 has you playing as the bosses you defeated in DITL1. Both games were developed in Game Maker, and are for Windows PCs only. The first weighs in at around 7mb, and the sequel a slightly inflated 11.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Freeware Game Pick – ‘Mega Man: Day In The Limelight 2′ Released

Ah, the 80s. When anime was cool, new and edgy, and featured enormous burly men who could cut giant skull-themed robots asunder in a single swing of their improbably huge and totally-not-phallic-no-sirree swords. The NES was king back in those days, and there was no shortage of badical games about manly men doing manly things in post-cyberpocalyptic futures. Today, Oniken is released on Desura. Brace yourself for nostalgia.

Well, that’s deliciously retro, and a fairly impressive piece of work for a two-man crew in Brazil. The full game is priced at a pocket-friendly $5, and there’s a pretty hefty playable demo available from the official site here, if you’d rather get a taste before you let retro-gaming fever completely override everything. The gameplay feels like a blend of Ninja Gaiden and Strider, and they really do capture the NES style almost perfectly. The only part that falls a little short is the music, which is a little too MIDI-sounding. The game is currently for Windows PCs only.

The banner says it all – after a long, long time in development, I-Mockery’s eagerly awaited Flash-based smashfest has been released and is available to play now for the low, low price of $0.00 (tax not included). Step into the shoes of Abobo, fan-favourite grimacing villain from the Double Dragon series on a brutal quest to rescue Aboboy, his similarly stern-looking son. For those who grew up with the Nintendo games of the late 80s and early 90s, this is a great combination nostalgia trip, and a fine game in it’s own right.

It looks like a NES game, and plays like one – difficulty included. Expect a pretty tough ride and enemies that don’t show much in the way of mercy. Extra lives will be hoarded, health pickups coveted, and the occasional ‘gimme’ chain of enemies that helps level up your Rage meter (used for special moves and screen-flattening smartbomb attacks) will be eagerly smashed into 8-bit dust. Varied gameplay too, as the core gameplay shifts into different genres with each level completed, although it all begins with Abobo’s native Double Dragon, albeit with some more varied foes.

My only real gripe so far is that due to whatever Flash game engine is used here, it runs at a lower framerate than most real NES games – a pity they couldn’t quite replicate that particular aspect – still, there’s no sprite glitching or edge artifacts either, so you gotta take the good with the bad. If you appreciate a good action game, you want to play this. If you grew up in the NES era, you have to play this. And even if you don’t fall into either category – it’s free and it runs in your browser. You should play it anyway.

[Abobo's Big Adventure]

Back in November I wrote about a game called Abobo’s Big Adventure. It was an NES tribute game of sorts built with Flash for the browser. Still, what it promised was an unbelievable experience in playing as Double Dragon’s Abobo in all manners of classic NES worlds from Zelda to Megaman… seriously, it’s pretty crazy.

In any case, the game missed its promised 2011 release date, but not by much. According to the website, Abobo’s Big Adventure is a mere 6 days 14 hours from release (at the time of this writing) which essentially marks it at midnight PST of January 11th.

I’ve gone ahead and included the trailer, once again, here and you can visit the site below to find out more information. Also, seeing as how the game will be free upon release, consider donating to help cover some of the development costs! Even a couple dollars would be a huge help to these guys and their awesome tribute game.

[Abobo’s Big Adventure]

Trailer

Some of my earliest and fondest memories of gaming were of playing the original Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) games on the NES. Surprisingly, my young brain could comprehend it all and it the stories remain with me today. Dragon Warrior, Dragon Warrior 3 and Dragon Warrior 4… I never played the second, for whatever reason. In any case, I’m now sitting here staring at Dragon Fantasy and I can’t think of anything else.

So, essentially, if you’ve never heard of those games I’m talking about the old Dragon Warrior games were some of the first JRPGs ever released, up there with the likes of the original Final Fantasy only better because they had an actual storyline (but don’t get me started on that!).

Here’s the game’s official description:

Experience an all-new old adventure!

Fight your way through hordes of strange, silly, and scary monsters! Explore the caves, castles, and dungeons of an ancient evil! Meet warriors, princes, pirates, zombies, and crazy old woodsmen in huge world of epic retro adventure!

Authentic 8-bit artwork and an original soundtrack by renowned Bay Area 8-bit musician, Crashfaster keeps the game true to its retro roots.

Dragon Fantasy can be had right now on a “Pay What You Want” scale starting at $1. If you’re anything like me then this game should be right up your alley.

Oh and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the similarities between this game and Zeboyd Games’ Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World, both great classically themed JRPGs.

[Dragon Fantasy, Indievania]

Trailer

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DIYGamer Holiday Give Away! For each and every article we post we’re giving away an indie game.

This article’s game is Antipole for the PC/Desura, by Saturine Games!

Leave a meaningful comment below to enter into the drawing.

It’s been 25 years since Nintendo launched their second grand flagship franchise; a free-roaming action adventure about an elf in a floppy green hat and his quest to collect a triangle and stab a pig. The Legend of Zelda series has earned countless fans through the past quarter-century. While many are celebrating this grand anniversary with the latest Wii entry in the franchise, us Windows/Mac/Linux folks can look back and remember how it all began, and wonder what might have been if they’d expanded directly on the original NES release.

Zelda Classic has been around for a long time. Six years, to be precise, but it’s still being actively developed (find the latest builds here), improved and refined. More features, more tilesets, and more fans producing dozens more full-length adventures for 8 (or 16-bit) elves to dig into. At it’s heart, it’s a direct port of the original 1986 NES adventure minus the limitations of the original console hardware, but it’s also far more than that.

In addition to including the original NES version, Zelda Classic includes a further three alternative adventures, and a full editing suite. The fanbase has produced over 200 full adventures to be downloaded from the ZC Quest Database, each taking you through a full set of dungeons, bosses and more. Some even use alternate rules, tweaks and sprite-sets to bring the experience more in line with the later SNES titles, or perhaps even other games entirely – there’s Metroid and Mega Man adventures lurking in the archives as well.

The Legend Of Zelda is a seminal gameplay template which has inspired countless imitators over the decades. Even with all the years of graphical improvements and new features stripped away, Zelda Classic is still entertaining in its own right, and the vast number of fan-made alternative quests will keep fans coming back for ages. It’s well worth the download – no better way to celebrate a major anniversary with a well aged game. It’s good for your Elf, y’know.

[Zelda Classic]

For quite a while I wasn’t entirely sure about what I was looking at when I was pointed to Abobo’s Big Adventure. Honestly, I didn’t even know if it was supposed to be a joke or a real game! After much contemplation, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that not only is it a real game, but it could very well be the best damn NES tribute game ever.

But first you’re probably curious just who the hell Abobo is. Well, for those of you too young to remember, or simply never got their hadns on it, Abobo was a constant antagonist in the Double Dragon video games. Essentially he was a bad guy… But there are two sides to every story and this is his. Sort of. It gets weird from this point on:

Abobo’s son has been kidnapped and now it’s up to you to help Abobo fight his way through some of the greatest NES games of all time in order to rescue him.

Not only does Abobo have to fight through these classic games, but he has to adapt to their varying gameplay styles. Gameplay ranges from beatemup, to underwater platformer, to side-scroller, to top-down dungeon crawler, wrestling, run-and-gun, boxing, and MOAR!

Oh, and did we mention BOSSES?! Mini-bosses, medium bosses, large bosses, and ultra-huge multi-stage bosses will assault you at every step of your journey.

Abobo’s path is a long and hard one, he’ll encounter more enemies than any single character has ever had to fight, but this is Abobo we’re talking about here. He has the heart of a lion… probably because he actually punched a lion and ate its heart!

Abobo will stop at nothing to save his beloved son, Aboboy. Are you ready to unleash his rage into this violent world of pixelated foes? You better be. If you’re not, Abobo may pummel you too.

The game is set to launch later this year as a free browser game. The developers say the game is a labor of love and will push Flash to the limits of what it can do. Judging by the trailer, I’m inclined to agree.

I really don’t have anything else to say other than: I can’t fuggin’ wait! If you can’t wait either it looks like the developers are looking for active beta testers so that might be your in to checking out the game a little early. For the rest of us, well, we’ll just have to wait until it gets released later this year.

[thanks @Fushichou187!]

[Abobo’s Big Adventure]

Trailer

Originally conceived as a way to recreate Grand Theft Auto on the original Nintendo under the title Grand Theftendo, Retro City Rampage quickly grew into something bigger. With countless pop-culture elements to pull from and dozens of games to tip the hat to, almost every aspect of the game is a nod to something. As a gamer approaching thirty who recognizes almost every one, the game’s flow kept me significantly entertained and bathed in the warm light of the days of yore. But at the same time, this excess of callbacks and references makes me worry about any younger generations picking up the game. Will they get it? While more modern catch-phrases like “more car bell” are dropped into the game, what child of the nineties is going to recognize Roger Wilco’s ship from Space Quest III in the junkyard of Retro City? But in the game’s favor, it has excellent gameplay and can be a successful experience for anyone who picks up a controller. And if any parents happen upon their kids playing the game, they’ll spend the entire time saying “isn’t that?” or “that looks just like” or “I remember that!” and it will be like a living history lesson.

I’ve put hours into the most recent build of the game courtesy of the developer Brian Provinciano and seen a lot of its gameplay, story and secrets.

The gameplay is simple. You control a pixellated character from a top-down view who can maneuver in all directions, jump and attack. You can also get into cars by pulling out the driver or stealing one from its parking space. You’ll find additional weapons like pistols, uzis, bazookas, baseball bats, molotov cocktails and more along the way. There is plenty of mayhem to undertake. Using the joystick of the Xbox 360 controller (or PS2 controller as was offered in this build of the game) it’s quite easy to control who or what you’re shooting. The game features an adept lock-on system so you don’t have to get your angle perfect, just close to your target.

If your crime starts getting out of hand or you happen to murder someone in front of the police, your wanted meter raises on police cruises and bikes begin hounding you. To the game’s credit, the cops are more difficult to shake than any prior installment of Grand Theft Auto I’ve experienced. If the cops get on your tail during a mission, you’re going to be looping, circling, parking in alleys, and generally trying to hide yourself from the fuzz – which is no easy feat. The cops are able to zip right up to your bumper and try to ram you off the road, but if you thread enough traffic, pull of illegal u-turns and generally drive dangerously, you might just get away.

On the note of driving, the game offers two control schemes. In one you can turn your car with the joystick and accelerate with the normal trigger, and in the other the car automatically drives in whichever direction you may be holding the joystick. I preferred the latter. It’s easy to maneuver through traffic, around (or over) pedestrians, and generally get to your destinations unscathed. The cars are all pretty solid and can take a beating without exploding, but it still pays to drive safely.

The missions throughout Retro City Rampage pull a lot from the games of yore. Your character is called simply PLAYER, in an entertainingly self-reflexive manner. The game begins when you find a job ad looking for henchmen, and you’re crime career begins in earnest. From planting underwater bombs a la Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on NES (though the heroes-in-half-shells definitely defused them) to escaping a laser-filled base in the vein of Contra, you’ll experience a lot of memories as you work your way through the game’s story. One mission has you trying to rid the local high school of a student with the name “Norris,” one letter off a certain TV-troublemaker. And throughout the city, almost every business has a sign that’s a play on game history. From “Gargle Quest” mouthwash to the “Fresh Prints” copy shop, you’ll be experiencing a lot of “oh yeah!” moments throughout.

Along the way, the game manages to shake up its general gameplay with unique twists on what might be called mini-games. At one point, you’re helping a team not unlike the Ghostbusters rid a possessed van of spirits. To do this, you head to the local retirement home where they throw bodies out of the window and you have to “feed” these bodies to the haunted car in order to satiate its possessor. Nobody said the game would be politically correct in its mission structure. Later on, while in disguise as the town’s superhero “Biffman” in order to “offset your criminal footprint,” you’re kidnapped and lowered into a tank of crocodiles. But to save yourself you have to swing back and forth, catching henchmen from a henchmen-dispenser (every villain’s dream machine) and feeding them to the gators in place of yourself in order to stuff them and keep them from eating you.

The missions are varied and hilarious and will keep you entertained throughout from the cheesy dialogue to the hilarious situations you’ll find yourself in.

The game also features a series of sprees in which you unleash timed havoc on the city. From a bazooka with unlimited ammo to a DeLorean that can only get up to 88-mph by running over pedestrians to how fast you can flatten fifty people in a steam roller, the challenges are varied. You’ll see skulls on your mini-map indicating where you can launch one of these challenges. The game tracks your scores and records, along with a staggering numbers of stats from “Invisible Walls Found” to “Bikeapults.” In fact, it appears that the game keeps tabs on more elements than most full retail releases to a hilarious extent. Want to know how many swimming lessons you’ve given? No problem! It’s all there. For 8-bits of sound and graphics, the game has gigabytes of stats (not literally).

The music and sound effects are fabulous throughout. With composition that could truly be coming directly from the 8-bit era, everything from the explosions to the game’s theme song are great. Just check out the soundtrack trailer we posted a few weeks ago to hear it in action.

The aspects that linger long after you’ve shut down your console are the details. From the clever signs spotted about the city to PLAYER’s tiny little feet pedaling a bicycle.

Retro City Rampage was originally announced as a Wii title to be released by the end of 2010. But as of now the game has been pushed into next year (hopefully February) as the platform of choice is now up in the air. If you have any inkling of interest in the game, make sure you’re following it on Facebook and Twitter, and we’ll have any key updates and trailers right here at DIYgamer along the way.