The Friday High Five
Here be dragons, love conquering all, and sports video games
Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High Five. 🙏🏻I mentioned last week that I’d been replaying the Nintendo games of my youth, which all came about after watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie. This has blossomed into a renewed obsession with Tecmo Super Bowl, a game which I spent several formative years addicted to.
As I’ve crushed teams of 8-bit avatars—and developed a blistered thumb in the process—I’ve continually asked myself one question: Why? Why am I wrapped up in a game that’s over 30 years old, one I haven’t thought about in years?
Tecmo Super Bowl was my favorite game from roughly 1991-1993. I don’t know exactly when I got it, but I do remember the game that ushered it out: NHL '94. I still played Tecmo Bowl after I got NHL, but there was definitely a new sheriff in town. Actually, speaking of sheriffs: It was exactly like in Toy Story when Andy pushes Woody aside because he’s enamored with Buzz, his shiny new toy that has all the bells and whistles.
Tecmo was fast. NHL was faster. Play rarely stopped. You could check someone so hard his head would bleed, a feature later immortalized in Swingers.
Eventually I put NHL aside—probably for NHL ‘95—which is the lifecycle of all video games. As Qui-Gon Jinn said: “There’s always a bigger fish.” And by fish, he obviously meant a newer and shinier game. Skyrim is unique in that it’s the only game I’ve never quit playing. I take long breaks, sometimes years-long, but I always come back.
I’ve been completely enamored with Tecmo the last few weeks. The game is everything I remember it being. The sights and sounds elicit little jolts of nostalgia. You can never go back, but sometimes you can faintly glimpse the past indirectly.
I can’t say I’m playing just for nostalgia. I can’t honestly say why I’m playing. That’s what I’ve been struggling with.
The game remains super fun and plays fast. I can play 3-4 games of Tecmo in the time it takes to play a single game of Madden. There’s something appealing about the game’s “less is more” approach.
You can’t divorce nostalgia from the equation. This game is 33 years old and looks every day of that. If I handed the controller to my son, I doubt he’d be blown away.
And yet.
As soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to fire it up again, and play 3-4 games before turning in for the night.
I know myself well enough to know I’m looking for something in this. Some of that looking is rather mercenary (can I get an article out of this? a podcast?) but mostly it feels old-fashioned in its complete lack of an agenda. Tecmo is what it is.
When I play modern games, I always sit down with an objective in mind: advance the plot, beat the level, complete the quest. That’s part of the deal. Mostly that’s great. Until very recently, I didn’t realize it’s also sometimes overwhelming. Even playing a cozy game like Stardew Valley brings along a host of responsibilities. Crops to tend, villagers to woo, beer to brew.
Sometimes I need my play to resemble play. Get in, get out, have fun.
The only thing Tecmo Super Bowl requires of me is 15 minutes. It doesn’t ask anything else of me. And I guess lately I’ve needed that more than I realized.
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House of the Dragon: Season 2
When we were partway through the second episode of season two, I turned to my wife and said, “Every one of these people are gonna die.”
It sorta goes without saying. When in Westeros, people be dying. Usually in awful ways that make you rage at how deeply unfair life can be. But in House of the Dragon, most of the main characters ride the equivalent of nuclear warheads, and people are itching to let their missiles off the chain.
It’s all so tragic, and also dumb. This is not a Stark vs Lannister scenario. It’s Targaryen on Targaryen. Which sorta fits their M.O., honestly—these people take “keep it in the family” seriously. It’s actually a bit funny that this whole thing popped off because Princess Rhaenyra had children with a lover outside the bloodline.
The brewing feud is sometimes referred to as Greens vs Blacks, which is probably necessary because everyone’s name is an offshoot of Aegon or Jayquellin. It’s a whole George Foreman situation.
I’m a supporter of team Black, led by Princess Rhaenyra, the rightful heir to the throne. Among others, she’s backed by Princess Rhaenys, “The Queen Who Never Was,” because the men powers that be wouldn’t let her.
Like real life, Westeros is hella misogynist.
So on one side, we have two Amazonian-looking dragonriders who have been cheated of the crown—twice!—and on the other, we have the poster children of rampant incest.
I frankly don’t know who could root for the Greens. Though I do think Aemond One-Eye is an effective villain, in a creepy, “I wanna wear your skin as a cloak” sort of way that’s evergreen in these stories.
NFL Films on Tecmo Super Bowl
Yes, Tecmo, again.
I recently happened across this short documentary made by NFL Films 12 years ago. It features a bunch of NFL players talking about how much they loved Tecmo Super Bowl, but the film is mostly about a bunch of dorky guys—who honestly look like my friends—that travel to Madison, Wisconsin for an annual Tecmo Bowl tournament.
It’s not clear what, exactly, one wins in this tournament. Other than bragging rights, which are probably not recognized outside Madison city limits.
I got immense joy out of watching this. I was simultaneously torn between wishing I’d known about it and wishing I’d thought of it. (The tournament is since defunct.) It warms my heart seeing people who are nerdy about something and just go all out for it. Frankly, it’s not all that different from how I devote an entire weekend to selecting players for my fantasy football team.
Tom Brady has played Tecmo Bowl and was pathologically competitive. Tell me something I didn’t already know.
Bridgerton: Season 3
We finished Part 2 in just over a week, and that was only because we made the conscious decision to save the finale until we could properly enjoy it, which typically means a weekend night and some choice snacks.
If you’ve seen Bridgerton, you already know what to expect. In some ways, the show is smartly written, Victorian era Hallmark Channel fare. Going in, you know it’s gonna end happily. But even knowing that, there are surprises to be had.
Whatever the Venn Diagram is for this show, I’m totally outside of it. But I love it. As I told my wife when she questioned my interest: My only criteria is that a show is good. I hate when TV wastes my time—22-episode network dramas are especially notorious for this, which is why I don’t watch network TV—or have no ambition other than to exist.
Mostly though, there’s just so much good stuff, I hate to spend time on something mediocre. Maybe that makes me a TV snob. I probably am. But I just like good shit.
Here’s my ranking of Bridgerton seasons I spent absolutely zero time on:
Season 1: Daphne and Simon are undefeated as couples go. It’s a huge bummer that we’ll (probably) never see them again.
Season 3: Penelope and Eloise are probs my favorite characters, and both have a lot to do in season 3. Colin is alright. I appreciate his sideburn game.
The Queen Spin-off: I sorta loath the Queen, but really liked her younger iteration. Funnily, the spin-off did nothing to make me like her more in the present day.
Season 2: I don’t hate it. It’s fine. I like Anthony when he’s not being a stupid cad. This season was high on the melodrama scale. It’s fine.
This Hilarious Article That Also Made Me Sad
Ending with a true banger.
I have no idea how I stumbled across this incredible article. I think it randomly surfaced while I was looking for Tecmo Bowl stuff.
The article is about a writer’s experiment simulating the end of the NBA by feeding the same draft class of scrubs into NBA 2K14, year after year, until only the scrubs remained. The players, in his own words: 5'3, 145 pounds, and awful at every basketball skill: shooting, passing, rebounding, defense, awareness, everything.
What emerged was a staggering glimpse into how easily entropy corrupts even the strongest of organizations and also seemingly immutable constants like Mother Nature. Rot isn’t noticeable until it’s already too late. The center cannot hold, and all that.
Here’s how the writers describes the 2027-2028 season:
Kevin Durant, the great relic of the NBA's golden age, has retired. Durant finishes with over 45,000 career points, setting a record that will never be broken. Not because it's too high, but because one day, no one will be tall enough to see it.
This is just brilliant stuff. The kind of thing I wish I’d have thought of.
Apparently this ended up a video game themed High 5. So it goes.
That’s it for this edition. What are you digging at the moment? Drop a comment and let me know!
I really relate to this want for a game that’s just fun to play, that doesn’t require so much of you.
I started buying used Nintendo games about a decade ago and also dug out some of my old ones that were somehow still around, sitting in a box for decades and not lost. Tecmo Bowl still plays amazingly great so many years later and I have a lot of fun playing that now just like I did back when it first came out. It’s the only football video game I’ve ever been able to play with some level of competitiveness against the computer too!