Revenge on Tecmo Cup

There are some games out there that have haunted me for years.  I’ve not beaten them for a variety of reasons.  I’m not one to let go of these grudges and have kept a mental tally all this time.  Someday, revenge will be mine.

One of these games in particular is Tecmo Cup: Soccer Game for the NES (I love the clarification of “Soccer Game” by the way).  I don’t remember how I originally got the game but since I played soccer as a kid my interest in the sport probably led my parents to see the game as a good present.  I remember playing Tecmo Cup obsessively with a friend of mine on the team but we never beat it.

Tecmo Cup was and is unlike any sports game I’ve ever played.  It’s more RPG-like than action-oriented.  Your team, the Razors, is led by young superstar Robin. 

The players on your team vary in skill based on their positions and assigned skill values.  A mid-fielder like Ralph is good at passing and dribbling but not shooting; while a forward like Kevin is mostly good at taking shots.  Robin, being the soccer prodigy, has high values for all his skills and can pretty much do everything.  The more you use players, the more their skills level up.  It’s sound strategy to focus on certain players early on to max out their abilities for later games.

One specific aspect of Tecmo Cup that strongly reminds me of Japanese RPG’s is that the better players like Robin have super special shots – whirling, zooming shots that will score almost every time.  One team has two brothers whose special attack is to fly through the air and head in an unblockable goal.  You have to lean heavily on Robin’s Hyper Shot to keep up with some of the game’s teams but to keep you from passing to Robin each time all your players have a finite amount of endurance, called “guts”.  Robin’s Hyper Shot takes a huge chunk of guts to complete so you can’t just blast it constantly – especially later in the game where some teams have goalies that can block super shots.

After kick off you dribble the ball up the field until you encounter opposing players, decide to pass, or take a shot at the rival goal.  Encountering opposing players is akin to NES RPG’s like the Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy games – you don’t see enemy players coming but instead you’re randomly taken to an event screen when they come upon you. 

In the passing screen you can get some sense of where other players are on the field but otherwise these encounters are random.

Within the event screen you’re given choices of trying to dribble through the blocking players, passing the ball to a teammate, or trying to take a shot on goal.  Your success is generated through an unseen algorithm of your player’s skill level and the AI’s defensive maneuvers.

It’s this system of algorithms rather than your physical dexterity that makes Tecmo Cup unique.  It’s also what can make it frustrating since your success ultimately isn’t completely within your control.  There is definite offensive strategy but on defense there is little to none.  As the computer’s players dribble down the field you have to wait for one of your players to obstruct their path.  You’re then given choices of various defensive maneuvers, but again, these are subject to skill calculations. 

While sometimes annoying I’ve always enjoyed Tecmo Cup.  The game has a feeling of cinematic action with the ball flying about the field that you don’t get in most sports titles.  Converted and translated for American audiences from the Japanese version of the game, Captain Tsubasa, it can be a bit goofy – though with player names like Robin, Brook, Basil, Damon, and Felix it’s like the developers accidentally got a list of male British names instead of Americans. 

As a child, I never beat this game.  While the game does give you passwords, later in the tournament they’re given out less frequently – requiring you to beat sets of two to three teams before getting the next password.  This is especially demoralizing in the final game when the opposing team is stacked with powerful players and a near impassable goalie.  If you lose to them you have to play the previous two teams again.  Also when I say impassable goalie I mean it – the guy has a special defense move where he shifts into a wolf to stop your shots.  A friggin’ wolf! 

However, now almost 18 years later, I have the tools to win.  The key to my eventual victory was touched upon in the comments section of my last Revenge post: the save state.  Emulating the game through my PC allows me to save at any point in the game.  To keep my victories legitimate, I only allowed myself to save in between matches and not during a game—that way I still had to beat an opposing team straight up but wouldn’t get booted back two spots in the tournament with a loss.

The final team still was a monster to beat.  I hammered on that damn wolf goalie again and again and kept getting creamed.  Eventually I beat him through efficient passing and a constant shooting attack – scoring when the goalie was still on the ground from defending my last shot.

I watched the poorly written/translated ending sequence finally feeling satisfied. 

But wait!  It wasn’t the end of the game!  Robin goes on to assemble a national team with all the star players you faced, including Eddie the wolf goalie. 

Robin’s brother, Cecil, who’s as awesome as he is, and who has mysteriously been missing from the tournament so far, joins as well.

You’d think a team of players who all have super shots and a wolf goalie would run over all competition but you’d be wrong.  Except for the exhibition game you play first, the teams of the world are extremely tough.  And there are quite a lot of them.  You play an additional ten games, each harder than the next.  My initial attempt to only use the save state function between games was soon thrown out the window – I ended up having to save on each possession and reload every time my opponent got too far ahead – which was often. 

After crawling possession by possession through these endless games I finally beat Tecmo Cup.  Robin and Cecil’s father, who apparently is some sort of deadbeat and touring the world with the adult national team, suddenly appears and judges Robin now worthy to join him on his travels.

I’m not disappointed in having to save my way through the second half of Tecmo Cup. Without spending months playing, there’s no other way to beat it.  The game is too heavily based on random events and luck.  It’s good to now know that failing to beat it as a kid was no shortcoming of mine but instead due to poor game design.

If you have the chance, give Tecmo Cup a try for a few games.  Its design is interesting, it’s unlike anything else out there, and on paper seems like a good idea.  But ultimately the game is frustrating and impossible to finish without cheating.