Knobbe Posted June 5, 2006 Share Posted June 5, 2006 Before the advent of online tecmo leagues, they used to have these things called Tecmo Leagues where people would get together and play on the console. Back in the mid to late 90s there were several of these leagues around with web sites. I had a chance to have a conversation the other day with a guy who ran such a league and he had some interesting stuff to say about Tecmo and his contact with the company.justinf: hey thereknobbe: heyjustinf: just registered on your site, brought back a ton of memories, I used to have one of two tecmo sites on the web, back in 95-95 maybe...knobbe: oh yeah? do you remember the url?justinf: it was Grogan's Panhandle Tecmo Football League. knobbe: i remember thatjustinf: the site was on nuc.net which is probably no longer a hosting siteknobbe: you can pull some of those old sites up on archive.orgjustinf: you do? cool. i'm trying to do that now in fact.justinf: i think it might be TOO oldknobbe: yeah, i started searching around in 97-98 for sitesknobbe: there was the cincinatti leaguejustinf: http://www.nuc.net/~sixty shows that there were updates, but it's not thereknobbe: and virginia techknobbe: and some othersjustinf: yeah i am good friends with the guys that REALLY started it all... the iron city guysjustinf: randall griffith has all his site archived somewhere.knobbe: if you or any of those guys want their old sites hosted, I can do that for youknobbe: i'm doing that with the old tecmobowl.com sitejustinf: i'd like to find mine. =) justinf: i had tons of emails and stuff from the lead dev of tecmo at the timejustinf: the project managerknobbe: for when they were developing tsb iii and psx tecmo bwol?justinf: tsb and tsb ii, Tomie somethingjustinf: one single guy programmed the entire tsb game, then they hired 2 other guys to work on the next two titlesknobbe: do you have any of those e-mails?justinf: no i saved them on the site...if i could find that site arvchived all would be well. they are really funny mails tooknobbe: was he the same guy who programmed the original?knobbe: probably, since they're all the same stylejustinf: he was a PM he managed it...now they are called Producers i guess ,in the industryjustinf: but the dev wrote tsb, tsb II and tsb III finalknobbe: i'd love to ask him why he didn't use passing accuracy in tecmo super bowljustinf: answers.com has all their infojustinf: you can see the guy i talked to..who would know thatjustinf: J.Sakurabajustinf: he has got to be in his mid 40's by nowknobbe: do you have a link for that?justinf: let me findjustinf: it says here he was the data engineer guy, so that makes sense i guess, but his emails said project managerjustinf: http://www.answers.com/topic/tecmo-super-bowl-game-3justinf: Data Tuner: T. Takasaki, J. Sakuraba, M. Matsumoto, N. Kameyajustinf: 2nd name there...justinf: Jenyricho Sakuraba i think was his full namejustinf: only guy that ever emailed me back..what an idiot i am for losing thosejustinf: googling him looks like he was the stat guy for the other tecmo sports games tooknobbe: I see posts all the time that have the statement "I'd love to ask the programmer X"justinf: well we asked him specifically about ironhead heyward and why he was so badass in tsb3justinf: his answer was awesomejustinf: :he's has the ironhead" or something like thatknobbe: i would completely expect thatknobbe: you don't happen to have that e-mail address, would you?justinf: i might be able to get that.justinf: i know another guy who works for tecmo usa.knobbe: panhandle tecmo, were you the guys in nebraska?justinf: no, Floridaknobbe: ahjustinf: Krell, Grogan, Chuck knobbe: hmmm..did you have the site that had all the tsb iii oddities?justinf: we coined the Hooptie, Rod-God, burned handles in effigy, had tecmo quirksknobbe: i wonder if he still works thereknobbe: that would be pretty amazing if he didjustinf: been 10 yearsknobbe: though i think its a japanese thing to work for the same company foreverjustinf: it would be rad if he was therejustinf: man he would offer weird stuff like beta testing and what not...i never know that was rare or a big dealknobbe: there is a beta version of tecmo bowl for the SNES that is out on rom formjustinf: do you have Spec Edition?knobbe: i have them allknobbe: even in genesisknobbe: in the cartridge and rom formsjustinf: I don't have the genesis ones, i never had a genesis, i just have nes/ps1/snes cartsknobbe: from my experience, tsb i on the genesis was a little better than the snes versionknobbe: but the tsb ii and iii versions on the genesis are worseknobbe: you know, it took me like 6 years to figure out you can cycle backwards through the receivers in the SNES versionsjustinf: i think the tsb 1 for genesis is pretty clean though and not as cheap as the snes versionknobbe: the later genesis have unbearably crappy sound effects and music along with the computer loving to run the fake over the topknobbe: which it then can fumble while laying on the groundjustinf: that's always awesome when it results in the unrecoverable fumblejustinf: that just bounces foreverknobbe: hmmm...it looks like the virgina tech site is down unless i'm just not finding itjustinf: http://www.vttfl.com/ gone!knobbe: I'll e-mail those guys about bringing back their sitejustinf: http://www.randatola.com/tecmo/index.htmjustinf: that's stuff from randyjustinf: from the originaljustinf: whats nuts is i have all those photosjustinf: he didnt have a scannerjustinf: so he mailed them to me and i scanned and sent back to him.randatola.com/tecmo/index.htmjustinfarren: that's stuff from randyjustinfarren: from the originaljustinfarren: whats nuts is i have all those photosjustinfarren: he didnt have a scannerjustinfarren: so he mailed them to me and i scanned and sent back to him Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad Moon Rison Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I remember some of those leagues back in the day, but don't remember the Panhandle League. I probably started checking out other people's league web-pages around 1995. In fact, the first time I think I ever searched the internet was to search for Tecmo leagues. I remember the Virginia Tech one vividly, and there was the Cincinnati one of course and one in Indiana I believe. Ah memories...Nice panhandle pics, except I didn't need to see that ass shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dajabec Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 Hey all. Was just thinking about Tecmo with the Bears and Colts in the SB and all. Grogan was one of the guys we talked with back then in our early chat room days. I played in console leagues from the original Tecmo Bowl all the way to the Playstation version.I was in the Indiana Tecmo League where we had stats and summaries of every game of the seasons we played. talked with Grogan and Doug of the Cincinnatti league, and Cochese Blue from up in Seattle I believe. We had the Unofficial Tecmo Super Bowl Homepage which was pretty extensive with history of the games, heroes and villans of Tecmo, Tecmo Gods, etc. We even held a tournament in Bloomington one year (97 or 98). I think Doug from Cincy and 3 other guys from who knows where showed up and we played Playstation and SNES versions. My league was with Lee and Ken if anyone remembers 10 years agoAnyways it's great to see Tecmo is alive and well, updated seasons, editing players and stats, internet play (which if I'm not mistaken me and Grogan or someone may have been one of the first to attempt it). As a working family man with 3 kids maybe you could beat me now, but back then I was pretty good.Madden still sucks compared to Tecmo, keep up the good work.Oh, and the Japanese programmers name was Junichi Sakuraba. The Tecmo USA guys name was Brian, still have the snail mail from him. I found Sakuraba's address searching all the search engines for Tecmo and finding a Japanese page that had an email link. Lost all this info, but they emailed me wondering what the names of the expansion Panthers and Jaguars were going to be, that was pretty funny. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hamburgler2682 Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 With all the information concerning fan bases available to companies now through fan sites and things you'd think that companies like Tecmo in the future would not let their popular titles die. Which is good for future gamers because they don't have to go through the frusteration that we did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slig Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Is the Brian he is referring to from Tecmo USA the same one that banned all of us from the Tecmoinc forum? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrBeef Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 dam the forum at Tecmo. Forgot all about that one. Would be an interesting twist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knobbe Posted January 30, 2007 Author Share Posted January 30, 2007 That's the reason i was asking for the web site. rod- try http://www.archive.org edge showed it to me, good way to find old websites if they were archived, that might help if you know the url even if the site isnt up anymore. but hell you probably knew that already Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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