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Playing a Full MAN Tecmo Season


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Has anyone ever tried to play an entire season of all MAN vs. MAN games?  Below is an idea I've tossed around a few times with guys in the NYC area that gets close to it.  This post inspired me to post about it here:

 

I've had this idea for a while about playing through a full season on the original TSB cart.  I've never played through a season with anyone, so I always wanted to see what it was like.  I wanted to see if it was possible to play an entire season with mostly MAN controlled teams.

Of course, having 28 people with each person controlling one team doesn’t seem doable.  Picking a division to start with is the easiest.  You could have 4-5 guys each pick a team from that division and play out the schedule.  That would give only 6 head to head games and 10 against the computer, which could be a bit dull once those COM games pop up. The problem with playing a full season is that there are A LOT of games vs. the Computer, so I want to try and minimize that.  So I started looking at the season schedule and if it were possible to select teams from other divisions.  It is possible for a person to select teams from other divisions without having to play against himself.


So the season would entail having a player draft a grouping of teams. You can have anywhere from 4-7 people taking multiple teams at once. I went through the Tecmo season schedule to find out what pairings would work so that a player doesn’t have to play himself throughout the season.  This would be near impossible to do if all 28 teams were used on one cart, so I split it up into AFC and NFC.


For example, it is possible for four players to select three teams from each conference and not have to play against themselves.  This would give each person 10 games vs. a human opponent (with 6 against the computer) for each team that they have, which is plenty more in-season Tecmo.

 

Based on the schedule, we can select from 4 groups of 3 for the conference of our choosing.  For example, the AFC would be the following pairings:

 

Group 1: BUF, CLE, SEA
Group 2: IND, CIN, K.C
Group 3: NYJ, PIT, RAI
Group 4: MIA, HOU, S.D

 

(N.E and DEN are left off because their schedules were altered to suit a 28 team league at the time, though you could have a fifth player choose those teams as a foil)

 

The NFC would look like this:

 

Group 1: WAS, G.B, S.F
Group 2: GIA, DET, N.O
Group 3: DAL, T.B, RAMS
Group 4: PHI, CHI, ATL

 

(MIN and PHX are left off for the same reasons)

 

Each person would draft a group.  We would decide whether we wanted to use the AFC or NFC, or have two TVs, one with AFC and the other NFC. But can't use both on the same cart.

 

For 6-7 players, the pairings would be as follows:

 

AFC:
Buf & Sea
Hou & Ind
Rai & Cle
KC & Jets
Mia & Pit

Cin & SD
(Den & N.E.)

 

NFC:
SF & GB
Gia & NO
Phi & Rams
Chi & Dal
Det & Atl
TB & Was
(Min & Phx)

 

Because there are only 28 teams in the original Tecmo, Min & Phx play each other twice, as do Den & N.E. (the game can be simmed, or have a player go 1-1 with each team in matchups).

 

Most players would have 12 MAN games and 4 COM games per team (if Den, N.E, Phx, and Min are used). If using one conference, we are talking about a lot of games, and a lot of time. This would be about 6-7 all-day sessions. That's based on an estimate of about 30 minutes it takes to play and set up a game. I estimated a season would be about 50-60 hours of playing time.  In the 6-7 player scenario, each person has 4 teams (2 AFC, 2 NFC), so that means 64 games per player, and might take a little longer with games overlapped on different carts.  There should be approximately 143 games (including playoffs) on each cart for a grand total of 286 games of Tecmo!  

 

For COM play, you could make it a little more interesting than just playing the computer.  For example, you have to put in your backups/worst players and try to defeat the computer that way. It might make those games more competitive and more fun. There won't be many of them, but it will make for an added challenge.

 

Have you ever tried a season with multiple MAN opponents?  Which team groupings above would you draft if given the choice?

 

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Very much like TLL (Tecmo Legacy League?) in picking multiple teams. That might be the best way to do it using the actual carts. I know @toolie did a full 28 man league in college, but yeah having to do that on just one cart is rough in terms of time. Heck even what you're suggesting is just on one cart right? Thus will be a very long time.

 

We did a modified season with Everdrives and a hacked rom and some tools that @bruddog (all praise Bruddog) made that allowed us to play a season on actual NESes but with the Everdrive Cartridges and instead of having to wait for only 1 game at a time, we played 4 at a time (it can be more if necessAry) and the game actually acts just like the actual Cart in terms of keeping season stats and standings. Frankly it is a game changer for me in terms of the ultimate tecmo experience (and staying as true to the original rom as much as possible). Granted we draft our teams in tandems a la HSTL (just a 7 round draft) and play all of our games using the Preseason menu (due to the hacks) but the fact that you can complete a season in such a (relative) short amount of time, it's the most fun I've had playing tecmo since the very first (and only) live season I did over a weekend in DEC 1991 with a handful of other guys when we were still learning how sick a game it was as a descendant of Tecmo Bowl with the cut scenes, fumbles, non interceptions and plays, STATS, all of it.

 

The rom itself using OG rosters is fun in that the conditions and injuries happen even in preseason games, if you're feeling that kinda vibe

 

Alas the ultimate goal for me is to have a full 16 game regular season (we've only managed 7 due to time) and that would take 2 days for sure.

 

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The Tecmo Legacy League is the closest thing to that idea and perhaps I was influenced by them. :)  

 

How does it work with 4 different carts?  Also, I'm curious to know how to captures injuries and conditions.  That's one of the big things I want a season for. I would seriously consider splurging for a few everdrives to get it to work. Would you have to use the in-game schedule?

 

Live seasons may be the next big thing after live tournaments! You're right, doing 20+ teams in an actual season is a big challenge and time commitment, even if two carts are used.

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1 hour ago, Bad Moon Rison said:

The Tecmo Legacy League is the closest thing to that idea and perhaps I was influenced by them. :)  

 

How does it work with 4 different carts?  Also, I'm curious to know how to captures injuries and conditions.  That's one of the big things I want a season for. I would seriously consider splurging for a few everdrives to get it to work. Would you have to use the in-game schedule?

 

Live seasons may be the next big thing after live tournaments! You're right, doing 20+ teams in an actual season is a big challenge and time commitment, even if two carts are used.

Hey Brian,

 

You can make it work with 4 or more (would need @bruddog to make a merger tool that does more than 4) everdrive carts. We have an event coming up  next month and if we have 8 I'm rolling with 4 Everdrive Carts, but if we get up to 12 owners (my max for this non summer one) I'm fairly sure we can get that merger tool from Bruddog. I liked the idea of having each week take 2 rounds of games (which was my plan for CFT2 last July, because it gave guys about an equal chance to enjoy playing and watching, but it turned out to be a game breaker in terms of time because of the logistics and technicalities of making this work. So from here on out, I'm going to shoot to just have every game scheduled for each week be played at the same time, as it's a huge time save. We've finished both seasons super late, Season 1 wasn't even with merging, just uploading files for stats and we finished past 1am local time. Season 2 concluded past 3:30 am, and that was after I cut out 3 weeks from a planned 10 week schedule (we also played the playoffs from the Tecmo Bracket [again thanks to Bruddog] which was just one game at a time and that in and of itself takes more than 3 and a half hours. BUT IT WAS AMAZING!

 

The top post in this thread explains most of it, but I can explain in more detail if necessary. That should answer your first question about how it works. Basically, we played 4 games at a time on 4 different consoles and Everdrive Carts using the rom that Bruddog hacked for keeping stats, records, and injuries from games played in preseason mode. {Trying to play any games on the rom using the Season Mode menu will not work, all games are started from the preseason menu, but all the stats, conditions, injuries and records are "inserted" into the season mode statistics files and pages on the rom, basically making it act just like a normal season mode game played, with the only difference being that all games are started from the Preseason Menu.

 

After the 4 games were played, we had to get a save state from each Everdrive cart using it's Save State capabilities, which is not as simple as it sounds. We needed 2 saves from each game, one from the blue game recap screen which we would use to upload our games to our CFT Phile here. Then we would need to get a save state from the Everdrive carts from the screen just after you hit the A Button on the Blue Recap Screen, which we would use to merge all 4 games' worth of stats, records, injuries and conditions together using Bruddog's tool. As if this doesn't sound complicated enough, the utility of the Everdrive's save state capability does not allow you to keep more than one save state for any rom using it's SAVE File folder. However, thanks to a gracious speedrunner named authorblues and a youtube (or twitch) video he posted explaining how you can use the everdrive to save more than one state for any given rom using precreated (and prenamed) files to save the state to. Long story short, it was possible to get both saves needed for this process without taking the Everdrive cart out at all. In the end it's a very particular and precise process.

 

After the 4 states were saved to our computer, we merged them together using Bruddog's merger tool, which spit out a merged state including all the stats from 4 games in one state. That state was then saved to the Everdrive's SD card, and then applied to the SRAM of the Everdrive before loading the rom which then in essence showed all 4 games worth of stats on each cart ready for the next round of games with all the conditions and stats updated and thus ready for the next week of games.

 

As for the in game schedule, you do not need to use that, you can just pick whatever teams play and go. I did edit the in game schedule, mainly for aesthetics, as I was trying to have our experience as close to an OG Rom season as possible, with the little hacks I did that were mostly visual and texts on the many of the cut scenes. None of the hacks really affect actual game play, although I did apply the no end zone fumble and tapmeter hack (because fun) . But the actual gameplay (and OL and defensive alignments) were kept just like the OG rom.

 

I really do believe live seasons are a wave of the future, not to replace live tournaments, but to fill the void of live seasons because live seasons on Tecmo are SO RAD!

 

 

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I read through your post twice.  It seems like a lot of work but I imagine once you do it a few times you get the hang of it. I would be worried about having to capture the save state twice.

 

I am toying with the idea of doing things in preseason to start, so I can at least get 5-6 guys committed to something without the harsh time constraints.  You get 3-4 months to play your games, you can play them in any order, as long as you play all of them by the deadline.  Problem with that is no stats/injuries but at least it counts towards something.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/15/2018 at 10:42 PM, Bad Moon Rison said:

I read through your post twice.  It seems like a lot of work but I imagine once you do it a few times you get the hang of it. I would be worried about having to capture the save state twice.

 

I am toying with the idea of doing things in preseason to start, so I can at least get 5-6 guys committed to something without the harsh time constraints.  You get 3-4 months to play your games, you can play them in any order, as long as you play all of them by the deadline.  Problem with that is no stats/injuries but at least it counts towards something.

 

Getting set up to play online is a huge pain at first, but then is simple afterwards.  Full 28-man season did happen, we ran maybe 10 seasons of that (even carried on a couple of years after my buddy and I who started it had graduated, which was pretty cool).  Many things led to that perfect storm working out: all guys being on a small campus and most of the league in one dorm was huge, and the large talent disparity made the league pretty competitive.  It seems like a really good team or a really bad team won every season.  I know a guy won with Tampa once (I lost to him with CLE ? ).  Tracking people down was a pain since we didn't have cell phones / texting, and once I had to recreate half the season because it got reset (good thing I wrote down all the results). But damn was it worth it! Playoffs in one night, pizza, beer, entrance music.  Those were the days! 

 

Good luck putting something together.  Being able to play games out of order is a huge benefit.  Kamp's deal of getting guys together for a one-day or one-weekend bash where you're only playing man vs. man games and drafting "equal" teams sounds awesome.  Wish I lived closer!

 

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1 hour ago, toolie said:

 

  Kamp's deal of getting guys together for a one-day or one-weekend bash where you're only playing man vs. man games and drafting "equal" teams sounds awesome.  Wish I lived closer!

 

I wish you lived closer too! 

 

Also, while I took the reins on this CFT thing, and I HAVE worked my ass off to make it work, I always want to give credit to @manYo720 for getting this type of thing going. 

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