Retro Bowl Coming to Mobile Devices Soon, Possibly For PC & Consoles at a Later Date - Details Here

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We recently had a quick chat with Simon Read, founder and creator of New Star Soccer, on his upcoming side project, Retro Bowl. It definitely gives off the Tecmo Bowl vibe, but has its own little gameplay features that are turning some heads.

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Mainly, as seen in the quick gameplay video below, Retro Bowl offers a one-touch based passing system, allowing users to aim and throw in order to lead passes to receivers.

Simon has confirmed to Operation Sports that Retro Bowl will not feature the NFL license, so it’s just city names and random player names for now, but an editor is something that can be added, as the game will continue to add and improve features if it is well received.

Check out some of the recently released Retro Bowl screenshots below showing off some of the early UI, stats, kicking game and new routes being added to the game.

… also, a quick video showing the running game.

Simon also mentioned to us that franchise mode will be the main, if not only, mode of play. The management aspects will be very light touch to begin with and there won’t be any direct control over defensive plays — that will take place during commentary, similar to New Star Manager.

He would like to include some sort of management in the game, so he’s currently figuring out possible ways to do that. The thinking is maybe just have a small roster of star players that you can pick/trade while staying within the salary cap.

To give a little history on Retro Bowl, Simon let us in on this little tidbit of information:

I started out with a New Star Soccer approach where you control the career of a quarterback but I found that to be a bit limiting and wanted to give the player control over running backs, receivers and kickers. So now you are effectively the head coach or GM, controlling the action on the field and picking players off it. It’s all very light touch at the moment, keeping the deeper aspects of football (playbooks, rosters etc.) to a minimum. Clearly the game is inspired by Tecmo Bowl but the action is designed specifically for touch screens. I should stress that initially this was just a little experiment that then grew into a side project and is now taking over my life as I immerse myself into the world of NFL, watching as many matches as I can each week!

You can get more details on the game, by following the official Retro Bowl Twitter account.

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Steve Noah
Steve is the Editor in Chief at Operation Sports. He's been here since the year 2000 posting news, features and interviews, along with keeping the hardcore sports gaming community alive and well for over two decades. He covers almost every game related to sports but enjoys basketball, football and baseball games the most.