Friday, May 16, 2008
Long after Bo Jackson retired, the legend of Tecmo Bo lives on. For today's gamers, digital athletes are even realer than the real thing.
Feb 5, 2004 | For a couple of years in the late '80s, Bo Jackson seemed to be everywhere. As an outfielder for the Kansas City Royals and a part-time running back for the Los Angeles Raiders, Jackson became the first athlete to be named an All-Star in two major sports.
Jackson's prominence turned out to be short-lived. He played in only 38 NFL games and never rushed for more than 1,000 yards in a season before retiring from football after a career-ending hip injury in 1991. After retiring from baseball in 1995, Jackson returned to college to get his degree and is now co-owner of N'Genuity Enterprises, a Scottsdale, Ariz., company that specializes in food and technology services.
Today, one of the strongest reminders of Jackson's former glory is an obsolete yet still popular piece of video gaming technology. "I can guarantee that I can't go a week without someone mentioning something about 'Tecmo Bowl,'" says Jackson.
"Tecmo Bowl" is a football video game released for the original Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989, at the height of Jackson's popularity. In the game Jackson is simply unstoppable. Even though Tecmo Bo, as he came to be known, had only one play designed for him, he would regularly peel off 80-yard runs. Even if the opposing player called a play designed to stop him, Jackson was able to bust through multiple defenders for a 20-yard gain. ESPN columnist Bill Simmons has described Jackson as the greatest video game athlete of all time, and later wrote a follow-up column in which he and his readers spoke in "reverential tones" about Tecmo Bo.
Jackson's video game popularity has transferred into his real life thanks to a generation of players who grew up playing "Tecmo Bowl" as well as hardcore fans who still play the game. Countless men (they're almost always men) have regaled Jackson with stories about Tecmo Bo and often ask him to autograph a copy of the game. Jackson is happy to sign a game that he's never even played but knows all about. "What I have heard about 'Tecmo Bowl' is that I'm a bad man," says Jackson. Bad as in really, really, really good.
Jackson isn't the only athlete to have achieved fame for his video game likeness. Then-Chicago Blackhawks forward Jeremy Roenick's ability to fill the net and make Wayne Gretzky's head bleed in the "NHLPA '93" game was immortalized in the 1996 cult film "Swingers."
"It's not so much me as it is Roenick. He's good," says Trent, played by Vince Vaughn, as he dominates his friend Sue and then forces him to watch the replay of Roenick.
While most video games consist of fictitious characters and events, sports video games contain real people. And for a generation that may be spending more time in front of gaming consoles than out throwing real balls around, these video games are providing a new venue for fame and fandom. They are immensely popular and profitable, and they are changing the relationship between athletes and fans -- in many cases, the fond memories that a particular fan may have for a sports star owes more to the performance of his pixelated version than his actual on-court heroics.
Get Salon in your mailbox!