Retro Bowl

Genre: Sports (Football)

Players: 1

.

Review:

Retro Bowl, released on mobile devices in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a Football game with a… well, a retro-style presentation, as well as some management elements. Players build up their team over time, make trades, improve facilities, and of course play football.

As the name implies, this is a retro-style look with pixel art visuals distinctly reminiscent of the classic game Tecmo Bowl. These quaint visuals are paired with a really catchy chiptune menu song, 8 Bit Joy!, with the actual gameplay mostly just backed by digitized cheering sounds from stadium fans. It’s all pretty minimal, but it works very well, hitting all the right nostalgia notes.

And when talking about the gameplay, I’ll kick things off (ha) by saying that Retro Bowl aims for an accessible experience, and the way it goes about it is by cutting out a lot of what you might expect to find in a football game. You’ll only be managing a small handful of “star” players whose qualities will reflect upon the rest of your team. There’s no defensive gameplay whatsoever – when the opposing team has possession of the ball you’ll just see text boxes telling you how well your team does, presumably based on the teams’ stats. And no doubt because of this lack of defensive gameplay, there’s no multiplayer.

Despite these huge omissions, Retro Bowl still manages to be a very fun and rewarding game of Football – the controls here are simple and extremely accessible, but nuanced enough that you’ll have options to shake things up if you want to get into more detail with the gameplay. The pacing is fast and doesn’t drag even the slightest bit. And the management elements give players a good amount of options for upgrading their teams without being overwhelming for more casual players.

Taking in both the good and the bad, Retro Bowl feels like half of a truly great retro-style Football game. Everything this game does do, it does impeccably well – the gameplay is great, the management elements are solid and not overbearing, and the presentation hits all the right notes. But at the same time, the lack of defensive play and multiplayer definitely feels like an important element of this game is missing. However, if you’re a Football fan looking for a great game on Nintendo Switch, the tiny $5 price tag makes this game an outstanding choice – it may be incomplete, but what’s here is so good that Retro Bowl ends up being one of the best Football games on Nintendo Switch (for whatever that’s worth).

tl;dr – Retro Bowl is a Football game that evokes the look of the classic Tecmo Bowl, but offers its own unique gameplay that’s absolutely fantastic. It’s just a shame that this game is missing so much – the game won’t let you play defense, and doesn’t have multiplayer. However, despite these omissions, this is one of the best Football games on Nintendo Switch due to the fact that everything it does do, it does extremely well. Well, and also due to the lack of great alternatives on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: B-

.

This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Efficient Use of File Storage Space (3.12GB)

.

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Talissa, Eli Goodman, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}