Ah, Tecmo Superbowl. In my latest engagement with it I decided to limit myself by playing through a season without ever using a ’save and reload’ in order to avoid an unfortunate fate. To play the game ‘live’, in a sense. The main reason for this was to resolve my addiction by making it possible for the season to end without getting to the play-offs etc., without the possibility of just trying again. And again.

But, thanks to my tireless devotion to mastering the art of Tecmo, I actually managed to steer the Cowboys to a Superbowl win over the Tennessee Titans. I went through a number of defensive and offensive strategies throughout the season, honed my ball-pursuit skills, and juggled my roster mercilessly. I was the coach (and god) the team needed to push it over the top.

I won the Superbowl while sitting on a train going between Dhaka and Chittagong. It would not be an understatement to say that it was a surreal experience. It would also not be an understatement to say that I was exceedingly elated by winning this pixelated, low-fi, ancient game. Go Cowboys!

The levels to which I sink in my obsessive love for American football and the Dallas Cowboys in particular continue to amaze me. A key component of this, in my current European time zone, is frequently watching games that at best end at one or two in the morning, and all too frequently start then. Or there’s the fact that I generally actually listen to these games on the radio. Like I’m from the 40s or something.

Lately, though, my footballish desires have manifested in my repetitive playing of the trial version of Madden NFL Arcade 2009, a somewhat crappy little 5-on-5 version of football with the NFL teams in it. The trial version only allows two scores per game, making any given game last roughly two or three minutes and have no conclusive ending. So I reload and play again. And again.

Even better, I’ve taken to repetitively reloading the game screen because it randomly selects the teams you can play as and, of course, I want to play as the Dallas Cowboys. I’ve found myself reloading that screen what felt like twenty or more times in the quest to play as the Cowboys. I’ve found myself calculating the probability that the Cowboys will come up in the first place (it’s something like 1 in 16).

God forbid I pick up Tecmo Superbowl again.

When I play Tecmo I consistently win by big, big margins. Given that the game also has horrible graphics and pretty limited gameplay, why am I still playing it – having started a new season?

My current theory breaks it into two part, based on the underlying mechanics of the game and the representational nature of video game football.

So, first, I am getting some kind of “gamer” enjoyment out of the game, just not at the level of “will I win?” Instead, it’s about perfecting the game (after all, it only has eight plays per team). So it’s about whether I can score a touchdown on a run from the one yard line, or whether I can stop a running play when I’ve called a pass defense. Basically, it comes down to being able to say I know the system perfectly – and this is reflected in lop-sided scores as I get better at it.

Second, the representations involved as I pursue this technical mastery are of the Dallas Cowboys, my favourite team, winning time and time again. This returns me to this idea of being a fan of the team rather than the sport. For a fan of the team, it’s fine to see them win crushing victory after crushing victory.

So the two aspects of the game work together to make it something akin to crack cocaine.