In 2023, Retro Bowl is America’s Greatest Mobile Game
The mobile gaming industry is defined by the fact that mobile games are…well mostly hit or miss. In my opinion the golden age of mobile gaming was like 2010 to 2015 when you you could pay $10 to download a relatively expansive game that had things like upgrade trees, a plot and rewarding, deep gameplay that involved more than clicking the screen. Minecraft Pocket Edition and Terraria would be great examples, if they were’t also on PC. The Dark Knight Rises mobile game was actually awesome. Hungry Shark wasn’t the ad riddled mess it is now. Plants vs Zombies was a cultural phenomenon. As usual, I blame capitalism. Giving mobile gamers hours of content at a great value means someone at HQ is doing their job wrong. Now we have Clash of Clans ads on actual television, often times exceeding the length of time you can actually play Clash at any advanced level without paying money. And should we even talk about Diablo: Immortal ? Nope.
I like football. A lot. My favorite mobile game ever was the Madden 12 Mobile Edition, which was basically a stripped down version of the normal game, with a working Franchise mode and all of the other fun things Madden used to have. These days you’re lucky to get that in the $70 version you buy for console. Unfortunately, it has gone the way of the dinosaur. It’s dead. They killed it. Which brings us to the Retro Bowl.
Retro Bowl is the best mobile football game since football was invented. It’s not perfect but it’s very fun and deliberately addicting for football fans like me. It’s simple control scheme and short games make it an easy pick up and play game but it’s true to life season lengths and use of (more or less) actual teams make it feel very legitimate. When I play as the Saints and their uniforms are actually Black and Gold. When I play as Alabama my uniforms are actually Crimson and White. This doesn’t hold true for every team. Florida’s uniforms are inexplicably yellow and white and Texas A&M and Mississippi State’s maroon come out more as scarlet but overall the attention to detail is impressive.
My scheme is simple. Maximize my offensive firepower while being efficient with my defensive personnel. In the OG Retro Bowl (NFL), having less than 3 receiving threats makes it easy for a defense to shut you down.
The thing that makes Retro Bowl work, even though I hate it, is that you can’t play defense. Your impact on games is limited to playing offense which means in many ways your strategy will be extremely different. The defensive side of the ball is entirely simulated which means all you can do is manage your roster. My ideal roster features a QB, 2 WRs, a HB and a TE on offense and four high level defensive players. This way you’ll have a solid defense that can occasionally win the RNG battle while also having offensive weapons that are on the field on every play. You’ll never have a formation that has less than 2 WRs, 1 TE and 1 HB. Which gets to my next point.
You ever see this formation? No? That would be because no one runs this formation. It’s not a thing outside of Retro Bowl.
You can’t call your own plays. You can audible to new plays. But you can’t call your own plays. Everyone runs the same scheme and has the same playbook, a playbook that often makes no sense. For example in the picture above, the RB is lined up between the guard and tackle as if it was shotgun but the QB is under center. This offers no schematic advantage. In fact it provides a disadvantage in the run game because the RB has to run to his right and cut upfield to take the handoff. This play doesn’t exist for many reasons but in Retro Bowl they stick you in this look all the time.
Every play is an RPO (run-pass option), which means you get to choose between handing it off (and getting stuffed) or dropping back into a pass play. I would choose the pass. Retro Bowl, whether it be college or professional, is a passing league. Running the ball is inconsistent and often ineffective and the inability to call your own plays hurts this aspect of the offense. You’re not getting 3 yards and a cloud of dust here. You’re getting 2 yards, -1 yards and then finally 3 yards on a perfectly blocked play. Once in a blue moon you will hit a huge chunk run for like 30 yards but because of how speed works you’re very likely to get caught from behind by someone you dusted at the start of the play.
The RB isn’t useless though. In fact the RB and TE positions can be the difference between having an elite unit that blows everyone out and a struggling group fighting in 1 score games. This is because of the Xs and Os and Retro Bowl’s surprisingly deep passing game. Concepts like leverage and rub routes apply here, as well as common football improvisations such as breaking off a streak into a comeback or under throwing a post to under cut the DB. You have to read the defense too, and there are a variety of coverages even if everybody runs the same 4-3 scheme. Every team will have 1 or 2 good WRs who will occasionally draw double or even triple coverage, making playmakers who start at the middle of the field all the more important. As such, a TE breaking into a quick seam route or a RB leaking out late can be among your most successful plays.
Moments before disaster: the defense sends 8 on the blitz committing a CB and FS to one WR while the RB is taken away by the blitzing LB. This leaves the TE wide open with a potential blocker in the WR.
There are two Retro Bowl games, though the main difference is the teams and playoff structures, which correspond to the leagues the games depict, which are the NFL and NCAA levels. The NFL version forces you to manages your roster a little more actively year to year as players are all on 2 year deals and if they become really good they become very expensive. It’s hard to maintain a juggernaut. The college game on the other hand, doesn’t have this but you only get to keep your players for 3-4 years max. The NFL version also allows you to make trades and sign free agents, which can transform your team instantly. My first season I had a bad defense and a struggling offense but was able to make some trades for a DB and a OL player that turned around both units. The college version doesn’t let you do this obviously, but individual players tend to be more dominant, especially WRs. I’ve won games throwing it to just one player.
The wonder of Retro Bowl is rooted in it’ simplicity and also its faux-nostalgia. It’s the Tecmo Bowl for people who never got to play Tecmo Bowl. It’s unsurprising that it’s caught on so much with the younger generations considering the hype of the original game. The game has grown it’s own community, including (my guilty pleasure) an 86.2k strong subreddit where people get way too deep into schematics and the mechanics of the game. If you made it to the bottom of this article and still don’t get why Retro Bowl is awesome, I don’t blame you, it really is hard to quantify, but I can tell you this- if you like football, there is no better game.
