Tecmo Super Bowl 2026: Week One Edition
The classic NES sports title, updated for the 2026-27 NFL season! The Preseason Edition has had a full pass over it — Week One rosters and ratings, two dead attributes turned into real ones, a rebuilt intro, an NFL rulebook the engine actually follows, and a COM that decides fourth down like a coach instead of a coin flip. Enjoy this version with the following features:
- Week One 2026 rosters, ratings, playbooks and sim data for all 32 teams.
- Playbooks edited – Plays moved to different slots, edited running plays, removed ‘bad’ plays (no more T formation plays). Play names rewritten, and the in-game playbook screen rebuilt to match.
- 66 hacks in total installed. 66 in the Hardtype version, 47 in Vanilla, 36 in Base.
- Kick power and defensive quickness are real ratings now — two attributes that did nothing in the engine, both re-rated from Madden 27.
- Two-point conversion, NFL touchbacks (35 on kickoffs, 20 on punts and turnovers), and a kickoff clock that starts when the return man catches the ball.
- Defensive players are setup for either 3-4, 4-3 or nickel defenses (RILB is the nickel back).
- Team uniforms edited so home team plays in primary uniform. NFC West teams now have a white road uniform and wear it on the road, and two uniform-lookup bugs in the 32-team expansion are fixed.
- Crowd and endzones drawn in the home team’s colors; in the playoffs the higher seed’s. Goal posts stay white.
- Sim code updated for more accurate team results.
- Updated helmets courtesy of @lpotter at TecmoBowl.org.
- Full 18-week NFL schedule courtesy of @COA Elway at TecmoBowl.org — all 272 games, correct home teams, and the standings header now reads 18 WEEK in week 18.
- The intro rebuilt with current players.
- Road-team-as-Player-2 and No Sprite Flicker both ship as optional IPS patches — no fourth ROM to keep track of.
Download v2.0 – Week One Edition (18-week version):
Optional Hacks:
TSB2026-v2.0-OPTION_P2_road_team_as_player_2.ips
TSB2026-v2.0-OPTION_No_sprite_flicker.ips
Notes:
TSB2026-v2.0-ROSTER_SET_COMMANDS.txt
Download v1.1 – Preseason Edition (18-week version):
Download v1.0 – Preseason Edition:
#1 – Base – Hacks Included
1. Two-point conversion
2. Automatic touchback on kickoffs into the end zone, ball placed at the 35; punt and turnover touchbacks at the 20
3. Kickoff clock starts when the return man catches the ball, or an onside kick is recovered — not when it is kicked
4. 15 yard XP
5. NFL wild-card pairing: the 6 seed plays at the 3, the 5 seed at the 4
6. Fix playoff bracket (32-team game)
7. Crowd color follows the home team; in the playoffs the higher seed. The Super Bowl and Pro Bowl keep the default crowd
8. Endzones take the home team’s color. The NFL shield is untouched and the goal posts stay white, on the field and in the FG/XP cutscenes
9. The COM no longer onside-kicks to open overtime — a vanilla logic slip that read an untimed overtime as “under two minutes”
10. Super Bowl score / Bills QB1 stat collision fixed. After the Super Bowl, Buffalo’s QB1 used to show the final score as his Pass Att and Pass Comp
11. NFC West teams have a white road uniform and wear it on the road, dark at home, per the 2026 schedule. Dallas wears white at home. Two uniform-lookup bugs in the 32-team expansion fixed
12. Punt returns fumble on the returner’s own ball control instead of a flat rate, and every kick and punt return man is rated 81 ball control
13. FG length max 69 yards
14. Punt length max 75 yards
15. Full 2026 NFL schedule, all 272 games with the correct home teams, a “WEEK 1” schedule header, and a standings header that advances to 18 WEEK
16. Pro Bowl: cutscene uniforms match the field (AFC red, NFC blue), and updated Pro Bowl rosters
17. TEAM ROSTER instead of 1991 ROSTER after the Super Bowl winner end game scene
18. Kick power is a real rating. The kicker’s old “avoid kick block” number did almost nothing; it is now his leg, field goal distance reads it instead of a flat constant, and the card reads KICK ACCURACY and KICK POWER. All 32 kickers re-rated from Madden 27
19. Defensive pursuit by quickness. Quickness drew a bar on the player screen and was never read by the engine; it now sets how long a chasing COM defender holds his line before re-aiming. All 352 defensive starters re-rated from Madden 27 Pursuit
20. COM knows its own kicker on fourth down — it compares the spot with that kicker’s actual range instead of trying anything inside 41 yards
21. The COM field goal and punt line moved out four yards, from the distance a kicker always makes to the distance he makes half the time
22. QB, lineman and defender fumble odds at 38
23. Play names rewritten, and the in-game playbook screen rebuilt to match — the base kept play names in two places and the second one still held vanilla’s
24. Milestone cutscenes at 100 rushing, 150 receiving and 300 passing
25. No Mighty Bomb Jack halftime — the Super Bowl draws one of the normal halftime shows
26. The intro rebuilt with current players, and the NFL shield, NFLPA licence and trademark screens taken out
27. Title screen: 2026 WEEK ONE EDITION
28. Add ‘Hut’ pre-snap cadence to 32-team ROM
29. NFC West SIM fixes
30. Player 2 conditions fix
31. FG avoid kick block fix
32. TE sim fix
33. Change offensive SIM to ‘out of 32’ sum
34. Prevent schedule from being random
35. More NFL like QB rating value
36. Set Pro Bowl kick/punt return
#2 – Vanilla – Hacks Included
Also includes all the Base version hacks.
37. Main menu background color change
38. Changing KR speed
39. PR speed change from SS to actual PR player
40. Better INT returns
41. Interception and fumble returns: the ball carrier’s hit power boost removed and his speed boost cut to one notch, so he no longer runs through the whole defense
42. QB backpedal animation hack
43. Kickoffs from 8 yard line to 3 deep in endzone
44. Better COM punt timing
45. PA/PC hack – PC is INT and PA is target
46. Add stats after quarters
47. Overthrow bug fix
#3 – Hardtype – Hacks Included
Also includes all the Vanilla version hacks.
48. Ultra logic hack — the COM changes its defensive calls instead of sitting in one look
49. COM fourth-down logic across the whole field. It decides from the real score, the clock and its own kicker’s leg. Its old arithmetic misread margins across the tens — 21-17 looked like ten points. Protecting a lead late it kicks in range and otherwise punts; trailing late it goes for it from anywhere a kick won’t help; fourth-and-goal from the 1 or 2 it goes. This replaces the old “COM goes for FG with :20 left”, “COM punts when behind by 15” and “punt when 50+ out” hacks
50. COM onside kicks by the real score — trailing in the fourth under a minute, or earlier when down two or three scores. Never in overtime
51. Late-game play mix: leading under two minutes in the fourth the COM runs 80% of the time, trailing it passes 80%
52. COM QB scrambles by his own pocket rating instead of a flat rate for everybody, and never steps up in the first half-second — no more walking straight into a linebacker
53. JStout’s Find Open Receiver, sharpened — with no receiver open the COM QB throws to the least-covered man instead of a blind pick
54. Onside kick recovery for the kicking team, on kickoffs only. Punts, passes and field goals bounce as in vanilla
55. More accurate FGs, with the very best kickers no longer automatic
56. Decrease fumbles to 30%, with nobody fumble-proof
57. Changing the differential for popcorning / DL busting through
58. Punt coverage boost removed
59. Randomize in-game music
60. Timing of snap exchange b/n C & QB
61. Faster handoffs, pitches, snaps & player control
62. QB throws ball instead of taking sack and runs less
63. COM dive tackling like SNES TSB I
64. COM angles to the sidelines if there’s no defenders in front of them
65. Push/Pull hack
66. Buck’s TSB COM juice setter — the COM plays at the 4-win level from game one, then climbs on vanilla’s curve
Changes from the Preseason Edition
- Week One rosters and ratings across all 32 teams.
- Two attributes that did nothing now do real work. Kick power sets field goal distance — a 25-rated leg is sure from 44 yards, the best legs from 62, with a few random yards on every kick. Quickness sets a COM defender’s juke window: a 50 gets vanilla’s half-second, the quick re-aim two to three times as often, the slow commit for nearly a second. The league median is unchanged, so the game is not globally harder — pursuit is redistributed.
- Two-point conversion added.
- NFL touchback rules: 35 on kickoffs, 20 on punts and turnovers. The Preseason Edition put everything at the 25.
- The kickoff clock now starts on the catch, not the kick.
- The Josh Allen bug is fixed — after a Super Bowl win, Buffalo’s QB1 was showing the final score as his passing line.
- NFC West road uniforms rebuilt, and two uniform-lookup bugs fixed.
- Crowd and endzone colors follow the home team, and the higher seed in the playoffs.
- Full 2026 schedule with the week-16 Las Vegas / Arizona error corrected, and a standings header that reaches week 18.
- Hardtype’s fourth-down, onside-kick and late-game logic rewritten from scratch. Three old community hacks retired into one system that reads the actual score.
- The intro rebuilt with current players.
- Milestone cutscenes added.
- FG max moved 67 → 69 yards.
- Road-team-as-Player-2 moved out of the ROMs and into an optional IPS patch, so there is no fourth download.
- Every jersey number in the file audited against all 32 clubs’ own rosters.
Thanks
This release stands on other people’s work. Names first, then what they did, because “thanks to everyone” pays nobody.
@bruddog — the Tecmo Super Bowl disassembly, which very little of this exists without; the overthrow bug fix; and the onside-kick recovery work.
@cx_rom — the 32-team foundation and the expansion-team template this whole ROM is built on, and two-point conversion work.
@BAD-AL — TSB Tool, which this project leans on constantly, and the SET command syntax the hack lists are written in.
@jstout — Find Open Receiver, the PA/PC read, and the color work that keeps turning up underneath other people’s hacks.
@Knobbe — the hacking documentation directory, without which half of this would have been rediscovered the hard way, and the PA/PC read that matched where this build landed independently.
@Suede Wade — the milestone cutscenes and Pro Bowl fix, the two-point conversion patch, and the report that caught the garbled roster title after a championship win.
@COA Elway — the 18-week schedule, a run of bug reports, and the 14-team playoff bracket that turned “is this even possible” into “here is the shape of it.”
@buck — the COM juice setter.
@konForce — kick-return speed.
@Ryzzynnwa — Push/Pull, the intro drawing routine, the ball-carrier bounce effect, and a great deal of the hacking documentation forum generally.
@xplozv — Find Open Receiver for SNES TSB I, and the idea and table behind the defensive quickness work.
@pambazos88 — the intro art — metatiles and palettes — and the insight that they are background metatiles and not sprites, which is what unstuck the intro. He is no longer with us. His notes still work, byte for byte, years later.
@keithisgood — roster and post-career research, and the 32-team base for the original Tecmo Bowl.
@lpotter — updated helmets.
@Jorgasms — the two-point conversion work whose signature is still in the ROM.
SheepdogXIX on X spotted a schedule error that triggered a full audit of all 272 games. He was right, and two of them were wrong.
And everyone at TecmoBowl.org who reports a bug instead of shrugging at it. A report that turns out to be right has value even when the file was already correct — it is a check that got run.