thrillist

Over-analyzing something can ruin its appeal, whether it's endlessly comparing a movie to the original book, or just reading a book in the first place. Getting deep where you like it -- in old-school video games -- is Tecmo Bowl vs. RBI Baseball.

Not actually pitting the two against one another, TB vs. RBIB's an insanely detailed breakdown of the ultra-technical strategies the founder discovered during "lengthy study" (i.e., 20 years), which he claims morphs the games into the "ultimate cerebral battle", so suck it, War. Tecmo deets begin with five "basic" (yet wildly in-depth) strategies for victory, covering everything from "Cat and Mouse Defense" to exploiting playbook glitches, providing screen shots & diagrams for good measure; he also lists team power rankings that reveal design flaws rendering Bo's Raiders shockingly easy to stuff, and suggests you "deal with the fact that your precious memories of the Raiders have been destroyed and move on with your life!", which means a lot coming from a dude who still plays hundreds of games of Tecmo Bowl every week. As for RBI, strategies are based on exploiting individual players' rating abilities, but get fleshed out with a deep analysis of each team's pitching staff strengths and weaknesses, plus how to maximize your lineup using bench subs, though considering he was almost 50 when the game came out, it's kind of common sense to get Johnny out of there.

If for any reason you doubt his devotion, there's even a page showing off the founder's extensive game-repping tats, including an entire leg sleeve screenshot of a 49ers/Giants game -- analyze it too closely, and things are bound to get hairy.

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Nerd out on NES at TecmoBowl-vs-RBI.com