Retro Bowl College

[BigDaddyCool]

Yes, you read that right - Retro Bowl College is now out, I've been playing it, I'm impressed and saddened at the same time. Saddened because we never got this kind of game on the PC unless we bought Bowl Bound from Grey Dog Software, but that was a text game that only gave you one major division at a time.

RBC gives you not only access to all the FBS teams, divisions and Bowl games, but all of the FCS teams, divisions and playoffs!

That's 250 college teams in all folks. 250!!!

For a game that you can play on your iPhone!!!!!!!

I got this game a few days ago and I had spent most of that time modding the game. Basically if you want accuracy you are going to have to do this and it is going to take you some time. You will need to edit the names of most of the conferences, all of the bowl games, and every single uniform for every single team in the game.

Every. Single. One.

Now before you groan about how much work you have ahead of you, don't panic. There are others who have done the leg work for us and they have published their work that the rest of us can use. There are videos on YouTube that detail what you will need to do to play with accurate team names and uniforms. If you go to YouTube and do a search for "Retro Bowl College Uniforms" you'll get a series of videos. You are looking for a video called "Complete REALISM GUIDE for College Retro Bowl" by I'm Grego that is 22:27 long. That's the one that I used. According to Grego if you sit down and just pound out your editing process without any distractions you should be able to finish in about six hours. Realistically, if you have a life, it should take you about three days. That's pretty much what it took me to finish up editing everything before I played a down, and trust me it was worth it. Somehow S.Cal vs South Bend doesn't have the same ring as USC vs Notre Dame.

Anyway, this game plays pretty much like Retro Bowl does in terms of game play. There are some obvious differences like no free agency, college overtime rules, and you have to try to build a recruiting budget throughout the season if you want to get the blue chip players from St. John Bosco and Mater Dei. You also need to build your staff and upgrade your facilities to make your program more attractive to potential recruits.

And you need to win games to get the alumni to donate. Coaching credits can be bought just like in Retro Bowl and that can get you going if you want to go that route. Be careful because that can get expensive after a while.

To be continued...

[BigDaddyCool]

Ok, now the roster is pretty much the same as in Retro Bowl with some differences. Obviously like I said before there's no free agency and there's no trading for draft picks. You can cut players if they are just not cutting it on the field but you have to be careful. If you cut them during the season you cannot replace them at all and you do not recoup their scholarship money. If however you decide to cut them after the season is over, the NFL draft has happened and you are actively recruiting then you will be able to get some of their scholarship money back. So sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and bare having a player on your roster that might not be up to snuff.

Another thing you need to keep an eye on - GPA. This is college ball remember. There are minimum GPA levels that your players have to meet in order to keep their eligibility, and it is up to you to make sure they go to class and maintain that level. Freshman has a lower threshold than Sophomores do, and the minimum increases for Juniors and Seniors. One trick that you can use to make sure your guys maintain a good GPA is to use some of your coaching credits to get your team some extra tutoring during a bye week. I recently did that with the Georgia Tech game I'm playing (I'll explain later). I had a bye week after beating North Texas and South Alabama in my first two weeks so I figured I'd use the time to get my guys some classroom help. The GPA's on my roster were like 2.7's, 2.5's, and there were a couple of 2.3's in yellow that I guess was a warning that they were getting kind of low. So I spent 25 credits to get my whole roster a GPA boost with some extra tutoring, and the next week before our ACC opener at Syracuse my whole roster had a GPA of 3.0. Job done.

[BigDaddyCool]

Now in order to edit the team names, uniforms, conferences and bowl games you are going to need access to the unlimited version of the game. Yes, you need to pay for that to unlock it but it is well worth it in the end. Then you will be able to have accurate teams and uniforms, you will also be able to have a 12 man roster instead of 10, weather effects and kickoff returns.

Now the pictures below show the conferences and some bowl games after I got done editing them. New Star Games obviously can't include some bowl names and real school names and colors because this is not an NCAA endorsed product. That's why we have to make changes ourselves, but some of the provided names are pretty obvious as to who or what they really are. The Spice Bowl is supposed to be the Sugar Bowl, the Party Bowl is the Fiesta Bowl, West Point is supposed to be Army, the Large Ten is supposed to be the B1G or Big 10, etc.

And you might have a lot of fun making alternate uniforms for some of these teams, I know I had some fun making some alternates for certain teams that I liked that weren't included in Grego's tutorial.

Also, here's a tip that you should utilize that comes in handy. Create one main game that you can edit and occupy the five game slots you have. Go ahead and leave that edited game in that top slot without playing it and edit the information for all your teams and bowl games. Then go ahead and create games in any of the other four slots and once you get it started, you can copy that information over from slot one without having to spend all that time editing everything all over again. It works without corrupting your new game and it's a great time saver.

[BigDaddyCool]

Some other tips about game play:

There's no transfer portal - at least not yet. I saw one video on YouTube where a player was trying to build a great roster quickly just like in Retro Bowl by cutting players and getting more scholarship money to get blue chippers. He assumed that he would be able to get more players through the transfer portal to shore up his roster and create a top 20 team.

The look on his face when he discovered that there was no portal and that he had royally screwed himself...

That's why I said in a previous post to be careful when you're recruiting and maybe hang on to players until you know you can replace them.

New Star may include some kind of transfer portal in future versions of the game along the lines of free agency in the pro version, but it doesn't have it yet.

You won't start out at your favorite school - When you start out in a game you won't be starting out at the top. You won't be starting out coaching Alabama or Clemson, you are going to have to prove yourself before that. It's not like in Retro Bowl where you can coach your favorite team right away. It's like in Retro Goal (their soccer game) where you have to manage Nottingham Forest for a season before you can get an offer to manage Liverpool. Here in RBC you have to coach a FCS team or a "lower" FBS team for a season before you get that offer for one of the "elite" teams in the game. So before you get to coach Boise State or USC, you have to prove yourself at Georgia Tech or Cal Poly SLO for a season first.

This game is available at Google Play for Android and at the Apple Store for iPhone. I managed to get it for my Amazon Fire Tablet though a different means and I'm able to play it just fine.

No word on if they are going to expand the four team playoff in the FBS to a twelve team playoff or if they are going to address conference realignment in a future update. But at least in this version of the game the Pac12 lives.