Seemingly every year a new video game sweeps the halls of Elder and causes a slight dip in the average student’s attention span. There will always be classics such as Hill Climb, and Tetris, but this year a new game has burst onto the scene: Retro Bowl.

Retro bowl is a strategy based 16-bit football game that has taken it’s grip on the students here at Elder. The goal of the game is simple; build a powerhouse team and bring them to as many Retro Bowls as possible. The difficulty lies in acquiring the right players to build such a dominant team. Some say all you need is a quarterback with a strong arm, and a fast wide receiver, but I’d beg to differ. Whether or not you have a fantastic QB or a fast wide receiver, you still need a pretty solid defense, otherwise the other 31 teams in your fictitious techno league will run circles around your team.

New games here at Elder seem to spread like wildfire. You will see one person playing a game, and by the time you get to your next period, the whole class is hooked. I sat down with Retro Bowl veteran Alex Shewmaker to find out what he thought of everyone playing this new exciting game.

“I feel like everybody loves it now but it will dwindle.” Shewmaker is no stranger to dwindling things. His team experienced quite the loss after losing three five star offensive players, and not making the playoffs for three consecutive seasons.

So this begs the question, what makes Retro Bowl so special? Well, I have a couple of theories. First, Retro Bowl is styled like a game from the 1980s. Although it would not be nostalgic for any current students of Elder, it is still a reminder of a simpler time. My second theory is that Retro Bowl is a combination of things that many students here at Elder love: Winning, and managing a fictitious football team.

Only time will tell whether or not Retro Bowl is a game to stay, or one of the many games that just become passing fads.