Oklahoma State football recreates signing day recruits in 'Tecmo Super Bowl' Nintendo game
STILLWATER, Okla. — For most of the last six weeks, Heath Vessels’ life has been consumed by sprites.
No, not the drink.
“Sprite” is the graphic designer term for each of those little "Tecmo Bowl" football players Vessels recreated for Oklahoma State’s signing day social media campaign that was a huge hit with players and gained national attention for its creativity on a day when every college is trying to top everyone else.
Each school tries to do something creative to recognize their new signees, often tying into popular culture.
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In case you weren't surfing social media on Wednesday, Oklahoma State released a video for each of its signees that opened with some 1980s-style graphics, biographical information on the player, then a mock-up play from "Tecmo Bowl" — the Nintendo football game that was wildly popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s — that morphed into the player’s actual highlight video.
At the end of the clip, an image of Barry Sanders welcomes the player to the Oklahoma State Cowboys family. Twitter views for the videos, in total, were climbing into the hundreds of thousands by Wednesday afternoon.
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Oklahoma State had been promoting the 2021 signing class by using imagery of Sanders, the school’s greatest No. 21 — and greatest player — of all time.
In sticking with that throwback theme, Vessels came up with the idea of recreating plays from "Tecmo Bowl" back in early November.