New Tecmo Bowl shirts are perfect way to celebrate Chiefs legends

I became a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs at 12 years old. I know some fans are born into the Kingdom, but some of us find our own path to our favorite team. A few years back, I detailed my entire journey to finding the Kansas City Chiefs and now I feel like Homage's new line of classic Tecmo Bowl NFL shirts was specifically made just for me.

I was an avid sports card collector as a kid. While baseball cards were my first obsession, it didn't take me long to venture into football cards as well. While opening up a pack of cards was always exciting, my local card shop would break up complete sets and sell "team packs". As a kid growing up in Topeka, KS my first NFL team pack was of the local team, the Kansas City Chiefs.

In 1989, that team pack included a couple of players that caught my attention. The first was a rookie card for K.C.'s first-round pick, Derrick Thomas. The other was a running back named Christian Okoye with the biggest shoulder pads I had ever seen. It may sound crazy that I bought the Chiefs team cards before watching them play, but all I can say is that I've always been a collector, and buying those cards made me want to tune into their games to see if these players were any good. When it came to Derrick Thomas and Christian Okoye the answer was a resounding yes.

Homage's new shirt line honors Kansas City Chiefs Tecmo Bowl legends Christian Okoye and Derrick Thomas.

I was also a Nintendo junkie as a kid, and if you fast forward two years to 1991, I bought the Nintendo game that would become the most played video game of my entire childhood, Tecmo Super Bowl. While I'd enjoyed the original Tecmo Bowl, this updated version was a nice step up and they had the Chiefs in the game this time.

Again, this may sound crazy, but playing that video game for hours on end made me a bigger Chiefs fan. Sacking the quarterback with the blazing-fast Derrick Thomas was great, but the real highlight was sending defenders flying across the screen with the seemingly indestructible Christian Okoye. Okoye would go down in video game lore as one one of the most dominating players of all time (Barry Sanders and Bo Jackson were up there too).

With Christian Okoye and Tecmo Bowl being such a huge part of my history of becoming a Chiefs fan, I jumped at the chance to preview Homage's new line of shirts that feature the best players in the game. This is the first time that Tecmo Bowl has had officially licensed apparel. Homage has already released Tecmo Bowl team helmet shirts for every team. Their initial wave of 10 different legendary Tecmo Bowl players included two Kansas City Chiefs—Christian Okoye and Derrick Thomas—and they are now up to 24 different player shirts.

I got the Okoye player shirt and a shirt with the iconic Tecmo Bowl American flag lettering from the game. I'm really tempted to pick up the Derrick Thomas shirt as well. You can see pictures of the shirts below and you can check out the entire line of Homage's Tecmo Bowl collection at this link. If you're a Chiefs fan who grew up playing Tecmo Bowl and destroying your opponent with the Nigerian Nightmare you may jump at the chance to pick up a piece of nostalgia.