title image

Retro Bowl

Play football like it's 1987!

Ratings

Age

4+

Category

Sports

Languages

English

Retro Bowl is the perfect game for the armchair quarterback. Take over a struggling franchise and build a dynasty. Manage your players, handle the press, and call the plays on the field. With its charming 8-bit aesthetic and modern gameplay depth, Retro Bowl offers an endless season of American Football excitement.

Dinsun Expert Review

Our Expert Score

95/100

Retro Bowl is a absolute masterpiece of game design. It manages to capture the soul of 'Tecmo Bowl' and 'Madden' while stripping away all the unnecessary complexity. The gameplay is pure, addictive fun: you manage your team's roster, build your stadium, and then take to the field with simple, brilliant touch controls for passing and running.

The difficulty balance is perfect—the game is easy to pick up but incredibly hard to master on 'Dynamic' or 'Extreme' settings. The management side is surprisingly deep, forcing you to make tough calls about player morale, salary caps, and draft picks. It’s the kind of game that you play for 'just five minutes' and realize two hours have passed. It is, without a doubt, the best football game on mobile.

Dinsun reviewed on: Thu Feb 26 2026

Features

1

Addictive retro-style gameplay

2

Full roster and facility management

3

Simple, responsive touch controls

4

Regular updates and 'Extreme' mode

Featured In

Play a Thrilling Throwback
Play a Thrilling Throwback
Relive gaming’s gridiron glory days.

Tips & Walkthrough

Gameplays

Screenshot

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Q&A

No, you can play as many seasons as you like, building a multi-decade legacy for your team.

Ratings & Reviews

FAVORITE APP PERIOD
Mon Jun 20 2022 Fonginator

The game is without a doubt one of my favorite apps i’ve ever downloaded and i continue to love playing this game. Although, i think they should update it with a feature where you can see opposing teams roster, coaches, facility ratings, etc. They should also do something where you can simulate different choices during the game like getting an injured player halfway through the game so you have to make a decision on whether or not to let them keep playing type of scenario. I also think that letting you choose your defense set up or different defensive plays would be cool. I say that because of the fact the game only uses a 4-3 defense and i’d love to see my team with a 3-4 defense and occasionally a 5-1 defense on the goal line maybe. I think it would also be neat if they added the option of drafting or getting a punter from the free agents list where the better the punter would also help with a better, more dominant performance from the defense cause the offense would have to gain more yards. The option to not only customize your team on premium but also your stadium, field, and stands would be really neat. Getting the option to make an avatar for yourself as the head coach would be really cool or the option to edit parts of your story leading up to becoming head coach of that team that you chose or got selected to. I think these would be really cool in a future update to the game or even a possible sequel. Nonetheless 5 star game without a doubt!!

Best sports game on App Store!
Tue Apr 05 2022 crnl.beef

This game is incredible, I love everything about it, but that doesn’t mean there’s room for improvement. One thing I wish you would do is add it so you can see a opposing teams roster, coaches, etc. along with during gameplay you can see your opponents Star players on defense, like how you do with the users players. I’m pretty sure other people have said this in their reviews too, but it would be awesome if we were able to start in college or choose to stay in college, I don’t care if I have to pay for that feature, I would get it either way. Another one is of course the option to play on defense as well. I think it would be cool if you added a simulation feature to it, so you can sim games you don’t wanna play, because sometimes after like 5 full seasons of games, you just kinda get tired of playing and wish you could progress your career and franchise without actually having to play the football game. Also I think it should be easier to get Coach Credits, sometimes it’s really hard to resign guys because you don’t have enough cap room, but the only way to make more is to either cut someone or pay Coach Credits to expand the cap, but the expansion cap is mega expensive and the only way to get it without paying real money for more Coach Credits is to farm them for like 10 season. I think if you add this stuff this game becomes App games hall of fame worthy. Keep updating and make this game even better!

Hope bug fixes are coming soon
Sun Apr 10 2022 C_Boheme

This is without a doubt the best sports game you can play on your phone. Full stop, no competitor. I was really excited to see the kick return update last week, but I’m really hoping we get a bug fix update soon that can return the rushing game back to normal. It’s almost unplayable right now taking a 3 yard loss one of out of every five times you try to run the ball. There’s no way I’m the first person to bring it up so I hope it’s coming soon! I’d love to see RetroBowl MVPs and maybe halftime stat breakdowns in future updates. Would also love to see a 3rd interchangeable receiver added as well like you can with TEs. I’ve seen other people say they’d like to see the other players and star players league wide and I totally agree. Would make the trade/free agency market more fun. Would love to have league wide stat boards as well to see who is leading in different categories and make record stats league wide and not just for the franchise. Hope updates like that roll around eventually, I would totally pay for any upgrades that come along. I enjoy the soccer game as well but it isn’t quite as addicting. Would love to see other sports as well, basketball would probably be pretty tough in this format but I bet baseball would be awesome. Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 for SNES would probably be sort of the model for that I’m guessing. Mostly came to plead that the rushing gets fixed but rambled on. Keep up the great work.

BETTER THAN MADDEN
Sat Nov 12 2022 I❤️JESUS-JESUS❤️YOU

This game is good period. Without a doubt the second you download this game, your hooked. Improving your team with pixels from way back when, that’s amazing! First thing I would suggest is being able to play Defence. I just think it would be so cool if you were able to play with the your opponents but on Defence. That would also provide room for multiplayer. I think it would also be cool if you could play with a friend, play by play. Second thing I would suggest is logos for teams. That would be put in the middle of the field of course and where you keep the score. Third thing is Being able to make longer games. With Defence and longer games, this would Improve your game better than it already is. Fourth. I think people have already asked this a billion times, but it’s just a good idea. You should be able to have a mode that allows you to have real players, current and past. Such as Tom Brady or Brett Favre. Fifth, and last. Simulator mode. Kinda like a idle game where you upgrade things but better. I think it would be cool to be able to build and improve stadiums and be able to see what your doing, and make restaurants inside your stadium. This is one of the random ideas, but I’m just trying to provide suggestions for future updates. Thank you for making such a fun game, have a wonderful day-month-year and I hope you put my thoughts into consideration. Thank you again. - Sincerely, DogeMan 😏

Best app for passing time
Sat Oct 22 2022 VeryCannyM0untain

Games are short and easy for premium team customization is great I literally made a whole college roster with it gameplay is amazing the graphic are simple but amazing passing and running are great but things they could improve on is that there should be a option to put one of your players on kick returns cause i don’t like how slow the normal ones are and I feel like they could improve on dynamic difficulty I wanna feel the struggle against a 8-2 team and not the score being 60-20 and then the next week where a 1-8 team drops 55 on me and I barely get by but that’s pretty much my problems with the second one I can just easily change the difficulty to extreme I like the role of the upgrade system with the franchise like the stadium where if you lose with a 1 stadium your fan base basically goes to 100 to 50 from 1 lose to a 10 stadium where the fan base is barely affected like the role coordinators play and the attributes play but to finally cut this off my take away is you can pick up this game do the bare minimum by just playing games or get into the more complicated side with managing cap , coordinators, facilities, contracts , players morale or condition and trying to break records and you can get caught up in it I’ve never been more invested in a franchise centered sports game since like 2014 with ncaa 14 and if this game to me is better than madden 23 as a whole that says a lot

Fun retro style game. Better with the premium version
Sun Jan 16 2022 Pohuyd

This game is very fun. I’m on yr 13 on my save slot. I paid the dollar for the premium version and it’s definitely worth it plus the 25 CC. I am dedicated to keeping my QB on the team. He is 4 1/2 stars with MAXED arm strength. He has 3 rings and 3 MVPs. I like the option to switch from team to team. One thing that could change is when you switch back to one of your teams after one year I wish you could still have some of your former players. The good thing about the premium is that you can tag them for your HOF so you can remember your former players and see how many rings and awards they had as well as there stats. This game is worth the download and it barely takes any space up which is a plus. I strongly recommend getting the premium version for the dollar just to get started. One good strategy that I used to get started after a while of playing is once you start trade your players that are not so good for draft picks so you can pick younger better players. I also like being able to have 5 save slots at the same time. It’s good also because you don’t have to spend money to win like most other games and it has no annoying pop ups of new offers. It has a very simple shop where you can get CC coaching credits, as well as websites to browse at shirts and hoodies. Over all this is a 100/5 stars worth the download.

What I think
Tue May 30 2023 dickeoder88

I feel like overall the game is really good I feel like #2 football game in the App Store obviously behind madden but I prefer this game I like everything is has to offer with hopes there’s more updates in the future I feel like the game is fun but it’s missing something to me I feel like star players make a difference but you can’t really do any moves I feel like qb scramble could definitely get more interesting I don’t like how you can’t play defense it’s almost pointless to get defensive players to me overall I feel like gameplay is my biggest problem I’m waiting for some massive update or something where this game will dominate the app market The off-season is also very cool wish there was more to the draft process and I wish free agency was a thing I think the coaches kinda make a difference maybe let’s higher rank coaches have access to different plays or something to make it feel like they actually matter outside a buff or upgrade In conclusion I feel like this is a really fun game and I will continue to play it hopefully this game becomes more of a complete football but as of now still think this a good quality game Also I feel like trading is fun I wish you could trade your own picks for other teams players or picks and make the game more competitive I get it’s a fast paced game but I wouldn’t mind it slowing down for better quality

Really good game
Sun Oct 16 2022 idshdbtn no

Overall 10/10 game but a couple changes could be made to make it even better. First I think the trading system could be expanded upon. The option to trade players for players or picks for players would be cool. Also a trading block and ability to trade multiple players/picks would be great. Another thing I would change is the option for a legit Hail Mary. Most NFL quarterbacks can throw at least 50 - 60 even yards even at the end of a game but the max a quarterback can throw in this game is like 30 or 35. Maybe near the end of a half or game the option to call a Hail Mary where your quarterbacks arm strength and receivers speed increases significantly but it is still a very difficult play would be awesome. Another problem is with the simulation mode. I think simulating games was a great addition to the game but the players stats are clearly completely off of what happened in the game. For example, sometimes a kicker will miss twice in a game but afterwards it will show he was perfect or you will score 4 touchdowns but it will show the quarterback threw four himself and the runningback scored one rushing. Also, the new retrobowl mvp award has some issues. It keeps getting awarded to the players who barely made an impact. My tight end had 3 catches for 29 yards and won it over everyone else. Other than these things the game is pretty much perfect.

Some Youtube Videos found!

News found!

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Apple has announced that three new titles will be added to its Arcade subscription service on September 4, expanding its library of more...

Business Standard Thu Oct 09 2025

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Apple Arcade is set to score big this September with NFL action, classic quiz show thrills, and fan-favourite virtual pets joining its...

Business Today Thu Oct 09 2025

NFL football, Jeopardy, and more coming to Apple Arcade in SeptemberNFL football, Jeopardy, and more coming to Apple Arcade in September

It's time to slip into the mood for American football, a bit of quiz show experience, a touch of whimsy and interactive life simulation this...

t2ONLINE Thu Oct 09 2025

Do Apple Arcade NFL Retro Bowl '26 and other gaming gems are coming!Do Apple Arcade NFL Retro Bowl '26 and other gaming gems are coming!

To mark the start of the NFL season, the NFL is adding Apple Arcade exclusively to its catalog the retro title NFL Retro Bowl '26,...

Letem světem Applem Thu Oct 09 2025

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An 80s vision of NFL that you can take on bathroom breaks with your phone – that's what I call building back better

The Guardian Sat Nov 23 2024

Apple Arcade launches three new games in September, including NFL Retro Bowl ’25Apple Arcade launches three new games in September, including NFL Retro Bowl ’25

On September 5, NFL Retro Bowl '25, Monster Train+, and an all-new Apple Vision Pro spatial title, Puzzle Sculpt, join more than 200 fun titles on the service.

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