Ice Hockey (game on NES): Simplistically addictive

I was perusing an emulator site the other day and came across the game.

I hadn't thought about it in years but then started to remember how much I would play this game. It has to be one of the most simplistic ice-hockey games of all time but yet I would rather play it than the super-complicated games of today that use 26 buttons to run a puck around some ice.

There weren't even many settings that someone could pursue and which country you decided to play as had absolutely zero impact on your team's ability. This seems odd today but to be fair it was the mid 80's and games were absurdly small at the time.

Basically, you could choose 3 different kinds of players for your team.

• Skinny: These guys were really fast but had the weakest shots of any of the player options, you would have to finesse the puck into the goal, which given the very limited nature of this game, wasn't really all the possible and was more just a case of luck
• Fatty: These guys, obviously, were very slow but had a "rocket in their pockets" as far as shots were concerned. If you had enough patience for them to get down the ice they had a much better chance at scoring. I wouldn't often use these guys as the fast-pace of the game normally didn't allow time for them to catch up. They were also almost useless on defense.
• mid-size guys: As you can imagine these fellas were the average of both. Medium in speed and shot power.

look at that 8-bit wonderfulness

Of course it looks extremely dumb by today's standards but let's keep in mind that it was made likely before most of you were born so we have to make allowances. It has been called one of the best and most addictive sports games from the NES and the director of the game, whose name i can't recall, went on to be involved in such amazing titles and Super Mario Kart.

A friend of mine told me that the fat hockey player is an award received for doing well in a Super Smash Brothers game.

I think the size of the goal in relation to the size of the players is quite comical, but if they had made it more realistic, every single game would be a 0-0 draw.

The defense was hilarious also, you would basically just whack the crap out of anyone that has the puck with impunity, there were no penalties unless there was a fight and then whoever lost the fight is who goes to the penalty box - which is just slightly different than the actual sport.

To give an idea about how old this game is, one of the playable nations is The Soviet Union. Remember those guys?

I do not recommend that any of your actually play this game because it, like almost any NES game, will bore you to tears by today's standards. I just wanted to feature it because it was truly a stand-out game for the time period it was released in.