In Ice Hockey, the USA never loses to Canada…or the USSR
While espion4ge was busy having his heartbroken on being denied a PS3 at the last minute, I was experiencing heartbreak of a different sort: sports heartbreak. Battling a fever, I drove 4 hours to get home to watch the United States play Canada in the Gold Medal game in hockey. The game was well worth it, even if the final result wasn’t what I’d hoped. At least Canada never beats us in baseball…oh wait, they did. Whatever. I’ve more or less stopped playing sports video games, but watching hockey always makes me want to pick up a hockey title, since hockey games are my favorite type of sports game, and also because hockey video games make me nostalgic. For what? I’m glad you asked.
NES: Ice Hockey
This game was released in 1986 but is still relatively fun to this day (I own it on Virtual Console). In this 4 on 4 hockey game, you could pick to play as one of six countries: United States, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Poland, or the big bad USSR. For being such a simple game, there were some strategic decisions to be made: you could build your 4 player team (not including goalie) out of skinny guys, average guys, or fat guys. Skinny guys ruled the faceoff circle, but sucked at everything else except being fast, average guys were average, and fat guys had wicked slapshots and would knock you down without so much as a check but couldn’t win a faceoff for their life. My friends and I used to play this game a lot, and between choosing rosters, switching people in the faceoff circle, and controlling your goalie with the same inputs you were using to control your players (simultaneously), there was a lot of fun competition to be had. I miss the days when you hit A to pass and B to shoot. Also, I can make sure the US beats Canada at hockey in this super old school version!
My favorite sports game ever
SNES: NHL ’94
NHL ’94 is considered the best hockey game of its generation, and maybe even one of the best of all time. Although the game removed fighting from the ’93 version (and bleeding heads), you still were able to injure players by checking them extra hard and the addition of one timers more than made up for it. My friends and I used to play this game until the sun rose, and since they used to always pwn me at Street Fighter (and still do), this was the only game I wanted to play since I stood a fighting chance. Being a NJ Devils fan, I remember using Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermeyer (who was on the ice for Canada on Sunday!) to finish my hard checks. I still remember my go-to scoring moves: wrap arounds, fake wrap around centering pass for a one timer, and rush down one side and pass to other side for one timer. This game was so famous it was even referenced in the movie Swingers. Incidentally, I had the chance to play on my friend’s SNES a few years back…over a decade later, the game is still awesome. Emulate onto Virtual Console Nintendo!!
Nice! Those are some classic hockey games. I remember playing the original EA hockey game on the Genesis, simply titled, “NHL Hockey”. I think that was 1992 or something, because I remember 1993 was only the NHLPA game, with the player names but not the official teams. I think NHL 94 was the first year that they managed to get both the official teams and the player names. Funny to think how that seemed like such a big deal at the time. Now every sports game you can think of is just a rehash of the previous year’s with a few new tweaks. It’s nice to remember the originals!