Game #65 of my challenge
Sports games was really popular at the time. It was meant to reach out to different type of kids and try to reach the interest of some to play video games. A lot of sports had their own games, but it was time for Hockey to have his place to shine.
Once again, there ain't no plot to this game since it's a sports game on the NES. Simply be the hockey champion and beat every country.
The Intro music and game music is catchy. Nothing extraordinaire here but does the job.
The visuals are neat. The ice is good looking and nothing is really missing for an arena type of view. The characters looks decent. They created 3 types of shapes for the players on the ice and the only thing that they did is to swap colors to represent each country in this game.
The controls are where the shit show starts : You control a hockey player. You can shoot or pass the puck. This is the basics of how a hockey game should work. You can tackle the player with the puck to steal it from them. What is the most annoying thing about this game is that when you control your hockey player, you also control the goalie. This is the worst design decision ever. The reason for that is if you are at a disadvantage, you can't really control the player, because if you do that, the net will be so vulnerable. So the only thing that you can do is to goalie for the whole disadvantage situation until you are lucky enough for the goalie to keep the puck.
The gameplay is really not good as well. You have 3 type of players on the ice : The skinny, the medium and the fat one. They each have their speed and strength associated to one another. However, there isn't much difference between the stats of all of them (especially the speed). This makes the game really frustrating since the skinny one are kind of useless. Scoring in this game is also really hard. The computer is so good to block your shots. It was so painful to play this game that once I scored one point more than the other team, I kept the puck behind my goal and wasted time until the game is over. I know this is shameless, but I did what I got to do to win a game and get over with it.
While this game was really popular at the time, I had no fun at all playing this game. Maybe this game was more appreciated for his 2 player gameplay, but I didn't tried it and probably won't. This game is not be open from me ever again.
Sports games was really popular at the time. It was meant to reach out to different type of kids and try to reach the interest of some to play video games. A lot of sports had their own games, but it was time for Hockey to have his place to shine.
Once again, there ain't no plot to this game since it's a sports game on the NES. Simply be the hockey champion and beat every country.
The Intro music and game music is catchy. Nothing extraordinaire here but does the job.
The visuals are neat. The ice is good looking and nothing is really missing for an arena type of view. The characters looks decent. They created 3 types of shapes for the players on the ice and the only thing that they did is to swap colors to represent each country in this game.
The controls are where the shit show starts : You control a hockey player. You can shoot or pass the puck. This is the basics of how a hockey game should work. You can tackle the player with the puck to steal it from them. What is the most annoying thing about this game is that when you control your hockey player, you also control the goalie. This is the worst design decision ever. The reason for that is if you are at a disadvantage, you can't really control the player, because if you do that, the net will be so vulnerable. So the only thing that you can do is to goalie for the whole disadvantage situation until you are lucky enough for the goalie to keep the puck.
The gameplay is really not good as well. You have 3 type of players on the ice : The skinny, the medium and the fat one. They each have their speed and strength associated to one another. However, there isn't much difference between the stats of all of them (especially the speed). This makes the game really frustrating since the skinny one are kind of useless. Scoring in this game is also really hard. The computer is so good to block your shots. It was so painful to play this game that once I scored one point more than the other team, I kept the puck behind my goal and wasted time until the game is over. I know this is shameless, but I did what I got to do to win a game and get over with it.
While this game was really popular at the time, I had no fun at all playing this game. Maybe this game was more appreciated for his 2 player gameplay, but I didn't tried it and probably won't. This game is not be open from me ever again.
2 Comments
True that it's an Nes game, however, there were some other sports games that I think did it better and were released before this game : Techmo Bowl, Punch-out, Side Pocket, Golf, etc.. If it's a game that you enjoy, that's a good thing, since I think every game has his audience. This game wasn't for me. Maybe it's simply because I have no nostalgia for it.
SBW64
4 months ago