PlayStation 1
Released in 1997 by Acclaim Sports
Grade: F
It doesn’t get much worse than this.
Where it falls in the series
It’s the first and only for PS1, but the poor N64 had a 99 followup as well.
Gripes
Hockey seems like the easiest sport to make into a video game. The NES had Blades of Steel and Ice Hockey, which are both beloved, and EA whipped up a simple formula for frozen fun in 16 bits on their first try. How does a hockey game be this bad in 1997?
Skating is totally out of control with no basis in reality. Your player can slip across the width of the rink just by accident, as if he’s wearing vaseline-coated socks, not ice skates. Passes go to nobody, and shots feel weak. My strategy became drifting into the offensive zone and trying not to press the D-pad in any direction lest I go zooming into the boards, waiting for a teammate to skate across from me, then pass for a one-timer shot.
The graphics are ugly, with a dark rink and alien players with squarish heads. Penalties are random. The buttons are mapped oddly: pass is X and switch player is R1 with no way of changing one but not the other. Even the fights are terrible.
Skip it.