Nintendo Entertainment System
Released in 1988 by Konami
Grade: C
Buckle up for one of my most controversial video game opinions: Blades of Steel is OVERRATED! 🫢
Where it falls in the series
It’s the only Konami hockey game on NES, and the franchise was resurrected 10 years later for Blades of Steel ‘99 on N64 and Blades of Steel 2000 on PS1, which are both considered awful games.
Praises and gripes
Blades of Steel offers up-tempo 5-on-5 hockey action with simple controls. Fighting is a big part of the game, which people seem to love.
The large player sprites clutter the ice well, making it hard to skate end to end and forcing a heavy reliance on passing. Sounds realistic, but the action can get repetitive. You’ll learn to use the same pattern over and over to transition from defense to offense.
There are three difficulty levels against the CPU, and on the higher end, it’s tough to score in genuine hockey-like ways. Players can’t pull off one-timers and it takes an extra moment to receive a pass and fire it. Many goals come when players bunch up near the net and exploit repeated rebound opportunities. Goalies are controlled manually in the midst of breakneck action, and I found it terribly agitating to move my goalie up and down while also controlling a defender who could get the puck out of harm’s way.
While nostalgia nuts claim this game has a lot of charm, I don’t really see it. The rink is dark and gray, the uniforms are ugly, and the fights are stupid and far too frequent. Gameplay-wise, it’s pretty mechanical, lacking skating-like physics and hockey’s unpredictable nature.
In the long-debated comparison between Blades of Steel and Nintendo’s Ice Hockey, I prefer Ice Hockey. While it has some of the same issues, it has nicer graphics, more flow, more open space, and much more unpredictability.
Teams
I’m not sure why sports games on NES rarely used home and away uniforms to help distinguish teams during games, and the bold color choices here are particularly off-putting.
- New York – blue and redÂ
- Chicago – red and gray
- Los Angeles – yellow and blue
- Montreal – orange and red
- Toronto – blue and light blue
- Edmonton – green and yellow
- Vancouver – brown and green (seriously!)
- Minnesota – white and magenta
Published November 8, 2025