Sega Genesis
Released in 1995 by Time Warner Interactive
Grade: C+
This game may have some jerky control and nonsense scoring logic, but it attempts to make up for it with raw chaos and speed. It doesn’t come close to even the worst installments of EA’s NHL series, but it’s probably better than every other 16-bit hockey game.
Where it falls in the series
This is a one-off, released on Genesis and SNES.
Praises and gripes
The game moves fast and has a hockey-like chaos to it. The skating control is in a middle ground between tight arcade style control and the loose “feels like skating” control from EA’s games. The speed burst is quite effective, but you usually don’t move far in this game without running into defenders, who can plow you over pretty easily. The puck pops loose pretty often.
Passing and shooting are both nicely responsive, although one-timers are needlessly tricky to pull off. The big problem is that it seems pretty random which shots are stopped by the goalies and which ones aren’t. There are two play settings, arcade and simulation, and there are more soft goals on the arcade setting.
The low-angle side view distorts your sense of spacing on the rink, but more important, the AI keeps players in a similar setup for most of the game. You’ll end up using a few of the same patterns of passes and rushes to move the puck up ice.
The game looks really nice by Genesis standards, with large, smooth, detailed player sprites, and a nice rink environment. The sound is also up to snuff, with plenty of skate sounds, a natural-sounding crowd, and a loud crack on slapshots.
This game has three difficulty settings, three in-game strategy settings, a fun fighting engine, pointless gifs that appear after goals, and the option to turn “real skate” on or off (you’ll want to keep it on). Oh, and it’s got the real players but with generic teams representing the NHL cities with off-the-wall color combinations. Luckily, you can tediously change all the colors to your heart’s content.