Nintendo 64
Released in 1997 by Midway
Grade: C+
It’s fun and flowy arcade hockey, but it lacks depth and has some annoying quirks.
Where it falls in the series
The first Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey was a big part of N64’s early days, and this game is the sequel, followed by Olympic Hockey Nagano ’98. The three games are basically identical, so reviews of the original were mostly “It’s really fun!” and reviews of the next two were mostly “It’s trash!” Of the three, only Gretzky ’98 was ported to PlayStation 1.
Praises and gripes
The speed and basic controls work well for the 3-on-3 arcade gameplay. Skating is fun and has its own “slidey” feel, which makes for free-flowing action but can a bit touchy. Passing and shooting feel about right. Turbo gives you a quick superhuman speed burst, and in a wise design move, it takes a few moments for you to regain turbo once you use it.
There’s room to skate around, but you usually need to pass a few times for a good scoring opportunity. CPU defenders ignore fundamentals but are very active, which is good. It’s easy to steal the puck, but tracking down skaters isn’t a sure thing.
Like many arcade style games, the gameplay will get repetitive and one-dimensional after a while. The goalies are very weak, and just about any one-timer will go in, so you’re constantly setting up cheap goals.
You can switch to “simulation” mode, which only makes the goalies tougher, and you can play 4-on-4 or 5-on-5, but the bread and butter is certainly 3-on-3.
The graphics show their age and the game has a dark look that I never liked, but at least it’s easy to tell what’s going on, and the camera moves smoothly. The sounds add a lot of fun and excitement to the mix.
Setting up the controls is a nightmare, because you can’t use the same button for offensive and defensive actions. For example, you can’t use the pass button for changing players on defense. You can’t use the shoot button to check. It’s like Midway ignored how the controls worked for years in sports games, even their own hockey game NHL Open Ice: 2-on-2 Challenge.
Even more vexing, the change player commands during gameplay are troublesome, because get this: You can choose “automatic” for changing players, which is annoying as hell, or you can choose “manual,” which is fine, except that you must manually change players on offense as well as defense! What were they thinking? And they didn’t fix this in the three games in the series? Come on, Midway!
Anyway, I’ll still fire up this game every now and then and get a few minutes of fun out of it, but it’s bound to frustrate me quickly and end up sitting on the shelf.
Published August 26, 2017
Updated September 23, 2023