“I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.”
-Phyllis Diller
PlayStation 1
Released in 1998 by EA Sports
Grade: C
Man, time was really not kind to NHL 99. This game was and is revered. It got glowing reviews from all the magazines when it came out. I played it for hours. Kids talked about it. But I don’t recommend playing it today. It’s ugly.
Where it falls in the series
It’s EA’s third of five attempts at 32-bit hockey. NHL 97 was rough. NHL 98 was rough but showed promise. NHL 99 is an improvement, a bit smoother and more balanced than 98. NHL 2000 sped up the gameplay significantly and made a significantly worse video game, but luckily NHL 2001 is a decent upgrade and takes the EA PS1 hockey cake if you ask me.
Praises and gripes
This game is ugly. It’s tough to adjust your eyes, even with alcohol, to see this game the way people saw it in the late 90s. The animations are jumpy. The framerate is too slow. Even the colors seem off. It’s a chore for your eyes to watch these digitized jitterbug hockey-playing machines moving chaotically around the screen.
The control is manageable. You can cut, stop, and sprint easily. Defensive controls are intuitive. But, big problem, the shooting and passing have an annoying delay, and the puck never has the zip it should.
The hockey logic is decent. It’s a bit arcade-like, with plenty of scoring chances happening. One-timers and rebounds are the common methods of scoring goals, which isn’t great, especially considering that breakaways happen often but are hard to score on.
You’ll inevitably play with a heavy reliance on one-timers, frequently scoring the most unrealistic one-timer goals ever. These players who can’t convert a breakaway to save their lives apparently have no problem drilling a pass coming from a bad angle into the top corner at will.
And boy this game is jumpy, did I mention that?
EA took a while to reinvent its hockey engine after its great 16-bit games. NHL 99 is another step in the right direction, but just isn’t a whole lot of fun to play today.