A great game to play when you’re drunk and not sure when you’ll pass out
PlayStation 1
Released in 1996 by Midway
Grade: B
Imagine if you gave a bunch of game developers 24 hours to take the code from NBA Jam and make it into a hockey game. You’d get this, this blazing fast, cracked out thing that looks like it’s NBA Jam wearing a hockey costume for Halloween.
Where it falls in the series
Came out a year after its arcade counterpart. Open Ice has no associated titles, nor was it recreated in any way. The initial NBA Jam engine was repackaged and tweaked for several more releases, as was NFL Blitz years later — no such luck with Open Ice. Midway did continue to put out arcade hockey games with N64’s Wayne Gretzky titles and the excellent NHL Hitz series, but both those series bare little resemblance to Open Ice.
Praises and gripes
This game is raw, speedy, simple fun. The controls are tight once you adjust to them and games are frantic and high scoring. You can’t protect a 3-goal lead or even a 5-goal lead in this game, you just keep trying to score. No lead is safe.
I love the unrelenting speed of this game. The only time the action stops is when there’s a goal or the goalie freezes the puck, and play resumes literally two seconds later.
Unfortunately, as fun as that is, the game could have used at least a little goal-scoring logic. There’s no rhyme or reason to which shots go in and which ones don’t. A well-crafted one-timer has as much chance as a little wrist shot from wherever.
I personally love the visuals, even though they’re distinctly low-rent, if that makes sense. The 32-bit sprites dashing around the screen are unique for a hockey game.