Ice Hockey (1988)

Ice Hockey is another sports game from Nintendo where it feels like the system is a little too complicated and difficult to control to be properly simulated on an NES. Doesn't stop them from trying though!

You play a pre-Soviet fall ice hockey game where you can pick a handful of countries to battle either a computer or another player on the ice. The idea is to get the puck into the goal. Easy, right?

Teams are made up of five players (including the goaltender), and four of those can be selected from skinny/medium/fat members. Various members can be used for face-offs, body checking and shooting, and a balanced player. Players may pass and battle with the puck on offense, while they may also body check on defense. Battling for the puck can lead to a fight, however, which can penalize the player. Pressing the B button on defense can switch to the player nearest the puck. The B button on offense can lead to a fake shot or regular shot.

This all sounds fine and dandy to have at your disposal, but these controls only work on paper. The puck will most likely never shoot in the direction you want to go (my arrow pointed toward the goal seemed to shoot it away from the goal most of the time) and the player switching is extremely unwieldly. The other computer teams also tend to have their team together while players can never quite figure out how to gather people and can get a goal efficiently well while the player scrambles with controls.

While the game can be eventually mastered and/or some janky fun can be had with 2-player mode, Ice Hockey feels like an unfair fight with controls that don't quite seem to do what you want them to do, leading to a neat simulation look (the music is cute if forgettable and the rink is lovingly detailed down to the ice resurfacers) that doesn't hold a candle to the better sports games on NES.

History:
While I never really liked sports games, for some reason I always had fun with hockey. Also, in the 90's (and any decade before and after) air hockey was probably the best thing ever, so, there's that. This game though? Never played it.

Expectation:
After R.B.I. Baseball I'm deciding it's best not to have any...

Pre-Game Thoughts:
From the screenshots I've seen I think this may actually be fun. Here's to hoping!

Night 1:

Yep, this definitely feels like an early Nintendo game. The sprites, the music, hell, the pause sound is lifted straight form Super Mario! Right away the game makes more sense to me than RBI did, despite the fact that I actually really don't know anything about hockey aside from the objective. First up is teams. I pick USA ('MURCA!) and choose to play again Poland... no particular reason.

My immediate thought is that, hey, this is pretty fun! Unfortunately, I quickly realize how much the controls are fighting against me. Aside from scoring a few goals that I had no idea how I actually made, I'm really not feeling it.

I did lose against Poland, but I lost 2-3 so hey. The game is so chaotic that I really had no idea what I was doing, only what I wanted to do, and the game seemed dead set on not allowing that to happen. I figured out how to switch active players, but that felt very random. I had to hope and pray that I'd switch to the player nearest the puck, and god forbid when I pass there's someone their to receive. Worse yet, my AI players seemed to actually run away from the puck most of the time!

I decided to give it another go, for science. This time I picked Canada.

Look, I'm already blind, and this is just unfair. As you can guess this game was even more of a mess than the last one. No fun.

Conclusion:
Ugh... I can't believe I'm going to say this but I had MORE fun playing RBI than I did this game. Controls are a mess, the only game option is one player or two, and the AI is worse than terrible. It's starting to sound like I hate sports games, but I'm really hoping things get better once I leave the 80's.

Play it Again?
Nope! Unless someone looks at the shelf and goes, hey, let's play Ice Hockey! To that I shall respond by sighing heavily, and comply.

Personal Score: