Ice Hockey (Nintendo)

Ice Hockey

NES - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Nintendo, Pax Softnica Publisher Nintendo Published 1988-01-21 Platforms Famicom Disk System, NES Genres Action, Sports Themes Sports Multiplayer Simultaneous versus Distribution Commercial

Ice Hockey is a sports game developed by Nintendo (R&D2) and Pax Softnica and published by Nintendo on the Famicom Disk System on 1988-01-21 and on the Nintendo Entertainment System in March 1988. While the game is based on the sport of hockey, it takes great liberties with the rules; for example, each team has only five players. Despite being such a primitive simulation of the sport, Ice Hockey is one of the more enjoyable early sports games made for the NES.

Personal

Own?	Yes. Loose US NES cartridge.
Won?	Yes. Beat level 1 AI with USA.
Finished	2010-04-04.

I first played Nintendo's Ice Hockey at a friend's house around 1990. Although I was never a big fan of sports games, I was fairly well-versed in them because I had an older brother who loved them. Even though the game was new to me, I was still able to figure the game out well enough to beat the kid who owned it. While on a kick of beating old NES games, I tried playing the game against its AI and beat it at level 1.

Review

4	5	4	3	4

Best Version: NES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• Allowing the player to customize their team players with three body sizes (thin, medium, and stocky) is a fun, if ridiculous, way of making your team unique.
• Allowing the player to switch control of their player makes it much easier to control a whole team with only one player.
• You can adjust the game's playing speed. While this technically doesn't make the AI better, it makes everything faster which decreases human reaction speed, effectively making the game harder.
• The game supports two-player simultaneous versus mode which can be a lot of fun when both players are equally skilled.

Bad

• The game ignores the majority of the rules of hockey (although, to some extent, this helps keep the game fun). Examples of ignored rules include: the number of players on the ice is five instead of six, icing is the only real penalty, players without the puck can enter the goalie crease, fighting arbitrary punishes a player, etc.

Ugly

• The AI only has one difficulty level, and, once you get good at exploiting it, which doesn't take long, there is no challenge left in single-player mode.
• There isn't much to the game. After you play your first match, you will probably have seen everything there is to it.

Media

Box Art

• 

  The Famicom Disk System release uses a cartoon of the three different players with pucks flying everywhere. This is my favorite box.

• 

  FDS disk sleeve.

• 

  The US box art is essentially a stock photo of a guy playing hockey wearing a jersey for the team "Hockey."

Documentation

• 

  Manual - FDS - Japan.

• 

  Manual - NES - USA.

• 

  Nintendo Fun Club - Tips.

• 

  Coming soon in The Official Nintendo Player's Guide - Coming attractions.

Videos

Review - NES Works.

Review.

Longplay.

Play Online

Famicom Disk System, NES (Europe), NES (USA)

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no female characters.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are no female characters.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	All characters are white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Credits

The original game doesn't have credits.

Role	Staff
Director	Hideki Konno
Music Composer	Soyo Oka

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Ice Hockey
Japanese	アイスホッケー	Aisu Hokke	Ice Hockey

Links