let's play ice hockey

Let’s Play Ice Hockey

Let’s Play Ice Hockey! let's play ice hockeyI played this around the time of the Winter Olympics and I had the grand idea of pairing Al Michael’s legendary final call of the equally legendary US Men’s National Hockey team’s 80’s Olympic improbable victory with the end of this let’s play. I actually wanted to mimic that game as closely as possible in terms of scoring, but the AI wasn’t having it. Oh well, it was still an epic ending.

Let’s Play Ice Hockey:

Damn if this isn’t one of the best sports games for the NES. Baseball Simulator 1000, Dodgeball, and Ice Hockey. The Big Three when it comes to NES sports games as far as I’m concerned. So simple yet the replayability is untiring.

You make your team of 4 players up using three types of players: fat, medium, and skinny. Each type has their own obvious strengths and weaknesses. Fat guys have a huge, Happy Gilmore like shot and can throw their weight around to win skirmishes on the ice and claim the puck but they’re super slow, medium guys are balanced and have a decent shot in terms of velocity and decent weight to throw around in a fight and are even a bit faster than the heavy guys, and the skinny guys as you’d expect are super quick but don’t put a lot of mustard (to use a hockey term) on the puck.

I don’t know that I have a favorite make up of the team. I generally go two fat, one medium, and one skinny. I like to have the extra fat guy on hand because if one of my guys ends up with the puck, then it’s likely that it’s a fat guy who will have the best shot on goal. I think I read or remember medium guys are best on the face off, but that may be an old wive’s tale.

Some people bitch that the same controls for the players controls the goalie, and their brain forgets that in the heat of the moment when they’re on defense so that they end up inadvertently getting out of the way of the goal as opposed to blocking shots, but I love this game top to bottom. The AI is even pretty good for an early NES game, making it difficult to run up the score or even dominate your computer opponent. You can keep your NHL 1X’ whatever year it is; I’ll take NES Ice Hockey every damn time.

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