Ice Hockey - Nintendo Entertainment System

When it comes to console sports games, a few franchises really stick in peoples mind. Madden, NFL Blitz, FIFA and the variety of Street games that came out, are a few that have made their mark. Although, being the retro gamer that I am, there is one sports game holds a special place in my heart.

Ice Hockey was a Sports Series game released on the NES in 1988. The game itself is nothing more than what the title suggests. You start by picking your team from the six available countries to play from (USA, Sweden, Poland, Canada, Russia and of course...Czechoslovakia). You can then set the game speed and the length of each period. After you have set the rules of the match you then must construct your team.

Your roster consists of four spots each being filled by your choice of three styles of players, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. The three styles of characters are tall skinny, average sized and short fat. The tall skinny characters are the fastest moving of the three but can’t shoot the puck very quickly. The short fat characters are incredibly slow moving compared to the tall skinny competitors, but have the best and quickest shot of the three choices. And then the average sized character holds a medium level of both speed and shooting between the other two characters. This choice of characters alone allows the player an ample stretch of strategic roster composition.

As far as the actual gameplay goes, it plays incredibly well for the controller that the designers had to work with. You control one primary character at a time which is the one who controls the puck when you are on offense and the one closest to the puck when you are playing defense. At the same time, your goalie also follows the same direction in the goalie box as you move your primary character. Along with moving your primary character and the goalie, the directional pad also controls the general movement of the rest of your team. If your primary character is moving left, the rest of your team will follow you from a respective distance in the same general direction. With all these simultaneous controls going on at once, it makes the game very difficult to master, since in order to control your whole team well you must take into account the movements of three different entities.

Shooting can be done in a variety of ways, but is best done after a division of strategic passes. You pass the puck with the A button and shoot it with B. You may also charge your swing by simply holding down the B button and releasing when you are ready. This allows for a much greater distance and speed of puck travel to approach the opponent’s goalie.

And what would a hockey game be without a little bit of fighting? When on defense, your primary character may attempt to steal the puck from the opponent by attacking them with the A button. If the character attacks their opponent for a somewhat obsessive amount of time, the two players get into a fist fight soon to be joined by the rest of the characters on the ice. The fight is then broken up by the referee who then chooses the one who will be placed in the penalty box.

The rest of the game plays exactly like ice hockey. You play three periods and at the end of the three periods, the player with the most points wins. I have never yet had a match result in a tie, so if anyone has, please comment below and tell me what happens! : )

The game can be played either with one player against a computer or two players playing head to head. The game unfortunately lacks a one player tournament mode, which would have been incredibly nice. Another fallback is that the only way you can change the level of gameplay is through the speed of your characters. A computer difficulty setting would have also allowed the game to be more expandable and give the one player setting a little more replay value.

To close this review up, the game is definitely a gem amongst the sports games on the NES. The one player settings are a little limited, but if you have a buddy to play this one with, there is an immense amount of replay value. Another positive is that the game is incredibly cheap and can be found from anywhere from 1 to 3 dollars. If you see this one anywhere I encourage you to pick it up, because it definitely gets my recommendation.

Atari Climber - Atari 2600

I questioned myself a couple times before I started writing this review because the game I am about to talk about is a homebrew.  For those of you who don’t know, a homebrew game is an unlicensed game designed by a consumer.  I’m usually not a fan of homebrew games just because the product of homebrews can sometimes result in utter catastrophe, but I bring specific attention to this game because it did not result in an atrocity, but rather an amazing product that I consider to be one of my favorites on the system.

Atari Climber is incredibly difficult to find a cartridge of because it was only produced in small amounts by the creator under the title Climber 5.  However, the game was actually discovered and praised by the developers at Atari, so much in fact, that the game was later included in the forty selectable games on the plug ‘n’ play Atari Flashback 2.0 console, released by Atari in July of 2005.

The game works like this; you control your human player on the screen with the objective to reach the ball that is located near the top of the screen.  In order to reach the ball at the top of the screen, your player must climb a series of ladders while avoiding horizontally moving lasers (they are actually supposed to be girders, but I like thinking of them as laser beams) on each floor of the level.  Also depending on what level of difficulty you are playing on, you may also need to dodge equipment such as helmets and hammers that fall from the top of the screen.

The time aspect works much like the bonus points method in the original arcade version of Donkey Kong.  You have a certain amount of time to reach the ball and depending on how quickly you reach it, the more bonus points you acquire.  However, if you fail to reach the ball in the allotted time limit, you gain no bonus points and lose a life.  Also after a certain amount of time in each level, the ball will transport to a different area on the screen.  So you have to plan your trip quickly and carefully as to not have to back track when the ball transports.

The game also allows the player to control the direction the laser beams travel at the cost of 500 points from their time meter.  By pressing the button on the Atari Joystick, the lasers will instantly reverse direction, potentially getting your player out of some close calls.  This aspect keeps the player from seeing the movements of the lasers as being “cheap” and “unfair” by giving the player a bit of control over the matter.

The controls are very responsive and not delayed at all.  You’ll also never find yourself fighting against the joystick like you may have to do in some Atari 2600 games.  The game play itself is actually incredibly addicting and since the movement of the lasers and the falling equipment is completely random, it gives the game a lot of replay value.  I’ve owned the Atari Flashback 2.0 for few months now and I still find myself going back and playing Atari Climber, trying to beat my high score.

If you ever see an Atari Flashback 2.0 at a garage sale or your local game store, I would definitely recommend picking it up.  Aside from Atari Climber, you get a lot of classic Atari games that will keep you entertained for a long time.