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Fan Poll Friday: Time To Grab Your Joystick…..

And vote on the best hockey video game of all time, as selected by two of our five writers.

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Fan Poll Friday

We're going to take a break from Flames related polls and have some video game fun.

Over the years there's been some great hockey video games and there's been some bad hockey video games. We here at M&G picked what we thought were the best hockey/NHL games released over the years on different platforms. There's nothing recent because the EA games lately have been "meh." Don't like it? Tough. Get off our lawn!

So here's what the staff, Ok, mainly Mark and Michael, picked for their favorites for you to vote on. Maddie, Gordie and Dustin were smart enough to stay away from this nonsense.

Atari Hockey

If you're old enough to have had an original Atari 2600 (Mark still has one), you know how bad these games look now. But on a 18 inch color TV back in the day, this was the greatest thing ever. It was also the only thing ever so you really didn't have a choice.

NES Ice Hockey

Nothing beat loading up your squad with 4 (not sure why it was 4) fat guys and bouncing your friends all over the rink. Of course your friend either had a balanced team or all skinny guys and would score a million goals because you couldn't catch them. Also, extra points for the Zamboni drivers wearing catcher’s mask. Why? Dark ages technology, that’s why.

Superstar Ice Hockey

This was a minor step up from Atari Hockey, but this game was SO MUCH FUN (Mark is on a serious memory lane trip right now). Before game downloads, streaming and CD ROMs there was the floppy disc. Before Windows there was a DOS Drive. Toss your floppy disc into the drive, type d: and BAM! You’re playing primitive games on what seemed like the greatest computer ever. If none of this makes sense to you, that's because you weren't 12 years old in 1988 (looking at you Michael).

Blades Of Steel

This was, at the time, the high point of video game hockey. Sort of NHL cities with not sort of NHL colors, but you played 5 v 5. The movements were more fluid and YOU COULD FIGHT! The fight cut away screen was revolutionary. There were penalty shots. This game was amazing! It would have been the greatest hockey game ever if not for….

NHL ‘94

We (I) don't care how you vote, this is the greatest NHL video game of all time. Many hours were wasted on college campuses playing tournaments with this game instead of going to class. The overhead camera view was a step up in hockey video games and let's face it, this game was just fun. Gretzky was impossible to stop and the Jeremy Roenick wrap around was unstoppable. And who can forget a “version” of this game appearing in the movie Mallrats. Licensing issues prevented the actual game from being in the movie, but we all know what game Brodie was playing. Also, the Flames were pretty dominant if you played them.

Fox Sports NHL Championship 2000

Like every other NHL game after EA's NHL '94 this game had the awesome overhead view and the game controls were fairly fluid for the early days of PlayStation and higher bit graphics (yes, those were GREAT graphics for the time). And any game that employed the "puck tracker" that Fox needlessly threw into the NHL lexicon is good by us! Jarome Iginla was a beast in this game and Fred Brathwaite was solid as well.

So there’s your choices. Like ‘em, hate ‘em, don’t care? Vote below in our poll!

by Mark Parkinson