Video Game Week

You’re trapped on a desert island. Gun to your head, only one choice. You get the premise. If you could only play one hockey game for a gaming system for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

We’ve made it slightly easier for you as we’ve narrowed it down to four games across the history of hockey video games. Here are your choices:

-NES Ice Hockey

-Blade Of Steel

-NHL ‘94

-NHL ‘04

NES Ice Hockey was a super fun, early gaming console hockey game because you got to choose your country and the size of your players. Were you a 4 fat guys player? Four skinny? Four middle of the road? Or were you a mix ‘em up and see what happens. This game provided hours on end of fun and laughter.

Blades Of Steel was revolutionary from the standpoint that it had fighting. You could tie another player up by ramming each other like mountain goats and dropping the gloves. The separate screen that took you to the fight was pretty cool as it gave you a close up of the hand to hand combat. There were also separate screens for penalty shots, which was super cool at the time. It still was plagued by no NHL players or franchises and the East/West view point was nice because it was like watching hockey, but it lacked a bit.

I think we can all agree that NHL ‘94 is the creme de la creme of hockey video gaming. Sure. it’s not as smooth as the current games and it was handicapped by when it came out graphically, but for my money this game was perfect. It had NHL franchises and players, the graphics were solid enough and nothing was better than playing this in a college dorm, tournament style with your suite mates and skipping class! The overhead view was a nice advancement that made the game a little more fluid and actually playing the goaltender was much better than previous hockey video game installments.

I can’t speak to the validity of NHL ‘04 because I was done with the video game circuit by the time this game came out. I will say that half of the staff here vouches for it and it does get glowing reviews. According to Michael it’s the “best modern NHL game” and Shane calls it “the best ever!” So there you go, NHL ‘04.

We’ve now reached the time to vote! If you can only play of these four games for the rest of your life, which one are you taking?