Ah, the days when arcade-style sports games were as highly regarded as any of those from the action, adventure and RPG genres.
That's how it was back in the 80s and 90s--back during an era when arcade-style and alternative-sports games like Jordan vs. Bird: One on One, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, Super Dodge Ball and NBA Jam were considered to be essential pieces of every kid's gaming library. We valued them just as much as the Marios, the Contras and the Ninja Gaidens and oftentimes much more than sports-simulation games, which were entertaining, certainly, but mundane in comparison. Truly they were some of the best games on their respective platforms.
And they were uniquely fun. Really, there was nothing quite like those five-ten minute periods in which you'd rapturously compete with and abuse friends or CPU players in the type of fast-paced, frenzied sporting contests that only arcade-sports games could produce. There was nothing like facing off against your best bud in a game like, say, Ice Hockey, in which the two of you could beat the tar out of each other while engaging in the sloppiest, most-hilariously-stupid hockey action ever broadcast on a television screen!
It was the kind of action we couldn't live without.
For me, Ice Hockey was a weird one. I received it as a gift on Christmas Day of 1989; it was one from a group of games I received that day but not one that I'd requested or one that I would have ever thought to request. I never thought to own Ice Hockey because it didn't seem necessary; I already had convenient access to it, since virtually all of my friends and cousins owned it. And because we hadn't been playing it regularly over the previous few months, I'd kinda lost interest in it; at that point, I considered it to be nearing old-hat status.
So you can understand why I wasn't particularly enthused when that instantly recognizable shade of blue came into view as I tore away the wrapping paper from its box. "I know exactly what this is," I thought to myself the moment the image registered, "and I'm not sure that I need it."
At that point in my life, I had a really bad habit of deciding in advance that a game wasn't worth my time and promptly dismissing it. And with Ice Hockey, I was quick to conclude that it wouldn't see much action. "Playing this game alone probably isn't any fun," I thought, "and my friends don't care much about it anymore, so, really, what's the point in owning it?"
That question was answered a few months later, when randomly we busted out Ice Hockey during one of our marathon sessions and for the first time in a long time began to duke it out on the ice. That's when our thinking began to change. Soon we were reminded why we loved to compete against each other in Ice Hockey; soon we figured out what it was that had been missing from our gaming diet: fast and feverish sports action! And that's what we engaged in for the next hour or so.
And as we were having a great time joyously cross-checking each other and excitedly firing off ill-advised center-line slap shots, we came to the agreement that no--games like Ice Hockey don't have expiration dates; that no--games like Ice Hockey should never be abandoned. Rather, they should be kept in the mix because they play an important role: They provide us a type of fun, frenetic action that simply can't be found in the Super Marios, the Mega Mans and the Zeldas. They serve to complement the big epics--to provide us spaces to which we can go whenever we want to avoid the stress of traversing our way through the large, danger-filled worlds of Hyrule, Zebes and Argool and instead enjoy us some simple fun.
From then on, Ice Hockey continued to be one of our group's favorite go-to multiplayer games (and it also became quite popular with my brother and his friends!). It would regularly appear in our day-long marathon sessions and, like Balloon Fight and Ice Climber, dependably serve as the perfect interlude between demanding action games--the usual suspects (Trojan, Renegade, Double Dragon, etc.). And very often, our wild, chaotic hockey matches were among the day's highlights.
Over the years, not much changed about the way I played Ice Hockey. I'd always assemble the same cast of players: two fat guys and two skinny guys. That combination, I felt, made for the ideal team. I concluded as much after finding great success with the strategy it allowed me to employ: let the two fatties clog up the rink's center portion and thus create an unbreachable wall and take advantage of their superior shooting strength by having them continuously fire off short-range angled slap-shots; and give the two skinny guys the job of quickly advancing the puck and using their constant motion to keep the defense busy.
The medium-sized players were said to have "all-around average traits," which turned out to be code for "these guys suck at everything." So I never used them. No one did, really. Everyone who had ever played Ice Hockey knew that they were completely useless.
On the subject of player types: I always believed that Ice Hockey's players were actually the Mario characters in hockey gear. The fat character was Mario, I thought. The medium-sized player was Toad. And the skinny player represented both Luigi and Princess Toadstool. And, well, they just might be. After all: Nintendo was always sticking Mario characters in its non-franchise games, so why wouldn't the company put them in Ice Hockey?
Our talking about the possibility of such was one of the many ways in which my friends and I had fun with Ice Hockey. As was usual with us, there were a bunch of silly activities in which we'd engage as we competed against each other. Most memorably, we liked to initiate jostling bouts with the intention of instigating all-out brawls--this to get unfair player advantages and generally mess with each other. Sometimes we'd refrain from competing and have fun attempting to get all of our players thrown into the penalty boxes; though it appeared that a penalty box could only hold two players at a time (visual evidence suggested that it was impossible for them to hold more than two fatties), we never stopped believing that it was possible to stuff more players into them. "Maybe two skinny guys are equivalent in size to one fat guy," we'd theorize, "which would mean that we might be able to get three players in there!"
Keep in mind that we were also the type who enjoyed trying to squeeze our heads into the five-inch-long spaces between banisters' uprights. Just in case you needed some context.
And that's how it went for several years. Ice Hockey continued to be a favorite with our group. It continued bring us together in a way that other games couldn't. There was no fun quite like Ice Hockey-style fun. And that type of gaming experience was just as valued as any. It was, in fact, essential. Any 80s or 90s kid would attest to that.
Ice Hockey, like so many others of its kind, showed us that alternative- and arcade-style sports games mattered in a big way. Theirs was an important pillar, we came to understand. Theirs was a type of fun that no other genre could provide.
Sadly, they don't make 'em like this anymore, and that's a damn shame. They're greatly missed. The industry is worse off without games of their type. Hopefully one day they'll return with a bang and in doing so remind us why we loved them.
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