Tag: Nintendo Entertainment System

Ice Hockey review

Hey, hockey fever for us Americans, amirite? Two golds! USA! USA! It makes sense to want to get in a little video hockey.

Yet, full disclosure is necessary here: I’m a “Blades of Steel” guy.

Hockey fans certainly had it good back in the day. So good, in fact, that the old NES gave gamers TWO quality games to choose from, the aforementioned Blades and the Nintendo-produced “Ice Hockey,” which has plenty going for it itself. Then, a couple of years later, EA really got things rolling with its NHL series on the Genesis (and eventually the SNES), which let’s be honest, is much better than its NES predecessors.

I consider the latter to be very nearly must-play (take your pick between ‘93 or ‘94 … I prefer ‘94), and the NES offerings are a little lacking in comparison. Granted, Ice Hockey attempts to create strategy by designing different styles of players (e.g. big and strong vs little and fast) to utilize, which I appreciate. It adds variety to the gameplay, which already boasts nice ice physics. And the game features international squads rather than NHL or pseudo-NHL teams.

But the problem is you get the gist of the gameplay about a game in, and then you dominate. And once you finish dominating your opponent, you’re done. There’s no tournament. No season. No playoffs. Just single matches to set up featuring the same few teams. Dominating them. Over and over. Until the end of time.

Blades gives you a better payoff, and its intermission entertainment is better too. It ain’t perfect either, but it gives you something more, and thusly has better longevity.

So basically, Ice Hockey is a pretty fun time, but it gets the bronze. Them’s the breaks.

Dave’s Score: 7/10

Mega Man 3 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 48)

I don’t know that I’m going to have much more room for series duplicates and sequels in the rest of this countdown. 

And yet, here we are anyway.

I mean, sure, we’re still going to have to see some covered ground as we go along, because I just have too much fondness for particular games to leave them off. And if we can acknowledge that sometimes sequels can exceed the original work (as we have done), we can likewise acknowledge that sometimes they don’t *quite* get there … yet they have a great deal of value just the same.

Even more than that,  if I’m honest with myself (and you), I can also allow that on occasion, my own choice for elevation in this list is more of a coin flip than a definitive proclamation. In other words, the relative quality between two choices for inclusion from a particular property might be essentially equal.

So, let us state for the record that even though it feels a shame to lean into a specific series often during a countdown of this sort (since it will inevitably result in the exclusion of other series), it is also not entirely without merit. Truly, sometimes, the games in question simply just deserve to be here.

For me at least, the real litmus test, above and beyond personal attachment, historical importance, or even quality, is going to be how distinctive an experience you might get from game to game within a particular series.

I can wince a little at all of the Mario games we have on this list so far, but only for appearance’s sake, because when you peer a little closer, you’ll see a unique experience from one game to the next.

To elaborate, Mario 1 was the original promise of continued fun and excitement. Mario 2 was the colorful oddball sequel that innovated. Mario 3 was excellence personified. Mario World was even more excellence personified. Mario 64 was a groundbreaker. And so on, and so on.

It’s the same with Castlevania. “Dracula’s Curse” is perhaps the best possible example of old-school “NES-hard” platforming, “Rondo of Blood” was the transitional game, introducing more dynamic branching levels and upping the visuals and sound, and “Symphony of the Night” was the natural end point for that evolution, going for more explorer-based action.

With all of that considered, you can probably pretty safely guess why we’re now going to talk a little about Mega Man 3. Sure, I have a personal attachment to it. But it’s also a titan among 8-bit platformers giving it a historical relevance, and it’s roughly as good as the game we already covered – Mega Man 2. 

But ALSO, it’s here because it’s distinct enough from Mega Man 2 to merit inclusion on its own.

Mega Man 3 at a glance:

Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
GamePro’s third-greatest 8-bit video game of all time
Continue reading Mega Man 3 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 48)