NHL Hockey (Intellivision, 1980)
Entry posted by Mezrabad
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NHL Hockey (Intellivision, 1980)
Okay, I'm really behind in this blog thing. According to Wired, the blog is dead and now everyone is all a-Twitter. Personally, I can't imagine myself being limited to a certain number of characters, but I can certainly understand how a reader might want to limit themselves to such. I mean, there's a lot to read out there.
Anyway, the latest game in the chronology was NHL Hockey for the Intellivision.
Say anything you want about the controllers for this system and I'll probably agree with you. Not because I think you're necessarily right, but because I'm really lazy and don't feel like arguing. My general peeve comes with the fact that when using the controllers on the Intellly II, which is what I have, it that it is hard to know when I've actually depressed one of the side buttons. That's a really difficult drawback to work around in a not-as-slowly-paced sports title like hockey. That being said, once again, I think it's amazing how much information the makers of NHL Hockey manage to put in the manual and how many features they manage to implement in the actual game.
For instance, what would a hockey game be without penalties? Knocking the crap out of your opponent and hoping to get away with it in hockey is as legitimate a tactic as pretending to get tripped by an opponent and hoping they get a card for it in soccer. NHL Hockey implements a penalty system by allowing you to swing your stick at any opponent. If they have the puck, that's alright--the ref's okay with that, but you can also swing your stick at an opponent who does not have the puck. This will knock his legs out from under him and you have a two out of three chance of getting away with it. If you don't get away with it, one of your players goes to the penalty box for an amount of "simulated" time. If you do get away with it, then hey, getting to knock someone on their butt is its own reward.
I think that it is interesting to note that playfield vs. atmosphere space in games is changing. By playfield, I mean the actual space in which your action and game takes place. By atmosphere space, I mean the part of the game that is largely decorative and unaffected directly by anything you do as a player. Hockey, for instance, mostly takes place on the ice; you don't throw the puck in the air, so there isn't the need for air space like a basketball game might need. So, if you look at a screenshot of NHL Hockey... what? No, I don't have one, go find your own, sheesh... the ice only takes up the bottom half of the screen while the the top half contains scoring elements. Keeping score and track of penalty time is an important part of the game, yes, but half of it? I guess it's the price of this 3D-look for games (pioneered by Basketball for the Atari VCS) that make you feel like you're in the stands rather than in the eyes of a bird nailed to the ceiling directly over the ice.
Something I don't know if I mentioned about most Intellivision games we've seen, is that there always seems to be at least four speeds to every game. If you turn the game on and activate the disk, for the most part, you get the fast version of whatever game you're playing. If you press "1" on the keypad you get the slowest version of the game; "2" and "3" get you faster versions. Hockey also implements this feature. The irony of this type of system for we modern gamers is that the slowest speed might be easy enough to play, but, invariably it is fairly dull. The faster speeds are much more interesting to play but require some time to master and the controllers are so awkward to use that "more interesting" doesn't help.
The goalies in this game were very difficult to get a puck past. First, my son and I played against each other and neither of us could score against the other. Then I played against his un-manned controller and I still couldn't score against the brick wall of a goalie. It took the combined might of my team, with one member in the penalty box, and his team to actually get the puck past my own goalie. The trick was to knock the goalie down and shoot him while he was down. I think we managed to do it by having one of my players hang on to the puck while my son knocked the goalie down. While the goalie sat on the ice, counting his teeth, I let my son steal the puck and shoot at the vacant goal. This was not easy to do. I don't even think we were playing on one of the faster modes.
Eventually our game devolved into trying to get away with beating up each other's players and goalies. Can we blame this on the game or on our own appetites for violence? If we blame our appetites, must we not also blame society?
I continue to have a really hard time slogging through the sports titles for the Intellivision. I'm just not into them. I also recently discovered that I should have started the year off with Space Invaders for the Atari VCS, because that was released sometime in January of 1980. See, that would've been a kick ass start to 1980, I mean, that would've given me some momentum. Oh well, it's not like this is a science. Here's to more chronogaming in 2009, for 1980.
Next entry: I don't even know! Basketball? Didn't I already do that? Did I take my meds today? Damn I feel old.
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