NHL 94

the worst game i played last year (indiana jones and the last crusade for the sega genesis) has an absolutely baffling end sequence, where you need to re-enact the ending to the titular film by picking the holy grail from a lineup of various chalices. correctly identifying the holy grail leads to the "ending" where indy and his dad ride off on silhouettes of horses that look like chickens. choosing any of the seven wrong options, regardless if you have any extra lives or continues, leads to an

if you haven't seen the movie, you're kinda screwed! at the last possible second! unless you're able to not only figure out what the fuck the game is asking you do since the final level smash cuts to this screen, but also truly embody indiana jones and divine that the cup of a carpenter like jesus christ would not be large or gaudy, and only one cup fits that bill. y'know, a normal ask for your player.

a video game that requires outside knowledge of a real-world thing that isn't like... mahjong soul? or chess? especially from a platforming action game? wild! absurd! ludicruous!

so, sports video games. although it's not the point i wish to make with this post, just the phrase is a huuuuge net that has a very nebulous definition. NHL 94 is definitely a sports game (some would say THE sports game), nascar thunder 2004 is a sports game, mario golf: toadstool tour is a sports game. mike tyson's punch-out is a sports game. is mario kart a sports game? is f-zero a sports game? is kirby's dream course a sports game? you could make an alignment chart out of that question like several people have with indie games!

no matter what your definition of a sports game is, a lot of them ask, with various degrees of assertiveness, that you know the sport going in. aside from any tutorials that explain the specific quirks of the game itself, NHL 94 isn't going to tell you what icing is, bill lambieer's combat basketball won't tell you what the back court penalty is, NFL 2K won't tell you what a "live ball" is. people that are fans of the sport coming in are probably gonna have that prerequisite knowledge, but i imagine that most people that don't know won't want to learn it just so they could play ken griffey jr. baseball on the super nintendo.

bridging the gap

of course, there are plenty of sports games that embrace the nature of pick-up-and-play, and a lot of the games that people consider to be "the best sports games of all time" are closer to arcade than simulation sports. a (mostly) unsorted list of what i think the "best sports games" are to a majority opinion:

1. neo turf masters (change_my_mind.jpg)

• some genesis NHL game between 93 and 97, depending on if they like seeing hockey players fighting or not
• NBA jam (tournament edition, maybe? you can probably get away with either version)
• NFL blitz
• tony hawk's pro skater 2
• wii sports
• some madden between 04 and 09 / ESPN NFL 05 (the one that sega was involved in before EA bought the rights to the nfl and nflpa)
• tecmo super bowl
• punch-out
• NBA street
• SSX tricky
• NES ice hockey
• a mario sport game from before nintendo started half-committing to making live service sports games by releasing late-beta builds at full price and telling you that finishing the game with a free patch in 18 months is a good thing

sorry if i missed your personal favorite sports game (unless it was windjammers, i loooove windjammers but it's nowhere near as known as any of the above). i'm not actually that big of a real-life sports fan, if you couldn't tell. i know the rules on most of them, but i think it's cause i'm a half-assed polymath about anything you could quantify as a "game", cause i thought how most casino games worked was common knowledge, but "what's the lowest value hand that beats ace high in straight poker" was a 1981 trivial pursuit question sooooo

ANYWAY. SPORTS. i'm sure people noticed that all of the games i mentioned came out before, or on the very cusp of, the 7th generation of consoles. that's definitely my bias, but it's not like my perception of all modern sports franchises churning out the same thing over and over isn't the majority opinion. and i'm not here to say the games themselves are badly designed / boring / microtransaction hell, it's a bit reductionist to write off an entire genre that way. the genre of game that gave us neo turf masters, the already proven best sports game, one of the best arcade games, and probably one of ~~my~~ the top 25 games ever isn't a complete loss. although i would argue the art is starting to become lost, with the most visible sports games being simulations that are marketed primarily towards those that are fully familiar with the sport. anyone else is just not the target demo, i guess.

the kind of person that has all P ranks in pizza tower, plays top ranked in counterstrike 2, or can 1CC gradius 3 probably has not played much of a modern sports game, and if they haven't, has no opinion of them. i can empathize with the kind of person that would spend dozens or hundreds of hours learning the particular ins-and-outs of one game, also not giving a single solitary shit about what a one-timer is in hockey. and it's not like there _is_ possible prerequisite knowledge for casually playing any of the three aforementioned games, unless either of those three games are your first video game ever (in that case, glhf), and the casual play is usually the prereq for higher level play.

assuming someone will be playing a sports game of this vintage by themselves against the computer, what's stopping someone from looking into the real life sport, so they *do* have the prereq to playing NHL 94? i mean, when i phrase it like that, it sounds like doing homework. and i imagine that, for a lot of people, that's probably what it would be like, depending on their enthusiasm at the prospect of playing hockey as someone with no experience. you can go in blind, lose your first shootout, then when you do get the puck, send your right winger up to the net and do a slapshot at the first opportunity presented to you. but, surprise! you approached the net awkwardly in a way where your right-handed right winger has to hit with his off-hand! bad slapshot! repeat for three periods until the game ends 0-2 and you go "maybe not today" with NHL 94.

you could also do your "homework", and spend time looking up that one-timers in NHL 94 are just as powerful as in real hockey, while being infinitely easier to perform, since if the recipient of the pass gets the pass, will almost always hit the puck with amazing force and good aim, with two single button presses (B to pass, C to shoot), regardless of whether or not they hit it with their dominant hand. and there's nothing wrong with looking that sort of thing up, although i can't imagine most people's ratio of "interested in playing NHL 94" to "already knows a bit about hockey" is anything but 1:1 (unless you're like me, a fucking idiot poser wanting to branch out and think about retro games and looking like an idiot knowing nothing about hockey).

one could spend however much time learning to play one instance of virtual hockey and have fun, or one could learn how to be a tetris grandmaster, or to become a world record contender speedrunner, or to play a fighting game and have the finesse to perform a >100 hit, 20 second long combo as vanilla ice from jojo's bizarre adventure that does 90% of your opponents health! those all sound a hell of a lot cooler than, uh. playing normal hockey.

my personal experience, prior and present

not being a "fan" of things doesn't stop me from trying things out, i've put several hours into the aforementioned jojo fighting game despite having consumed absolutely zero jojo outside of this one game. i can't really review NHL 94 as a fan of hockey, since i'm not a huge die hard that can compare it to other hockey games, or real life. the only definitive sports games i ever played before my 20s were the mario sports on gamecube, which have a very low barrier to entry with very simplified controls and mechanics. although toadstool tour did lead to me playing maaaany other golf games! i put a full 18-hole course away in "great golf" for the sega master system, and thought it was fiiiiiine?

but it can get me thinking about the whole of sports games, and i think any kind of game that can get you thinking is worth it in some way. after doing that aforementioned 0-2 game playing as the buffalo sabres against the toronto maple leafs, i looked up how to actually fucking play the game of hockey, and came across The Ultimate NHL '94 Strategy Guide website, i learned what the hell a one-timer was, learned that an individual player's dominant hand impacts how they shoot the puck, learned that based on player ratings, the 1994 Anaheim Ducks would probably get their shit kicked in the by 1994 Boston Bruins.

and then i won a few games! cool!

once i got a hang of things, it was pretty fun! NHL 94 will probably end up in my rotation of games i put in my genesis when i want to play something for a little bit, next to herzog zwei, ghouls n ghosts, super hang-on, outrun, gain ground and the like.

but i couldn't imagine my few friends actually wanting to play with me. they know absolutely nothing about hockey, and no matter how low the barrier to entry is, i don't really think i could convince them. that's not the game's fault, is it? it's fun, and with a sports game like this, that's all that really matters. in any case, at least it's not going to make me pick out the holy grail.

FINAL GRADE: 0

*grades are on a scale from 3 to -3