It's no Blades of Steel, but for other reasons still a must have hockey game for the NES.

User Rating: 8 | Ice Hockey NES
Ice Hockey for the NES was one of the first games I ever had. Later on Blades of Steel came out, which was a much superior game as far as realistic hockey simulations go. However, Ice Hockey has many redeeming qualities that still keep it as one of my favourite NES games. It is actually a pretty bare bones game. It doesn’t have a tournament mode or anything like that, it is just straight exhibition games. You start off by choosing a 1 or 2 player game (2 players is way more fun, of course!). After that you come to the set up screen. Here you choose your team, of which you have a choice of 6: Canada (naturally), Sweden, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland (who knows how they got an entry!) & the US. On this screen you also set your game preferences: the game speed (from levels 1-5), and the period length (maximum is 15 minutes). After this screen comes the player selection screen. Each team has 4 skaters and you can divvy them up however you want between 3 different types of available players. The first type of player is the really big fat guy (we use to call him pork & beans when we were little!). This guy is really tough and has a huge shot, but he sucks at faceoffs and is also really slow. The next type of player is the tall skinny guy. This guy is super fast and wins virtually every faceoff, but his shot sucks and he gets knocked over in a stiff breeze. The last type of guy is the mid-sized guy. As you can guess, he is just an average type guy, good but not great at everything. Once you figure out your player configuration you are off to the races. Gameplay is not bad, the only problem I encounter is the passing, as in don’t bother! The passes go nowhere, it’s basically just throwing the puck out there and whoever gets it gets it. Really this game is just end to end rushes, whoever can score on more of theirs wins! The goalie is easy to control, as are the skaters. Every once in a while there will be a bit of a tussle which will end up turning in to a full fledged brawl a la Wile E. Coyote. At the end of it the ref will randomly pick a player from one of the teams to send to the penalty box. That’s about it, it’s a pretty simple game! If you still own this game and don’t know of the secret code you can use, this will make the game all the better! What you do is, at the team selection screen, hold both the A & B buttons on both controllers, then press the Start button on controller 1. When the game eventually starts you will have engaged what we used to call “bouncy puck mode”. What this does is, whenever the puck is shot or passed, it will keep bouncing around the rink until a player touches it or it ends up in either of the nets! This simple code makes this hockey game infinitely more fun! Make sure to load up on “Pork & Beans” in this mode, because he can shoot! There is also a code for no goalies, but it’s not nearly as much fun.