EHM The Blue Line

i loved punch out! on nes and first nhl hockey on megadrive (genesis): http://www.thepensblog.com/pensblog/sep ... games.html

Check this out!

http://www.thepensblog.com/pensblog/sep ... games.html

Loved the article as it brought back memories. My family used to play Atari Ice Hockey, along with other games, on Friday nights, back when I was little. We would eventually move on to Ice Hockey (Still My All-Time favorite) and Blades of Steel for the NES and NHL 95 for Sega.

I still have Faceoff 2001 and my girlfriend has NHL 98 and 2001 for the PS, which we play occaisionally, but we're playing NHL 07 and 2K8 almost religiously now.

It's funny how the botton of the Article mentioned Fox Championship Hockey. I owned that game and everytime I played a season, it would crash just before the Stanley Cup playoffs. I got so frustrated that I gave the game to a roommate when I was in college.

Another game that was missing that I'd like to mention is NHL Open Ice. Pat Foley is the announcer and, for those that have never played the game before, think NBA Jam (2 on 2) on the ice, just a great game.

It's cool.
That NHL 99 intro on youtube is just fantastic. I remember watching it before playing the game. Great times, 10 years ago

NHL 98 was my first video game and got it every year until Faceoff 2001....i was far more impressed with EA's hockey series back then.

My hockey games history (excluding EHM!):

I became a fan of ice hockey games with the NHL 98 demo although I didn't buy an NHL game until the following year with NHL 99. Myself and my brother spent many an hour playing the game - it was so much fun. We bought the NHL games every year up to NHL 04. I think NHL 99 and 04 were the two I spent most time playing and were the most enjoyable. NHL 02 and 03 were my least favourite as they seemed to make the game far too arcadey.

I was abroad during the 04/05 season so I never bought NHL 05 but I don't believe it was any better than 04 anyway. It was at around this time that the 2K series was generally seen as the better game. When I bought my XBox I went for 2K6 rather than EA NHL 06. With the introduction of the XBox 360, NHL 2k7 and 07 for the original XBox weren't much of an improvement (judging by online reviews) and were more of a roster update. I think I may have played NHL 07 and/or 08 on my brother's PC.

Then I went for NHL 2K9 as at that time I had a Wii. Boy did it suck. I wasn't really fussed about the graphics, I just wanted an enjoyable game. Unfortunately 2K9 Wii really wasn't enjoyable at all. This was my final straw with the Wii and so I traded it all in for an XBox 360 and NHL 09. NHL 09 is very much enjoyable (I love the skill stick and the idea behind Be a Pro - but BAP does need much improvement) but I'm not addicted to it like I was with the NHL games of the late 90s and early 2000s. I won't be buying an NHL 2010 game this year (I don't feel I've gotten enough use out of NHL 09, and NHL 10 doesn't appear to be that much of an improvement over 09 judging by the demo and previews) but I'll be interested in an NHL 11 game next year.

Other than the EA and 2K Sports series, I also owned Fox Sports NHL 2000 (or was it 2001?). It wasn't anywhere near as good at the EA NHL games but it was nice to sometimes mix things up with a different game. I thought the puck trails were great at first but then the novelty wore off.

Has anyone played Actua Ice Hockey 2? I had the demo of that many years ago and loved it. I never managed to find it in the shops, though.

With regards to the intro videos; NHL 99 and 2000 had the best videos in my opinion. I remember when I used to get these games new from the shop it was always exciting to see what the intro video would be like. It wasn't the same when they used ingame footage rather than real life footage though.

My History is a short one I started play video hockey games when i was 4 years old. i played nhl 1997 on the computer and since then i have become like a nerd for those games ( im sorry for my bad english )

my first was at my cousin house, it was nhl 2001(PC), in 2004, I got nhl 2003(PC) and in 2005: 2005(PC), after that I had:

2008: NHL 07(PC), EHM 07(PC)
2009: NHL 08(PS3), NHL 09(PS3)
2010: EHM 2010

I remember playing some horrible video hockey game back on the Atari, I think. I also remember a couple different standup arcade machines with hockey games. The first game that I really played regularly for a hockey video game was the first EA one on the Sega Genesis. It came out when I was first in the Air Force and a whole bunch of us would cram into my dorm room waiting for our turn to play. We even set up little playoff style tournaments. Then I also played later versions of it, even following it onto the SNES. I played them some on systems like the first PS, PS2, and XBOX but I never followed them any further. I got away from console games. I never got into playing them on the computer either because I didn't have a game controller for the PC and I didn't like the way the mouse or keyboard worked for that type of game.

As for non-arcade type hockey games, more like simulations like EHM, I remember playing a text/DOS based game back in the 90's called "Dolphin Hockey". It was some guy that made the game on his own. He had a football (NFL) one too and an NCAA football one. They were simple and a lot of repetition but they got me interested in something more detailed. Eventually I found the freeware version of EHM and played that religiously until EHM:FE (they called that first one "Franchise Edition" if I remember correctly) and then got every version after that. I haven't moved on to another because EHM 2007 set the bar pretty high. Thanks to the Lidas rosters, it's staying fresh too!

One of the game missing in this article is the incredible FaceOff! by Gamestar on the computer.

It was hell of a game, with trading and recruiting I think, awesome for the period. Command was classic but efficient and fun, but AI dumb. Fun to play with another human player and make trades! Anyone remember this game? Actually one of the first notable hockey manager simulation I think!

[web]http://www.bestoldgames.net/eng/old-games/face-off.php[/web]