Yeah, listen… you’ve seen this in video form a few years back, but it’s the playoffs and I added these a while back, so let me fill the void with stuff about stuff.
The most amazing thing about NHL Hockey ’95 for Game Boy is that it was even made to begin with, let alone sold in stores for people to actually buy. This attempt to bring over EA’s famed NHL series from the 16-bit platforms to the portable format should have gotten a game misconduct call, but sadly, it was not to be.
You start the game and you have roughly 30 seconds of unskippable logos, copyright information, developer credits, and eventually a title screen… add another ten seconds if you’re playing this on the Super Game Boy so that they can load up the special custom board and color palette and then you can question why you would even consider playing this on your Super Game Boy adapter for Super Nintendo instead of the actual SNES version of NHL ’95 (or any other, for that matter)
Feature-wise, it’s about the same as the console editions at the time. You have all the available NHL teams of the 94-95 plus two all-star teams, but no actual players because this version is lacking the NHLPA license. You can play a single regular season game, partake in the play-offs in either single elimination or traditional best-of-seven series, or test your shootout skills. There’s a sixteen-digit password system for resuming seasons and playoff runs; how fun. And you can toggle penalties and line changes if desired. For the most part, the same options you get from playing the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis versions of this same game. The menus, while a bit cramped on the small Game Boy display, are easy to navigate. And each game is preceded with a sportscaster dude hyping up the game you’re about to attempt to play.
And that’s about the extent of the positives to be had with NHL Hockey 95 because the rest is downhill.
GRAPHICS: Graphically, they kept the same sprites as the console versions, except in monochrome and with fewer frames of animation that could be charitably measured at 10 frames a minute. The end result is very choppy motion and horrendous slowdown bordering on game breaking. But the bigger issue is that because the sprites retain their same scaling as the console versions, you actually have LESS visibility on screen, which means trying to set up potential passes or scoring opportunities can be nigh impossible. 1/10
SOUND: Abysmal sound output. Horrendous sound effects. Some musical bits that can barely be called music. I hate to resort to hyperbole, but turning the volume down to zero may help in retaining your sanity. 1/10
GAMEPLAY: Abysmally awful. Controls are ridden with lag and unresponsiveness. Moving your player with the D-Pad isn’t the smoothest thing around – which is sadly to be expected in this mess – and despite having only two buttons for passing and shooting, you’d figure they’d at least work, but they don’t. Sometimes, it’d take two or three button presses to get my player to pass the puck or shoot a shot… or whatever needs to be done involving pressing buttons or doing anything beyond turning off the game. As for the AI, every once in a while, it’ll score by accident, but for the most part, it’s fumbles about much like the framerate. 1/10
REPLAY VALUE: I cannot imagine anyone playing more than a single game of this thing without questioning their life choices that led them to this point. Even the PLAY VALUE can be somewhat contested. 1/10
OVERALL: NHL Hockey 95 is a bad port of a classic hockey franchise to Game Boy. It plays horribly, it looks and runs dreadfully, and it sounds bad. It wouldn’t be until the release of NHL 2000 that the Game Boy (and by extension, Game Boy Color) would receive an iteration of EA’s perennial hockey series a quality port worth playing. There are better hockey games on Game Boy that work within their means – Blades Of Steel is an oldie but goodie. NHL Hockey 95, on the other hand, is an experience more painful than being a Leafs fan watching their favorite hockey choke in the playoffs time and time again. Look elsewhere for your GB hockey fix because this ain’t it. 1/10
dtm666 