35. International Hockey
It might surprise you to learn that hockey is one of your old buddy Hank's favorite sports. Winters in Wisconsin get awfully chilly, and myself and brother Scoot spent many a weekend morning as youth on the ponds of Kenosha, wearing the Minnesota North Stars jerseys given to us on Christmas morning 1982, and banging clappers at our youngest brother Bimmy whom we had dressed in a football helmet, a few couch pillows, and tied to a couple of makeshift goalposts.
This naturally leads me to an interest in stick-and-puck-related video games, and let's just say we've come quite a long way. For example, today I'm writing about International Hockey, a game released in 1985 by Advantage Artworx for the Commodore 64 and (ugh) Apple II. The game is actually a sequel to an earlier Advantage Artworx game called Slap-Shot!, and was notable for adding a single-player mode and a penalty shot mini-game that we'll get into shortly.
2D hockey games mostly fall into the "north-south" and "east-west" categories, and International Hockey leans to the latter. I'd best describe this as a primitive version of Blades of Steel with looser movement and a few technical deficiencies along the way. I'm not actually sure how many players you're supposed to have per-side as none of them have names and numbers, and you never see more than one or two on screen at the same time, but you control one at a time and take control of any that pick up the puck. One button shoots, passes, and punches.
Despite the slapshots and glove saves, this game sometimes comes across a little more like soccer than hockey. First off, the ice surface is massive. It feels like you're playing on a football field that had an ice surface dropped on top of it. I know this is supposed to be an international-sized rink, but geez. The gameplay is also repetitive and can be tedious - with no variation in ability player-to-player, it's just a constant struggle for each player to strip the puck from each other and try and gain a few pixels of ground. Eventually, someone gets within striking range of the net, and odds of scoring are more-or-less a coin flip from there. Much like Blades of Steel, the player also controls the goalie, but I felt that a few shots would tend to float through even if I felt like I was in front of the puck.
That being said, there are some fun gameplay elements dropped into the mix to add a bit of variation. The game does call some basic penalties in higher difficulty levels if you become too aggressive. There's also an (incredibly basic) fighting mini-game, though penalties are given to both players instead of the loser in a game like Blades of Steel. The game also features a penalty shot/shootout dynamics (the "1 on 1" option offered in the start menu), which can either be played stand-alone or is invoked if the teams are tied at the end of 3 periods. This phase is also of the Blades of Steel Ilk: you get a first-person view from the shooter's perspective even if you're playing as the goalie, and have to choose to shoot (or attempt a save) in one of several directions. This makes goal-scoring or shot-stopping a guessing game instead of a matter of skill, but still feels pretty dramatic if you're playing with a friend.
Speaking of friends: you might want to get one if you intend on having fun with this game. The AI is repetitive and rudimentary, and while it's fine as a first effort, you'll get far more enjoyment out of trash-talking your buddy after you wire one top-corner on his dumb ass.
Presentation isn't.. good, but it's passable for a mid-80s Commodore title. The graphics are very basic, but are representative of the things they're supposed to represent, with no gaudy color schemes or brutally-malformed sprites. The game's sound is similarly limited but passable, with no music but a few basic sound effects like crowd noise and some classic arena organ stabs here and there. The menu is mostly text, and hey, that's OK - let's leave the art to the crackers and BBS heads.
Final verdict: this game is OK as something you'd pick up on cassette for a few bucks or grab at a copy party, and there are certainly a ton of far-worse hockey games that came way later in the course of video game history. It's also as good as hockey gaming got on C64, from what I can tell. It doesn't have much of an identity in missing any NHL licensing, teams, or players (real or finctional), but it's a fun way to blow 15 or 20 minutes, especially if you can drag a Player 2 into the mix. And never, ever forget: triple deke, glove side.
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