Alpine Studios‘ plainly-titled, but fun-to-play, Hockey was first published by Atari Corporation in 1992.

It’s an ice hockey game with a difference, in that: it contains actual fighting sections for when the players lose their cool with each other! And these beat ’em up sections are quite funny.

While we wouldn’t want to condone violence in sport, this kind of aggro often takes place in the North American hockey league, and it is not just tolerated – it is actually expected by the fans watching the games. And – having been to a few hockey games in the US myself – it doesn’t seem to take much (a few deliberate fouls) to light the blue touch paper.

Fighting aside, Hockey does give an excellent game of ice hockey on the Atari Lynx. The controls are simple and skating around the ice, hitting the puck from player to player, is easy to do. Scoring is exhilarating, and when you do score the players celebrate like have a mind of their own.

From the main menu you can choose to play a match, to just fight, to practise a shootout, or enter a password to continue a game. There are 22 teams to choose from, based on the NHL ’91 league, and these can be edited should the player wish. In the options screen you can switch ‘pro rules’ on or off; choose how long a game is; switch the referee on or off; fights on or off, or change the general level of play difficulty (easy or normal).

Overall, this is a superb handheld hockey game and standout title on the Lynx. It’s well worth a play, whether you’re an ice hockey fan or not.

More: Hockey on Wikipedia

HIDDEN TEAM:
Enter password BATSXPEB to unlock hidden team ‘The Bats’. 🙂