As great as the NHL series from EA Sports is, for many years it wasn’t the only hockey offering out there for gamers. More “arcade”-type experiences—ranging from the Wayne Gretzky 3D Hockey series in the late 90s, to the early 2000s’ NHL Hitz franchise from Midway—presented more off-the-wall experiences in the vein of what Blitz, The Bigs, and NBA Jam did for football, baseball, and basketball respectively. Unfortunately, all we have left of many of those games are the memories, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t yearn for something a little goofier now and again. Enter V7 Entertainment, a small startup game developer in Vancouver who have heard our cries for something a bit more lighthearted, and are planning to release a game called Old Time Hockey for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC, sometime in early 2017.
Old Time Hockey is a throwback in a multitude of ways. Not only does it feature a modern control scheme, but also a simplified, NHL 94 sort of option, and a one-handed “Beer Mode” where everything can be done with one stick and one set of bumper buttons. This way you can play with just a couple buttons like back in the old arcades—using one hand to play and drinking a beer with the other! The game also features bone-crushing hits, bench-clearing brawls, flaming nets, and even a full-fledged campaign (more on that in a bit). Oh, and did we mention it’s set in the 1970s? No helmets here! Pompadours and pucks all around, folks! The one drawback is that also like a lot of those arcade games of old, the game won’t feature online versus at all. The small developer would rather have no online than crappy online, and that’s definitely the right call in our books.
Local versus exhibition, a full-season mode, and that campaign I mentioned earlier, though, sounds like it should be more than enough to keep us satiated. The campaign is especially enticing. In it, players will join the Charlestown Blues—an obvious tribute to the Charlestown Chiefs from Slapshot—midway through a miserable season and wallowing in the basement of the Bush Hockey League. It’s up to you to turn them around in the final 40 games of the season, while earning bonus points for completing objectives like shutouts and Gordie Howe hat tricks along the way to unlock more abilities for your player and the Blues.
We’re not sure how the final product will turn out, but we here at Hockey Achievements definitely have high hopes for this vintage video game, and can’t wait to try to bring the Blues some glory. Be sure to stay tuned to Hockey Achievements for more on Old Time Hockey in the future, and let us know if you’d like to see us try it out on our weekly Tuesday Night Hockey Twitch stream when it’s released! Might be a nice change of pace, even if its just Ray playing on the couch with some buddies and some brewskis. In the meantime, enjoy Old Time Hockey’s launch trailer and be sure to take part in this week’s challenge!
RayCarsilloWrites.com 