Blades of Steel

After “Ice Hockey” Blades of Steel was probably the best Nintendo Entertainment system hockey game ever made. I used to spend many hours battling my brother in head to head matches. It came out in the late 80’s so the graphics are pretty poor compared to the modern day EA (Electronic Arts) sports games. It is worth a download for sentimental reasons but probably would not be that much fun for first time players.
When you start the game you are given two game play options "Exhibition" or "Tournament.

” Exhibition is like the clicking “Play Now” or “quick match” on today’s sports games, you just play one game against either the computer or another person. If you select “Tournament” you are put into a playoff. If you win the playoffs you get the coveted “Konami Cup!”
My favorite part of the game when I was young was the fact that it allowed you to fight. If you hit check a single opponent a couple of time in a row without getting into in with anyone else a fight screen will appear. The best part is only the loser of the fight gets a penalty. How great is that? Be careful though if you fight too close to your net the other team might get to take a penalty shot. Which brings me to my second favorite thing about the game, the shoot out. If at the end of game the score is tied, a shoot out is used to decide who wins. Basically to score during the shoot out you have to pick a location on the net, your opponent the goalie also picks a location pre-shot. If the spots each person picked are the same the goalie will block the shot if they are different than you score.
One part of the game that I hated was the teams are not real NHL teams but are just names of different cities in North America (Thus no NHL player names either). In total the game has eight teams all from cities were hockey is pretty popular including (Toronto, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, and Minnesota). Each team has its own colors but these colors are not correlated with that cities NHL team.
Overall the game is pretty fun but that might just be because I enjoyed it so much at a young age.