All the time we wasted in 1988-89 playing this instead of studying! This passed for a hockey videogame then too. Well, Blades of Steel by Konami was superior to Nintendo’s offering, which was cartoony. The version above had permission to use the NHL team names, I think, it’s been ~35 years so I only remember the key details: fighting! I also readily admit it was more fun to just play a game of hockey on a console system instead of all the bullshit EA has incorporated these days. I don’t see the joys of trying to run the entire NHL organization: salaries, trades, concessions, etc. What I’d give to bring back the simplicity of NHL 2001. Skate, pass, pass, shoot!
Anyway, it was a lot of fun when this guy on our floor at Mashuda the current NES as a birthday gift from his girlfriend. In adjusted dollars, it wasn’t a cheap present. We’d joke with him in the hallway by “singing” the Super Mario Brothers song as he’d walk by. One day we even used his VCR to slow down the Duck Hunt game to see how it worked. None of us being CS or Engineering people concluded that when the gun was fired, the screen turned black for a split second to check if you hit these squares where the ducks were with light projected from the gun. The gun probably reported back it illuminated the dark space to say “miss” and vice versa for a “hit.” Not a terrible hypothesis from a Communications or Pre-Med undergrad. I’m confident the answer is posted somewhere on Wikipedia, but I really don’t feel like it. I’m having more fun sharing the nostalgia over my roommate Paul kicking my ass at these games. It used to matter then and now it seems so foolish. I should’ve thanked him because he was preparing me for the day when tweeners would be doing this to me on a regular basis!