NHL ’96 on Sega Genesis: The Greatest Hockey Game Ever Made
When I was a little kid, I used to come into my parents room and watch hockey with my dad. It’s one of my first real memories. As I grew up, hockey took a back seat to basketball and baseball, but when I hit my teenage years, I hung out with a group of guys who loved the Pittsburgh Penguins. As a result, I, like most kids in a peer pressure situation, became an avid fan of them too. I can’t remember how I got my hands on NHL ’96 for the Genesis, but when I did, it didn’t leave my Genesis for months. I had played other hockey games before it, but nothing up to that point, or since for that matter, lived up to the perfect blend of simulation and arcade-style play in this classic.
The Genesis and SNES versions of NHL ’96 varied from the DOS version as the DOS version was a full 3D simulation, but the Genesis and SNES versions were a isometric 2D games.
And NHL ’96 is the reason why I got back into retro gaming. It was my quest for that game that led me to buy an original Genesis when I was in my 30’s and since then my passion for retro games has only grown.
Team and Player Authenticity
One of the first things that I fell in love with about the game was that I could actually play as my favorite players on the ice: Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. I had grown up with sports games like Joe Montana Sports Talk Football II, and Tecmo Bowl. This was the first time I played a sports game where you could be the players you liked best and actually see their names.
All of the hockey teams from the era with their full rosters is present in the game. You can select your favorite team, edit the scoring lines and substitute players in an out of lines, and then play a one-off exhibition game or go all-in with a 100+ game season.
But what if the team you like was complete crap in the ’95 NHL season (which is what the roster is based off of)?
Well, you can create your own players. And this is what made the game go to the next level for me. I love simulations up to a point, but as a teenager, what I really liked was waxing the crap out of the AI. The player creation allows you to create a player with the build and stats you want (though the build doesn’t really get reflected in the sprites within the game).
The game doesn’t give you enough points to be great at absolutely everything, so you still have to choose whether to make a player specialized at either offense or defense. Want an outstanding defensemen? Max out Defensive Awareness and Checking, and do some damage. Want the perfect scorer? Max out Offensive Awareness, Shot Power, and Shot Accuracy. Adding your friends into the game and playing as them was so much fun, and really increased the replayability of the game.
This also gives you the ability to add modern players into the league and adjust their stats accordingly.
Unfortunately, you can’t create a new team entirely. You’re locked into the 26 teams that existed in 1995.
Realistic Gameplay and Controls…But Not TOO Realistic
NHL ’96 offers a perfect blend of realistic game play mixed with arcade action and speed. I have to admit, most pure sports simulations feel a bit slow to me while some arcade classics like NHL Open Ice feel almost too fast and lack strategy. NHL ’96 gives you a nice balance of arcade speed while still allowing you to think on the fly and make strategic decisions mid-play.
The basic controls are pretty simple. The D-pad is your direction and pressing C gives you a boost of speed and also checks your opponents if they are close. When you have the puck, C shoots it – with a tap of C being a simple wrist shot and holding C being a full slap shot. You can also control where on the net you are aiming with the D-pad while you’re lining up a slap shot. This comes in very handy when you do the cheapest shot in the game – going to the corner of the blue line and shooting the puck into the lower corner of the goal (this is my go-to shot).
With the basics, you can play the game, but as you keep playing and working on the controls, you’ll be able to pass better, dump the puck when needed, and get back on defense in time to lay an open-ice check on an attacking player.
One of the other great features with the puck is the one-timer shots. Throwing passes across the ice to a waiting player that instantly shoots and scores is very satisfying (and less cheap than the blue line shot mentioned before).
The more advanced controls take a little bit of time to get used to, as there are a lot of other things you can do on offense, but they are extremely responsive. If you’re feeling brave, you can also take control of your goalie and try to stop those breakaways coming at your net.
As Many Rules as You’d Like
Within the game, you can toggle penalties on and off, which changes the realism of your experience. One rule that is called out separately is offsides. I’m really grateful for this, because I like playing the game with penalties, but due to the fast-paced action of the game, offsides becomes cumbersome and slows down the game considerably. Being able to toggle it off independently of the rest of the penalties is great.
Penalties seem to happen fairly randomly and at times it does feel like you’re in a hostile environment when your team is getting penalties consistently. So, in short, it feels just like real hockey.
FIGHT!
Fighting had been pulled from earlier installments of NHL and NHLPA games because the NHL and NHLPA were worried that it would promote children fighting. In NHL ’96, that was lifted and fighting was added back. It’s a welcome addition to the franchise because fighting, whether you like it or not, is a part of hockey.
If you had aggressive skaters on your team, you could just bet that one of them would get into a fight during the game. When this happened, the whole game would stop and the camera would pan up to the two players who were about to fight. In this moment, it was up to the human player to decide if they wanted to throw a punch and get into it, or just walk away with dual 2 minute roughing penalties. Well, call me the king of 5-minute fighting penalties because I loved the fighting in this game.
Your options when fighting are to throw an overhand punch or an uppercut, which if timed right will connect with a satisfying “smack”. You can also lock up with the other player by tugging on their jersey. At this point, you can still punch, but you can’t back away from the other players punches. When you’re locked up, you can keep punching and hope to knock them out, or you can pull at their jersey multiple times until you actually pull their jersey over their head, take them to the ground, and then rabbit punch them in the back of the head!
After playing for a bit, you will note that the AI has a pattern of throwing punches, and if you just wait about a second between throwing your own punches or pulling on the AI’s jersey, you can time it perfectly and knock out the AI every time.
Strong AI
While there are some cheap shots you can take to score goals, like the aforementioned blue line corner shot, the AI in NHL ’96 is very strong. I’ve been playing this game a lot, and I will still have some games end in a tie or even lose despite having a stacked roster. The AI is great at getting to positions to block passes on defense and can get very aggressive on offense.
Multiplayer
Of course, being that my friends were the ones who got me back into hockey, the multiplayer became our favorite part of the game. The game supports two players out of the box, but if you had the EA Sports 4 Way Play adapter, you could play 4 player. I was not lucky enough to have that adapter, so it was always a 2 player experience for me and my friends.
For the multiplayer, you can choose to be on the same team and go after the computer, or you could go head-to-head with your buddies. Head-to-head matchups were amazing, especially when you’d get into a fight and not be able to rely in the simple AI to make mistakes. The multiplayer plays just as smooth as the single player, and offers you the ability to cross-check your friend into their own bench without any repercussions in real life.
Groundbreaking Graphics and Sound
For its time, NHL ’96 boasted cutting-edge graphics that brought the game to life. For the time, the players looked “realistic”, as in you could make out hands and feet. (That’s the best we could hope for in the mid-90’s.) The sounds of players hitting each other and grunting is pretty good, and the little details like the squeak of the penalty door opening and closing is such a nice touch. The organ music that plays over the top of the game is also great and feels like you’re really at an arena. The crowd cheers up and down as plays happen, though it sounds a bit like white noise in the background at times.
The opening music when you turn on the game is iconic and is something that to this day still makes me smile when I hear it. The music score is second-to-none here.
The Legacy of NHL ’96
This post is going to be controversial because NHL ’96 is seen as one of the best hockey games by a lot of people, with me included. But others saw the leap to a new playing engine as a terrible setback. For those who fell in love with the original NHL games for the Genesis, such as NHL ’93 and NHLPA ’93, the upgrade to the new gaming engine with NHL ’95 was a big change, and some people absolutely hated it. That’s their opinion, and sometimes the thing you start with is the bar you have for the rest of your life. I completely understand that. I could never get into 3D hockey games after playing NHL ’96 and to this day it’s my go-to hockey game.
Should You Play NHL ’96?
If you haven’t played NHL ’96 on the Genesis, you are missing out. The Genesis version is regarded as the best console version and is snappier than the SNES version, while the SNES has slightly better graphics. But when it comes down to playing a game, the gameplay is what makes a game, and NHL ’96 for the Genesis has darn near perfect gameplay. It’s definitely worth checking out.
If you have a Genesis and want to check it out, you can find copies for around $10 on eBay here. You can also find the SNES version here.
