We've published close to 700 articles since we started this thing in April of '02. Which is an awful lot, especially if you're a new reader who wants to get caught up. You only wanna read the good stuff—or at least, the most important stuff. Which is why Classic 'Cola exists: to highlight some of the forgotten gems and memorable moments of GameCola's five-year-plus history. To that end, we're publishing one old article here every month to show you some of our best (or, at least most significant) writings to-date. (And we're running them completely unedited, as painful as that is.) NHL Hockey '94 (Super Nintendo) Genre: Sports Christmas 1999: One gift for the family (read: me) left to open. As I tear away the wrapping paper, I see the letters "N", "H", and "L" staring me down. This is followed by a "'94" tacked onto the end. I yelp with joy, and rush down to play it with my brothers, ignoring the countless Nintendo 64 games brought to me by a Mister Santa Clause. Summer 2001: Spend a lengthy time at my brother's beach house inside playing NHL '94, until we finally win the Stanley cup for the very first time. A large celebration ensues. These are just some of the highlights of my fixation with this game. Ever since playing it for the first time I've been hooked, and it's not hard to see why. Sure, you can have your next-gen games, with your polygon counts, and your 45 thousand bits, and your stats and drafts and your create-a-players; but with NHL '94, you have so much more than that. When playing this game, with its ancient-by-today's-standards graphics, you get a warm, fuzzy, nostalgic feeling; an honest, "this is a good game" feeling and that's way better than playing with any freaky, considerably-more-realistic-looking-than-anything-pre-Playstation blue-haired person I could create on my own. It seems like no more than your typical old-school hockey game; start the game with a face-off, team with the most points at the end wins. Pretty standard stuff. The modes themselves are standard as well; you can chose to play a normal, inconsequential game, start a playoffs series, continue a playoffs series (with a password supposedly given to you where you left off last time you played, but finding codes is a cinch on the internet), stage a shootout, etc. You have the option to have an automatic goalie (affectionately referred to as "Otto"), a manual goalie, or no goalie at all. The third can produce the most exciting of games, for shooting from one side of the rink can produce a goal in the other, whether intentional or not. It's not necessarily the game itself that's special; rather, it's playing the game with a group of friends on a hot summer day, when there's nothing better to do. It's "chilling" in the workout/video game room of your brothers house, playing the game while waiting for it to be time go to leave because you're having a sucky time and would rather be at home probably doing the same exact thing. It's earning the Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, finally showing those bastard Hawks/Icelanders/whoevertheylosttoandthenlaterwreckedinthethirdmovie what they're made of. NHL '94 is happiness in a gray cartridge. Control Control is crisp and simple to memorize. A shoots, B passes - that's all you need to know. Within minutes of getting the game out of the box (if you find yourself lucky enough to be in possession of a boxed cartridge, that is) you'll be scoring points left and right (and up and down, if you're really skilled). Graphics The year is twenty oh two, and I'm still leading
my All-Stars West team to victory. If a game can keep you hooked for
nine + years, then I'd say that it is a winner. To this day, the only electronic hockey game that
I've enjoyed more than NHL '94 is Wayne Gretzky's 3-D Hockey for the
Nintendo 64, and that's only because you can set the net on fire. If
goals were ablaze in NHL '94, it would be the premiere hockey game. -- Paul Franzen {05-2002} Rate this article — |
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