Welcome to another edition of Playing With Power. The review article that looks at all things Nintendo Entertainment System. Well, with winter rapidly approaching, and the NHL season underway, I figure that it’s only appropriate that I review a hockey game for the NES. And what better game than perhaps the most heralded of the bunch. But does it truly live up to the hype?
Year of Release: 1988
Publisher: Konami
Genre: Hockey game
Blades of Steel originally made its debut in the arcades a year prior in 1987. Then in 1988, Konami would port the game over to not just the NES, but many other systems like the Amiga and Commodore 64. However, it would see the most success on the NES. It would be a top selling cartridge for the console, especially in Canada. Blades of Steel was one of a very small handful of hockey games on the console. Others being Nintendo’s Ice Hockey, THQ’s Wayne Gretzky’s Hockey, and Jaleco’s Pro Sport Hockey.
Blades of Steel would also see a port on the original Game Boy a couple years later, before vanishing for an entire decade. That is until Konami attempted to revive the franchise back in the late 90’s on the N64, Playstation 1, and Game Boy Color. However, the reception for the newer games weren’t as strong as hoped, and the Blades of Steel franchise was more or less killed off.
Despite the flawed revival, the NES version of Blades of Steel is still often considered by many as one of the best arcade sports games ever, alongside giants like NBA Jam, and NFL Blitz. It is also still one of the most beloved games of all time.
GAMEPLAY
Blades of Steel is an arcade style hockey game. There are two modes of gameplay. The first is exhibition, where you can face off against either the CPU, or the 2nd player in a single hockey game. And the other is tournament, which you face multiple CPU teams to battle for the coveted Not-Stanley Cup. Both exhibition and tournament have three difficulty levels. Junior for easy, College for normal, and Pro for hard.
Blades of Steel plays as a standard 5 on 5 hockey game. Using the D-Pad will control the player you’re currently using, while B will either alternate the player or pass the puck if being currently held. The A button shoots the puck in your possession. The game has three 20 minute periods. However despite being 20 minutes on the clock, the game’s clock actually moves so fast that it’s actually about five minutes or so long a period.
You can control your goalie as well as your players. Just try to block the shot by moving the D-Pad, and then pass the puck to one of your players with B. The only major downside to controlling the goalie is that it does it automatically, which can slip you up a bit because you’ll likely be fumbling between using your current player and the goalie at similar times, thereby making it a bit tricky to successfully stop the opposing player from scoring a goal.
So, the game is pretty much your standard hockey fare. However, the major exception being that there are no penalties, no offisides, nothing that slows down the gameplay like regular hockey does. It’s just pick up and play, trying to outscore your opposition in three periods.
I know you’re probably already asking “But this is hockey. Where is the fighting”? Well, not to worry because the major selling point of Blades of Steel is the game’s fighting system. When the opposing player is in possession of the puck, if you can bump into them three times in succession with the same player, the two will begin to scuffle. Just keep pressing buttons, and you can possibly trigger a fight.
In this mode, pressing B either up or down will punch your opponent, while holding A and either up or down will block a certain area of the body. The object is to hit the opponent 5 times to knock them down. Just try to block when needed, and score more shots when your enemy has an unguarded body part. Once they’re knocked down, they will be dragged by the referee into the penalty box. This will give your team a two minute power play. That’s right. You can beat your enemies senseless and not be penalized for it.
However, should you trigger a fight in front of a goal, you will have a chance to trigger a penalty shot. This mode, which is more similar to a soccer penalty shot than a hockey one, gives you one chance to score or defend depending on which side you’re on. Press A and the direction you want to shoot if playing the opposition. And as the defending goalie, just move with the D-pad in hopes to block the puck. This similar gameplay style is reused at the end of the game should a game be tied. This will result in a shoot-out to see who can score the most goals to win the game.
You can choose from eight teams. Four being Canadian, and four being American. Of course none of these teams are affiliated with real NHL teams, but their jersey colors do represent other realistic sports teams from their respective areas. Chicago’s jersey is red and gray, very similar to that of the Chicago Blackhawks. And L.A is yellow and Indigo, similar to the Los Angeles Kings.
However, despite the colors, there really isn’t any variety in the players. All are of the same build, all have the same physical abilities, and all control and act the same. This is kind of a letdown when you consider earlier in the year Nintendo released Ice Hockey. In that you could customize your team to one of three different body types (Skinny, Normal, or Fat). This doesn’t hurt Blades of Steel, but it does kill the variety factor.
One final thing to add is the nice touch added after the 2nd period of the game. Before period 3 begins, you will get one of two mini “cutscenes”. One is of a polar bear scoring a goal, which is kinda neat. But the one everyone remembers is the Gradius mini-game. In it, you can control your ship as you try to shoot the bigger spaceship, while avoiding the blasts. Just shoot enough times, and you’ll win. Either way, after you finish, you will get an ad for Contra and Jackal, two other Konami games released at the time. The screen boasting “Amazing sound! Fantastic graphics! All your friends will want it”. A great sign of perfectly handled and wonderfully shameless product placement. Konami, I tip my hat to you.
GRAPHICS
The graphics are great, save for my one nagging exception. While the rink is well designed, and the cutscenes look great, the fact that all the players are faceless drones kinda takes a bit away from the game graphically . Not even in the fight or penalty shot scenes do they gain any sort of facial features. This wouldn’t be too big an issues if again I’m reminded of how the characters in Ice Hockey had facial features. And that the game as released just prior to Blades of Steel. Other than that, the game looks and feels like an 8-bit hockey experience.
MUSIC AND SOUND
There’s only a handful of music in this game. Mainly for the menu and pre and post game. However, there is no music during the actual gameplay save for goal scoring. The goal music is standard victory fanfares, but are all still quite good, and retain that classic Konami charm. But where the game may lack in music, it makes up for in digitized voice work. The game uses plenty of voice samples. But I’d say they’re mixed in quality. Phrases like the title screen’s “Blades of Steel” and “Face Off!” are all very clean sounding. However I do feel phrases like “Fight!” and “With the pass!” do sound a lot more garbled. In fact, when I was a kid, I had no clue they were saying “With the Pass!”. I always thought it was “Rip the pads!”. Also, get used to hearing that phrase, as it’s uttered after every successful pass. And considering how much passing has to be done in a game, it grates immediately. Other than that, the game still harbors a fantastic soundtrack, as well as some revolutionary audio for the time.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Blades of Steel is the best arcade style hockey game around. It’s easy to pick up and play, does away with the things that can make real hockey annoying, and has an awesome fight system that has yet to be correctly replicated. Some very minor issues aside, I’d still say that this is one of the very few sports games on the console that has been able to withstand the test of time. Even almost a quarter of a century later, I still find myself busting this game out from time to time. And the kicker is that I’m not even a hockey fan (which being Canadian can be grounds for treason), which says volumes about it’s addictive style. This game shoots and scores, and is a definite must have for any NES collection.
RATING: Thumbs Up