Ice Hockey

• Title — Ice Hockey • Developer — Nintendo R&D4 Pax Softnica • Publisher — Nintendo • Producer — Masayuki Uemura Shigeru Miyamoto • Programmer — Narumi Nakajima Hiroaki Hontani • Director — Hideki Konno • Composer — Soyo Oka • Platforms — Famicom Disk System, NES • Released — Famicom Disk SystemJanuary 21, 1988 NES • Genre — Sports (ice hockey) • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer

The play and mechanics of Ice Hockey are mostly similar to that of its namesake sport. The objective for both teams is to hit a black puck with a hockey stick into the opponent's goal. Teams are made up of five players including the goaltender, as opposed to six in real life. Players wear ice skates, which are used to skate across the icy rink. Each game is made up of three periods, with the victory going to the team who has the most points at the end of the game. At the beginning, two opposing players from each team face off in the middle of the rink. The player selects from three kinds of hockey player: the first is fast, weak, and feeble, but is good at the face-off; the second is average in all qualities, and the third is slow and poor at the face-off, but very powerful, both in body checking and shooting strength. The arena is similarly designed to a real-world ice hockey arena. The rink is coated in ice, with a goal on either side of the arena. There are a variety of marked areas, including the goal line that the puck must cross to score, the attacking/defending zone which is situated closely to each goal, the face-off spot, the neutral spot, and others. Each side of the rink has exactly the same design. If two opposing players fight for the puck for a certain amount of time, other players join the fight, resulting in the player from the losing team in the fight being put in the penalty box for a period of time.

Ice Hockey was developed by Nintendo R&D4, with Hideki Konno as director, Masayuki Uemura and Shigeru Miyamoto as producer and Soyo Oka as composer. Narumi Nakajima and Hiroaki Hontani of Pax Softnica assisted on programming. Hontani had previously directed Volleyball for Nintendo, a remake of his previous game Attack Four; this is his last project with Nintendo before his departure from Pax Softnica.